Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson
The Ancient Law
"And this is the result?" he asked, glancing down at the delicious creamy mould she had just worked into shape and crowned with a printed garland of thistles. "It makes me hungry enough for my muffins upon the minute."
"You shall have them shortly," she said, smiling, "but do you prefer pop-overs or plain?"
He met the question with serious consideration.
"Well, if the choice is mine I think I'll have pop-overs," he replied.
Before his unbroken gravity her quick humour rippled forth.
"Then I must run to Aunt Mehitable," she responded merrily, "for I suspect that she has already made them plain."
With a laughing nod she turned from him, and following the little path entered the house under the honeysuckle arbour on the back porch.
CHAPTER IV
Shows That A Laugh Does Not Heal A Heartache
WHEN Emily entered the dining-room, she found that Beverly had departed from his usual custom sufficiently to appear in time for breakfast.
"I hardly got a wink of sleep last night, my dear," he remarked, "and I think it was due entirely to the heavy supper you insisted upon giving us."
"But, Beverly, we must have hot things now," said Emily, as she arranged the crocheted centrepiece upon the table. "Mr. Smith is our boarder, you know, not our guest."
"The fact that he is a boarder," commented Beverly, with dignity, "entirely relieves me of any feeling of responsibility upon his account. If he were an invited guest in the house, I should feel as you do that hot suppers are a necessity, but when a man pays for the meals he eats, we are no longer under an obligation to consider his preferences."
"His presence in the household is a great trial to us all," observed his wife, whose attitude of general acceptance was modified by the fact that she accepted everything for the worst. Her sense of tragic values had been long since obliterated by a gray wash of melancholy that covered all.
"Well, I don't see that he is very zealous about interfering with us," remarked Emily, almost indignantly, "he doesn't appear to be of a particularly sociable disposition."
"Yes, I agree with you that he is unusually depressing," rejoined Mrs. Brooke. "It's a pity, perhaps, that we couldn't have secured a blond person – they are said to be of a more sanguine temperament, and I remember that the blond boarder at Miss Jennie Colton's, when I called there once, was exceedingly lively and entertaining. But it's too late, of course, to give advice now; I can only hope and pray that his morals, at least, are above reproach."
As the entire arrangement with Baxter had been made by Mrs. Brooke herself upon the day that Wilson, the grocer, had sent in his bill for the fifth time, Emily felt that an impatient rejoinder tripped lightly upon her tongue; but restraining her words with an effort, she observed cheerfully an instant later that she hoped Mr. Smith would cause no inconvenience to the family.
"Well, he seems to be a respectable enough person," admitted Beverly, in his gracious manner, "but, of course, if he were to become offensively presuming it would be a very simple matter to drop him a hint."
"It reminds me of a case I read of in the newspaper a few weeks ago," said Mrs. Brooke, "where a family in Roanoke took a stranger to board with them and shortly afterward were all poisoned by a powder in the soup. No, they weren't all poisoned," she corrected herself thoughtfully, "for I am positive now that the boarder was the only one who died. It was the cook who put the poison into the soup and the boarder who ate all of it. I remember the Coroner remarked at the inquest that he had saved the lives of the entire family."
"All the same I hope Mr. Smith won't eat all the soup," observed Emily.
"It terrifies me at times," murmured Amelia, "to think of the awful power that we place so carelessly in the hands of cooks."
"In that case, my dear, it might be quite a safeguard always to have a boarder at the table," suggested Beverly, with his undaunted optimism.
"But surely, Amelia," laughed Emily, "you can't suppose that after she has lived in the family for seventy years, Aunt Mehitable would yield at last to a passing temptation to destroy us?"
"I imagine the poor boarder suspected nothing while he ate his soup," returned Mrs. Brooke. "No, I repeat that in cases like that no one is safe, and the only sensible attitude is to be prepared for anything."
"Well, if I'm to be poisoned, I think I'd prefer to take it without preparation," rejoined Emily. "There is Mr. Smith now in the hall, so we may as well send Malviny to bring in breakfast."
When Ordway entered an instant later with his hearty greeting, even Mrs. Brooke unbent a trifle from her rigid melancholy and joined affably in the conversation. By a curious emotional paradox she was able to enjoy him only as an affliction; and his presence in the house had served as an excuse for a continuous parade of martyrdom. From the hour of his arrival, she had been perfectly convinced not only that he interfered with her customary peace of mind, but that he prevented her as surely from receiving her supply of hot water upon rising and her ordinary amount of food at dinner.
But as the days went by he fell so easily into his place in the family circle that they forgot at last to remark either his presence or his personal peculiarities. After dinner he would play his game of dominoes with Beverly in the breezy hall, until the sunlight began to slant across the cedars, when he would go out into the garden and weed the overgrown rows. Emily had seen him but seldom alone during the first few weeks of his stay, though she had found a peculiar pleasure in rendering him the small domestic services of which he was quite unconscious. How should he imagine that it was her hand that arranged the flowers upon his bureau, that placed his favourite chair near the window, and that smoothed the old-fashioned dimity coverlet upon his bed. Still less would he have suspected that the elaborate rag carpet upon his floor was one which she had contributed to his comfort from her own room. Had he known these things he would probably have been melancholy enough to have proved congenial company even to Mrs. Brooke, though, in reality, there was, perhaps, nothing he could have offered Emily which would have exceeded the pleasure she now found in these simple services. Ignorant as she was in all worldly matters, in grasping this essential truth, she had stumbled unawares upon the pure philosophy of love – whose satisfaction lies, after all, not in possession, but in surrender.
She was still absorbed in the wonder of this discovery, when going out into the garden one afternoon to gather tomatoes for a salad, she found him working among the tall, green corn at the end of the long walk. As he turned toward her in the late sunshine, which slanted across the waving yellow tassels, she noticed that there was the same eager, youthful look in his face that she had seen on the night when she had come down to find him spading by the moonbeams.
In response to her smile he came out from among the corn, and went with her down the narrow space which separated two overgrown hills of tomato plants. He wore no coat and his striped cotton shirt was open at the throat and wrists.
"It's delicious in the corn now," he said; "I can almost fancy that I hear the light rustle along the leaves."
"You love the country so much that you ought to have been a farmer," she returned, "then you might have raised tobacco."
"That reminds me that I worked yesterday in your brother's crop – but it's too sticky for me. I like the garden better."
"Then you ought to have a garden of your own. Is all your chopping and your digging merely for the promotion of the general good?"
"Isn't it better so?" he asked, smiling, "particularly when I share in the results as I shall in this case? Who knows but that I shall eat this wonderful tomato to-night at supper?"
She took it from his hand and placed it on the lettuce leaves in the bottom of the basket upon her arm.
"You make a careful choice, I see," she observed, "it is a particularly fine one."
"I suppose your philosophy would insist that after plucking it I should demand the eating of it also?"
"I don't know about my philosophy – I haven't any – but my common sense would."
"I'm not sure," he returned half seriously, "that I have much opinion of common sense."
"But you would have," she commented gravely, "if you had happened to be born with Beverly for a brother. I used to think that all men were alike," she added, "but you don't remind me of Beverly in the very least."
As she spoke she turned her face slightly toward him, and still leaning over the luxuriant tomato row, looked up at him joyously with her sparkling eyes. Her breath came quickly and he saw her bosom rise and fall under the scant bodice of her blue cotton gown. Almost unconsciously he had drifted into an association with her which constituted for him the principal charm of his summer at Cedar Hill.
"On the other hand I've discovered many points of resemblance," he retorted in his whimsical tone.
"Well, you're both easy to live in the house with, I admit that."
"And we're both perfectly amiable as long as everybody agrees with us and nobody crosses us," he added.
"I shouldn't like to cross you," she said, laughing, "but then why should I? Isn't it very pleasant as it is now?"
"Yes, it is very pleasant as it is now," he repeated slowly.
Turning away from her he stood looking in silence over the tall corn to the amber light that fell beyond the clear outline of a distant hill. The association was, as she had just said, very pleasant in his thoughts, and the temptation he felt now was to drift on with the summer, leaving events to shape themselves as they would in the future. What harm, he demanded, could come of any relation so healthful, so simple as this?
"I used to make dolls of ears of corn when I was little," said Emily, laughing; "they were the only ones I had except those Beverly carved for me out of hickory nuts. The one with yellow tassels I named Princess Goldylocks until she began to turn brown and then I called her Princess Fadeaway."
At her voice, which sounded as girlish in his imagination as the voice of Alice when he had last heard it, he started and looked quickly back from the sunset into her face.
"Has it ever occurred to you," he asked, "how little – how very little you know of me? By you I mean all of you, especially your brother and Mrs. Brooke."
Her glowing face questioned him for a moment.
"But what is knowledge," she demanded, "if it isn't just feeling, after all?"
"I wonder why under heaven you took me in?" he went on, leaving her words unanswered.
Had Mrs. Brooke stood in Emily's place, she would probably have replied quite effectively, "because the grocer's bill had come for the fifth time"; but the girl had learned to wear her sincerity in a less conspicuous fashion, so she responded to his question merely by a polite evasion.
"We have certainly had no cause to regret it," was what she said.
"What I wanted to say to you in the beginning and couldn't, was just this," he resumed, choosing his words with a deliberation which sounded strained and unnatural, "I suppose it can't make any difference to you – it doesn't really concern you, of course – that's what I felt – but," he hesitated an instant and then went on more rapidly, "my daughter's birthday is to-day. She is fifteen years old and it is seven years since I saw her."
"Seven years?" repeated Emily, as she bent over and carefully selected a ripe tomato.
"Doubtless I shouldn't know her if I were to pass her in the street," he pursued, after a minute. "But it's worse than that and it's harder – for it's as many years since I saw my wife."
She had not lifted her head from the basket, and he felt suddenly that her stillness was not the stillness of flesh, but of marble.
"Perhaps I ought to have told you all this before," he went on again, "perhaps it wasn't fair to let you take me in in ignorance of this and of much else?"
Raising her head, she stood looking into his face with her kind, brown eyes.
"But how could these things possibly affect us?" she asked, smiling slightly.
"No," he replied slowly, "they didn't affect you, of course – they don't now. It made no difference to any of you, I thought. How could it make any?"
"No, it makes no difference to any of us," she repeated quietly.
"Then, perhaps, I've been wrong in telling you this to-day?"
She shook her head. "Not in telling me, but," she drew a long breath, "it might be as well not to speak of it to Beverly or Amelia – at least for a while."
"You mean they would regret their kindness?"
"It would make them uncomfortable – they are very old-fashioned in their views. I don't know just how to put it, but it seems to them – oh, a terrible thing for a husband and wife to live apart."
"Well, I shan't speak of it, of course – but would it not be better for me to return immediately to Tappahannock?"
For an instant she hesitated. "It would be very dreadful at Mrs. Twine's."
"I know it," he answered, "but I'm ready to go back, this minute if you should prefer it."
"But I shouldn't," she rejoined in her energetic manner. "Why should I, indeed? It is much wiser for you to stay here until the end of the summer."
When she had finished he looked at her a moment without replying. The light had grown very faint and through the thin mist that floated up from the fields her features appeared drawn and pallid.
"What I can't make you understand is that even though it is all my fault – every bit my fault from the beginning – yet I have never really wanted to do evil in my heart. Though I've done wrong, I've always wanted to do right."
If she heard his words they made little impression upon her, for going out into the walk, she started, without speaking, in the direction of the house. Then, when she had moved a few steps from him, she stopped and looked back as if she had forgotten something that had been in her thoughts.
"I meant to tell you that I hope – I pray it will come right again," she said.
"I thank you," he answered, and drew back into the corn so that she might go on alone.
A moment later as Emily walked rapidly down the garden path, it seemed to her that the distance between the gate and the house covered an immeasurable space. Her one hope was that she might go to her room for at least the single hour before supper, and that there, behind a locked door with her head buried in the pillows, she might shed the hot tears which she felt pressing against her eyelids.
Entering the hall, she had started swiftly up the staircase, with the basket of tomatoes still on her arm, when Mrs. Brooke intercepted her by descending like a phantom from the darkened bend.
"O Emily, I've been looking for you for twenty minutes," she cried in despairing tones. "The biscuits refused to rise and Aunt Mehitable is in a temper. Will you run straight out to the kitchen and beat up a few quick muffins for supper."
Drawing back into the corner of the staircase, Emily glanced down upon the tomatoes lying in the bottom of the basket; then without raising her eyes she spoke in a voice which might have uttered appropriately a lament upon the universal tragedy of her sex.
"I suppose I may as well make them plain?" she said.
CHAPTER V
Treats Of A Great Passion In A Simple Soul
FOR several weeks in August Ordway did not go into Tappahannock, and during his vacation from the warehouse he made himself useful in a number of small ways upon the farm. The lawn was trimmed, the broken fences mended, the garden kept clear of wiregrass, and even Mrs. Brooke's "rockery" of portulaca, with which she had decorated a mouldering stump, received a sufficient share of his attention to cause the withered plants to grow green again and blossom in profusion. When the long, hot days had drawn to a close, he would go out with a watering-pot and sprinkle the beds of petunias and geraniums which Emily had planted in the bare spots beside the steps.
"The truth is I was made for this sort of thing, you know," he remarked to her one day. "If it went on forever I should never get bored or tired."
Something candid and boyish in his tone caused her to look up at him quickly with a wondering glance. Since the confession of his marriage her manner to him had changed but little, yet she was aware, with a strange irritation against herself, that she never heard his voice or met his eyes without remembering instantly that he had a wife whom he had not seen for seven years. The mystery of the estrangement was as great to her as it had ever been, for since that afternoon in the garden he had not referred again to the subject; and judging the marriage relation by the social code of Beverly and Amelia, she had surmised that some tremendous tragedy had been the prelude to a separation of so many years. As he lifted the watering-pot he had turned a little away from her, and while her eyes rested upon his thick dark hair, powdered heavily with gray above the temples, and upon the strong, sunburnt features of his profile, she asked herself in perplexity where that other woman was and if it were possible that she had forsaken him? "I wonder what she is like and if she is pretty or plain?" she thought. "I almost hope she isn't pretty, and yet it's horrid of me and I wonder why I hope so? What can it matter since he hasn't seen her for seven years, and if he ever sees her again, she will probably be no longer young. I suppose he isn't young, and yet I've never thought so before and somehow it doesn't seem to matter. No, I'm sure his wife is beautiful," she reflected a moment later, as a punishment for her uncharitable beginning, "and she has fair hair, I hope, and a lovely white skin and hands that are always soft and delicate. Yes, that is how it is and I am very glad," she concluded resolutely. And it seemed to her that she could see distinctly this woman whom she had imagined and brought to life.
"I can't help believing that you would tire of it in time," she said presently aloud.
"Do you tire of it?" he asked in a softened voice, turning his gaze upon her.
"I?" she laughed, with a bitterness he had never heard in her tone before, "oh, yes, but I suppose that doesn't count in the long run. Did there ever live a woman who hasn't felt at times like railing against the milk pans and denying the eternal necessity of ham and eggs?"
Though she spoke quite seriously the simplicity of her generalisation brought a humorous light to his eyes; and in his imagination he saw Lydia standing upon the white bearskin rug against the oval mirror and the gold-topped bottles upon her dressing-table.
"Well, if I'd made as shining a success at my job as you have at yours, I think I'd be content," was all he said.
She laughed merrily, and he saw that the natural sweetness of her temper was proof against idle imaginings or vain desires.
"You think then that it is better to do a small thing well than a big thing badly?" she inquired.
"But it isn't a small thing," he protested, "it's a great big thing – it's the very biggest thing of all."
A provoking smile quivered on her lips, and he saw the dimple come and go in her cheek.
"I am glad at least that you like my ham and eggs," she retorted mockingly.
"I do," he answered gravely, "I like your ham and eggs, but I admire your courage, also."
She shook her head. "It's the cheapest of the virtues."
"Not your kind, my dear child – it's the rarest and the costliest of achievements."
"Oh, I don't know how serious you are," she answered lightly, "but it's a little like putting a man on a desert island and saying, 'make your bed or lie on the rocks.' He's pretty apt to make his bed, isn't he?"
"Not in the least. He usually puts up a flag of distress and then sits down in the sand and looks out for a ship."
Her voice lost its merriment. "When my ship shows on the horizon, it will be time enough to hoist my flag."
A reply was on his lips, but before he could utter it, she had turned away and was moving rapidly across the lawn to the house.
The next morning Ordway went into Tappahannock, not so much on account of the little business he found awaiting him at the warehouse, as urged by the necessity of supplying Beverly with cigars. To furnish Beverly three times a day with the kind of cigar he considered it "worth while for a gentleman to smoke" – even though his choice fell, in Ordway's opinion, upon a quite inferior brand – had become in the end a courtesy too extravagant for him to contemplate with serenity. Yet he knew that almost in spite of himself this tribute to Beverly was now an established fact, and that as long as he remained at Cedar Hill he would continue to supply with eagerness the smoke which Beverly would accept with affability.
The town was dull enough at mid August, he remembered from the blighting experience of last summer; and now, after a fierce drought which had swept the country, he saw the big, fan-shaped leaves on Mrs. Twine's evening glory hanging like dusty rags along the tin roof of the porch. Banks was away, Baxter was away, and the only acquaintance he greeted was Bill Twine, sitting half drunk, in his shirt sleeves and collarless, on the front steps. There was positive relief when, at the end of an hour, he retraced his steps, with Beverly's cigars under his right arm.
After this the summer declined slowly into autumn, and Ordway began to count the long golden afternoons as they dropped one by one into his memory of Cedar Hill. An appeal to Mrs. Brooke, whom he had quite won over by his attentions to Beverly and the children, delayed his moving back into Tappahannock until the beginning of November, and he told himself with satisfaction that it would be possible to awake on frosty October mornings and look out upon the red and gold of the landscape.
Late in September Banks returned from his vacation, and during his first visit to Cedar Hill, he showed himself painfully nervous and ill at ease. But coming out for a walk with Ordway one afternoon, he suggested at the end of their first mile that they should sit down and have a smoke beneath a young cherry tree upon the roadside. As he lit his pipe he held the match in his hand until it burned his fingers; then throwing it into the grass, he turned upon his companion as eloquently despairing a look as it is in the power of a set of naturally cheerful features to assume.
"Smith," he asked in a hollow voice, "do you suppose it's really any worse to die by your own hand than by disease?"
"By Jove!" exclaimed Ordway, and the moment afterward, "Come, now, out with it, Banks. How has she been behaving this time?"
Banks lowered his voice, while he glanced suspiciously up at the branches of the cherry tree beneath which they sat.
"She hates the sight of me," he answered, with a groan.
"Nonsense," rejoined Ordway, cheerfully. "Love has before now worn the mask of scorn."
"But it hasn't worn the mask of boredom," retorted the despairing Banks.
For a minute his answer appeared final even to Ordway, who stared blankly over the ripened cornfield across the road, without, for the life of him, being able to frame a single encouraging sentence in reply.
"If it's the last word I speak," pursued Banks, biting desperately at the stem of his pipe, "she cannot abide the sight of me."
"But how does she show it?" demanded Ordway, relieved that he was not expected to combat the former irrefutable statement.
"She tried to keep me away from the springs where she went, and when I would follow her, whether or no, she hardly opened her mouth to me for the first two days. Then if I asked her to go to walk she would say it was too hot for walking, and if I asked her to drive she'd answer that she didn't drive with men. As if she and I hadn't been together in a dog-cart over every road within twenty miles of Tappahannock!"
"But perhaps the custom of the place was different?"
"No, sir, it was not custom that kept her," replied Banks, in a bitterness that scorned deception, "for she went with others. It was the same thing about dancing, too, for if I asked her to dance, she would always declare that she didn't have the strength to use her fan, and the minute after I went away, I'd see her floating round the ball-room in somebody else's arms. Once I did get her to start, but she left off after the first round, because, she said, we could not keep in step. And yet I'd kept in step with her ever since we went on roller skates together."
He broke off for an instant, knocked the cold ashes out of his pipe, and plucking a long blade of grass, began chewing it nervously as he talked.
"And yet if you could only have seen her when she came down to the ball-room in her white organdie and blue ribbons," he exclaimed presently, in an agony of recollection.
"Well, I'm rather glad on the whole that I didn't," rejoined Ordway.
"You'd have fallen in love with her if you had – you couldn't have helped it."
"Then, thank heaven, I escaped the test. It's a pretty enough pickle as it is now."
"I could have stood it all," said Banks, "if it hadn't been for the other man. She might have pulled every single strand of my hair out if she'd wanted to, and I'd have grit my teeth and pretended that I liked it. I didn't care how badly she treated me. What hurt me was how well she treated the other man."
"Did she meet him for the first time last summer?" asked Ordway.
"Oh no, she's known him ever since she went North in the spring – but it's worse now than it's ever been and, upon my word, she doesn't seem to have eyes or ears for anybody else."
"So you're positive she means to marry him?"
"She swears she doesn't – that it's only fun, you know. But in my heart I believe it is as good as settled between them."
"Well, if she's made up her mind to it, I don't, for the life of me, see how you're going to stop her," returned Ordway, smiling.
"But a year ago she'd made up her mind to marry me," groaned Banks.
"If she's as variable as that, my dear boy, perhaps the wind will blow her heart back to you again."
"I don't believe she's got one," rejoined Banks, with the merciless dissection of the pure passion; "I sometimes think that she hasn't any more heart than – than – I don't know what."
"In that case I'd drag myself together and let her alone. I'd go back to my work and resolve never to give her another thought."
"Then," replied Banks, "you might have all the good sense that there is in the business, but you wouldn't be in love. Now I love her for what she is, and I don't want her changed even if it would make her kinder. When she used to be sweet I thought sweetness the most fascinating thing on earth, and now that she bangs me, I've come to think that banging is."
"I begin to understand," remarked Ordway, laughing, "why you are not what might be called a successful lover."
"It isn't because I don't know the way," returned Banks gloomily, "it's because I can't practice it even after I've planned it out. Don't I lie awake at night making up all sorts of speeches I'm going to say to her in the morning? Oh, I can be indifferent enough when I'm dressing before the mirror – I've even put on a purple cravat because she hated it, but I've always taken it off again before I went downstairs to breakfast. Then as soon as I lay my eyes upon her, I feel my heart begin to swell as if it would burst out of my waistcoat, and instead of the flippant speeches I've planned, I crawl and whimper just as I did the day before."
They were seated under a cherry tree by the side of the road which led to Tappahannock, and as Banks finished his confessions, a large, dust covered buggy was seen approaching them from the direction of the town. As Ordway recognised Baxter through the cloud of dust raised by the wheels, he waved his hat with a shout of welcome, and a minute later the buggy reached them and drew up in the patch of briars upon the roadside.
"I was just on my way to see you, Smith," said Baxter, as he let fall the reins and held out his great dirty hand, "but I'm too heavy to get out, and if I once sat down on the ground, I reckon it would take more than the whole of Tappahannock to pull me up again."
"Well, go ahead to Cedar Hill," suggested Ordway, "and we'll follow you at a brisk walk."
"No, I won't do that. I can say what I have got to say right here over the wheel, if you'll stand awhile in the dust. Major Leary was in to see me again this morning, and the notion he's got in his head now is that you're the man to run for Mayor of Tappahannock."
"I!" exclaimed Ordway, drawing back slightly as he spoke. "He forgets that I'm out of the question. I refuse, of course."
"Well, you see, he says you're the only man we've got strong enough to defeat Jasper Trend – and he's as sure as shot that you'd have something like a clean walk-over. He's already drawn up a big red flag with 'The People's Candidate: Ten Commandment Smith,' upon it. I asked him why he wouldn't put just plain 'Daniel,' but he said that little Biblical smack alone was worth as much as a bushel of votes to you. If you drew the line at 'Ten Commandment' he's going to substitute 'Daniel-in-the-Lions'-Den Smith' or something of that kind."
"Tell him to stop it," broke in Ordway, with a smothered anger in his usually quiet voice, "he's said nothing to me about it, and I decline it absolutely and without consideration!"
"You mean you won't run?" inquired Baxter, in astonishment.
"I mean I won't run – I can't run – put it any way you please."
"I thought you'd put your whole heart and soul into defeating Trend."
"I have, but not that way – where's Trenton whom we've been talking of all summer?"
"He's out of it – consumption, the doctor says – anyway he's going South."
"Then there's but one other man," said Ordway, decisively, "and that's Baxter."
"Me?" said Baxter softly, "you mean me, do you say?" His chuckle shook the buggy until it creaked upon its rusty wheels. "I can't," he added, with a burst of humour, "to tell the truth, I'm afraid."
