Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson
The Ancient Law
CHAPTER IX
The Old And The New
WHEN she reached home she found Beverly, seated before a light blaze in the dining-room, plunged in the condition of pious indolence which constituted his single observance of the Sabbath. To do nothing had always seemed to him in its way as religious as to attend church, and so he sat now perfectly motionless, with the box of dominoes reposing beside his tobacco pouch on the mantel above his head. The room was in great confusion, and the threadbare carpet, ripped up in places, was littered with the broken bindings of old books and children's toys made of birchwood or corncob, upon which Beverly delighted to work during the six secular days of the week. At his left hand the table was already laid for supper, which consisted of a dish of batter-bread, a half bared ham bone and a pot of coffee, from which floated a thin and cheap aroma. A wire shovel for popping corn stood at one side of the big brick fireplace, and on the hearth there was a small pile of half shelled red and yellow ears. Between the two long windows a tall mahogany clock, one of the few pieces left by the collector of old furniture, ticked with a loud, monotonous sound, which seemed to increase in volume with each passage of the hands.
"Did you hear any news, my dear?" inquired Beverly, as Emily entered, for in spite of the fact that he rarely left his fireside, he was an insatiable consumer of small bits of gossip.
"I didn't see anybody," answered Emily in her cheerful voice. "Shall I pour the coffee?"
She went to the head of the table, while her brother, after shelling an ear of corn into the wire shovel, began shaking it slowly over the hickory log.
"I thought you might have heard if Milly Trend had really made up her mind to marry that young tobacco merchant," he observed.
Before Emily could reply the door opened and the three children rushed in, pursued by Aunt Mehitable, who announced that "Miss Meely" had gone to bed with one of her sick headaches and would not come down to supper. The information afforded Beverly some concern, and he rose to leave the room with the intention of going upstairs to his wife's chamber; but observing, as he did so, that the corn was popping finely, he sat down again and devoted his attention to the shovel, which he began to shake more rapidly.
"The terrapin's sick, papa," piped one of the children, a little girl called Lila, as she pulled back her chair with a grating noise and slipped into her seat. "Do you s'pose it would like a little molasses for its supper?"
"Terrapins don't eat molasses," said the boy, whose name was Blair. "They eat flies – I've seen 'em."
"My terrapin shan't eat flies," protested Bella, the second little girl.
"It ain't your terrapin!"
"It is."
"It ain't her terrapin, is it, papa?"
Beverly, having finished his task, unfastened the lid of the shovel with the poker, and suggested that the terrapin might try a little popcorn for a change. As he stood there with his white hair and his flushed face in the red firelight, he made a picture of beautiful and serene domesticity.
"I shouldn't wonder if he'd get quite a taste for popcorn if you could once persuade him to try it," he remarked, his mind having wandered whimsically from his wife to the terrapin.
Emily had given the children batter-bread and buttermilk, and she sat now regarding her brother's profile as it was limned boldly in shadow against the quivering flames. It was impossible; she discovered, to survey Beverly's character with softness or his profile with severity.
"Don't you think," she ventured presently, after a wholesome effort to achieve diplomacy, "that you might try to-morrow to spade the seed rows in the garden. Adam can't find anybody, and if the corn isn't dropped this week we'll probably get none until late in the summer."
"'I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed,'" quoted Beverly, as he drank his coffee. "It would lay me up for a week, Emily, I am surprised that you ask it."
She was surprised herself, the moment after she had put the question, so hopeless appeared any attempt to bend Beverly to utilitarian purposes.
"Well, the tomatoes which I had counted on for the market will come too late," she said with a barely suppressed impatience in her voice.
"I shouldn't worry about it if I were you," returned Beverly, "there's nothing that puts wrinkles in a pretty face so soon as little worries. I remember Uncle Bolingbroke (he used to be my ideal as a little boy) told me once that he had lived to be upward of ninety on the worries from which he had been saved. As a small child I was taken to see him once when he had just come to absolute ruin and had been obliged to sell his horses and his house and even his wife's jewellery for debt. A red flag was flying at the gate, but inside sat Uncle Bolingbroke, drinking port wine and cracking nuts with two of his old cronies. 'Yes, I've lost everything, my boy,' he cried, 'but it doesn't worry me a bit!' At that instant I remember noticing that his forehead was the smoothest I had ever seen."
"But his wife had to take in dressmaking," commented Emily, "and his children grew up without a particle of education."
"Ah, so they did," admitted Beverly, with sadness, "the details had escaped me."
As they had escaped him with equal success all his life, the fact seemed to Emily hardly deserving of comment, and leaving him to his supper, she went upstairs to find Mrs. Brooke prostrate, in a cold room, with her head swathed in camphor bandages. In answer to Emily's inquiries, she moaned plaintively that the pantry shelves needed scouring and that she must get up at daybreak and begin the work. "I've just remembered lying here that I planned to clean them last week," she said excitedly, "and will you remind me, Emily, as soon as I get up that Beverly's old brown velveteen coat needs a patch at the elbow?"
"Don't think of such things now, Amelia, there's plenty of time. You are shivering all over – I'll start the fire in a moment. It has turned quite cool again."
"But I wanted to save the pine knots until Beverly came up," sighed Mrs. Brooke, "he is so fond of them."
Without replying to her nervous protest, Emily knelt on the hearth and kindled a blaze which leaped rosily over the knots of resinous pine. Of the two family failings with which she was obliged to contend, she had long ago decided that Beverly's selfishness was less harmful in its results than Amelia's self-sacrifice. Inordinate at all times, it waxed positively violent during her severe attacks of headache, and between two spasms of pain her feverish imagination conjured up dozens of small self-denials which served to increase her discomfort while they conferred no possible benefit upon either her husband or her children. Her temperament had fitted her for immolation; but the character of the age in which she lived had compelled her to embrace a domestic rather than a religious martyrdom. The rack would have been to her morally a bed of roses, and some exalted grace belonging to the high destiny that she had missed was visible at times in her faded gray eyes and impassive features.
"Mehitable brought me an egg," she groaned presently, growing more comfortable in spite of her resolve, as the rosy fire-light penetrated into the chill gloom where she lay, "but I sent it down to Blair – I heard him coughing."
"He didn't want it. There was plenty of batter-bread."
"Yes, but the poor boy is fond of eggs and he so seldom has one. It is very sad. Emily, have you noticed how inert and lifeless Mr. Brooke has grown?"
"It's nothing new, Amelia, he has always been that way. Can't you sleep now?"
"Oh, but if you could have seen him when we became engaged, Emily – such life! such spirits! I remember the first time I dined at your father's – that was before Beverly's mother died, so, of course, your mother wasn't even thought of in the family. I suppose second marriages are quite proper, since the Lord permits them, but they always seem to me like trying to sing the same hymn over again with equal fervour. Well, I was going to say that when your father asked me what part of the fowl I preferred and I answered 'dark meat, sir,' he fairly rapped the table in his delight: 'Oh, Amelia, what a capital wife you'll make for Beverly,' he cried, 'if you will only continue to prefer dark meat!'"
She stopped breathlessly, lay silent for a moment, and then began to moan softly with pain. Emily swept the hearth, and after putting on a fresh log, went out, closing the door after her. There was no light in her room, but she reflected with a kind of desperation that there was no Beverly and no Amelia. The weight of the family had left her bruised and helpless, yet she knew that she must go downstairs again, remove the supper things, and send the three resisting children off to bed. She was quite equal to the task she had undertaken, yet there were moments when, because of her youth and her vitality, she found it harder to control her temper than to accomplish her work.
At ten o'clock, when she had coaxed the children to sleep, and persuaded Amelia to drink a cup of gruel, she came to her room again and began to undress slowly by the full moonlight which streamed through the window. Outside, beyond the lilac bushes, she could see the tangled garden, with the dried stubble of last year's corn protruding from the unspaded rows. This was the last sight upon which her eyes turned before she climbed into the high tester bed and fell into the prompt and untroubled sleep of youth.
Awaking at six o'clock she went again to the window, and at the first glance it seemed to her that she must have slipped back into some orderly and quiet dream – for the corn rows which had presented a blighted aspect under the moonlight were now spaded and harrowed into furrows ready for planting. The suggestion that Beverly had prepared a surprise for her occurred first to her mind, but she dismissed this the next instant and thought of Adam, Micah, even of the demented Aunt Mehitable. The memory of the fairy godmother in the story book brought a laugh to her lips, and as she dressed herself and ran downstairs to the garden gate, she half expected to see the pumpkin chariot disappearing down the weed-grown path and over the fallen fence. The lilac blossoms shed a delicious perfume into her face, and leaning against the rotting posts of the gate, she looked with mingled delight and wonder upon the freshly turned earth, which flushed faintly pink in the sunshine. A heavy dew lay over the landscape and as the sun rose slowly higher the mist was drawn back from the green fields like a sheet of gauze that is gathered up.
"Beverly? Micah? Mehitable?" each name was a question she put to herself, and after each she answered decisively, "No, it is impossible." Micah, who appeared at the moment, doting, half blind and wholly rheumatic, shook his aged head helplessly in response to her eager inquiries. There was clearly no help to be had from him except the bewildered assistance he rendered in the afternoon by following on her footsteps with a split basket while she dropped the grains of corn into the opened furrows. His help in this case even was hardly more than a hindrance, for twice in his slow progress he stumbled and fell over a trailing brier in the path, and Emily was obliged to stop her work and gather up the grain which he had scattered.
"Dese yer ole briers is des a-layin' out fur you," he muttered as he sat on the ground rubbing the variegated patch on his rheumatic knee. When the planting was over he went grumbling back to his cabin, while Emily walked slowly up and down the garden path and dreamed of the vegetables which would ripen for the market. In the midst of her business calculations she remembered the little congregation in the green field on Sunday afternoon and the look of generous enthusiasm in the face of the man who passed her in the road. Why had she thought of him? she wondered idly, and why should that group of listeners gathered out of doors in the faint sunshine awake in her a sentiment which was associated with some religious emotion of which she had been half unconscious?
The next night she awoke from a profound sleep with the same memory in her mind, and turning on her pillow, lay wide awake in the moonlight, which brought with it a faint spring chill from the dew outside. On the ivy the light shone almost like dawn, and as she could not fall asleep again, she rose presently, and slipping into her flannel dressing-gown, crossed to the window and looked out upon the shining fields, the garden and the blossoming lilacs at the gate. The shadow of the lilacs lay thick and black along the garden walk, and her eyes were resting upon them, when it seemed to her that a portion of the darkness detached itself and melted out into the moonlight. At first she perceived only the moving shadow; then gradually a figure was outlined on the bare rows of the garden, and as her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she saw that the figure had assumed a human shape, though it was still followed so closely by its semblance upon the ground that it was impossible at a distance to distinguish the living worker from his airy double. Yet she realised instantly that her mysterious gardener was at work before her eyes, and hastening into her clothes, she caught up her cape from a chair, and started toward the door with an impulsive determination to discover his identity. With her hand on the knob, she hesitated and stopped, full of perplexity, upon the threshold. Since he had wished to remain undiscovered was it fair, she questioned, to thrust recognition upon his kindness? On the other hand was it not more than unfair – was it not positively ungrateful – to allow his work to pass without any sign of acceptance or appreciation? In the chill white moonlight outside she could see the pointed tops of the cedars rising like silver spires. As the boughs moved the wind entered, bringing mingled odours of cedar berries, lilacs and freshly turned soil. For an instant longer her hesitation lasted; then throwing aside her cape, she undressed quickly, without glancing again down into the garden. When she fell asleep now it was to dream of the shadowy gardener spading in the moonlight among the lilacs.
CHAPTER X
His Neighbour's Garden
IN his nightly work in the Brookes' garden, Ordway was prompted at first by a mere boyish impulse to repay people whose bread he had eaten and in whose straw he had slept. But at the end of the first hour's labour the beauty of the moonlight wrought its spell upon him, and he felt that the fragrance of the lilacs went like strong wine to his head. So the next night he borrowed Mrs. Twine's spade again and went back for the pure pleasure of the exercise; and the end of the week found him still digging among the last year's plants in the loamy beds. By spading less than two hours a night, he had turned the soil of half the garden before Sunday put a stop to his work.
On his last visit, he paused at the full of the moon, and stood looking almost with sadness at the blossoming lilacs and the overgrown path powdered with wild flowers which had strayed in through the broken fence. For the hours he had spent there the place had given him back his freedom and his strength and even a reminiscent sentiment of his youth. While he worked Lydia had been only a little farther off in the beauty of the moonlight, and he had felt her presence with a spiritual sense which was keener than the sense of touch.
As he drew his spade for the last time from the earth, he straightened himself, and standing erect, faced the cool wind which tossed the hair back from his heated forehead. At the moment he was content with the moonlight and the lilacs and the wind that blew over the spring fields, and it seemed easy enough to let the future rest with the past in the hands of God. Swinging the spade at his side, he lowered his eyes and moved a step toward the open gate. Then he stopped short, for he saw that Emily Brooke was standing there between the old posts under the purple and white lilacs.
"It seemed too ungrateful to accept such a service and not even to say 'thank you,'" she remarked gravely. There was a drowsy sound in her voice; her lids hung heavily like a child's over her brown eyes, and her hair was flattened into little curls on one side by the pressure of the pillow.
"It has been a pleasure to me," he answered, "so I deserve no thanks for doing the thing that I enjoyed."
Drawing nearer he stood before her with the spade on his shoulder and his head uncovered. The smell of the earth hung about him, and even in the moonlight she could see that his blue eyes looked almost gay. She felt all at once that he was younger, larger, more masculine than she had at first believed.
"And yet it is work," she said in her voice of cheerful authority, "and sorely needed work at that. I can thank you even though I cannot understand why you have done it."
"Let's put it down to my passion to improve things," he responded with a whimsical gravity, "don't you think the garden as I first saw it justified that explanation of my behaviour?"
"The explanation, yes – but not you," she answered, smiling.
"Then let my work justify itself. I've made a neat job of it, haven't I?"
"It's more than neat, it's positively ornamental," she replied, "but even your success doesn't explain your motive."
"Well, the truth is – if you will have it – I needed exercise."
"You might have walked."
"That doesn't reach the shoulders – there's the trouble."
She laughed with an easy friendliness which struck him as belonging to her gallant manner.
"Oh, I assure you I shan't insist upon a reason, I'm too much obliged to you," she returned, coming inside the gate. "Indeed, I'm too good a farmer, I believe, to insist upon a reason anyway. Providence disposes and I accept with thanks. I may wish, though, that the coloured population shared your leaning toward the spade. By the way, I see it isn't mine. It looks too shiny."
"I borrowed it from Mrs. Twine, and it is my suspicion that she scrubs it every night."
"In that case I wonder that she lets it go out to other people's gardens."
"She doesn't usually," he laughed as he spoke, "but you see I am a very useful person to Mrs. Twine. She talks at her husband by way of me."
"Oh, I see," said Emily. "Well, I'm much obliged to her."
"You needn't be. She hadn't the remotest idea where it went."
Her merriment, joining with his, brought them suddenly together in a feeling of good fellowship.
"So you don't like divided thanks," she commented gaily.
"Not when they are undeserved," he answered, "as they are in this case."
For a moment she was silent; then going slowly back to the gate, she turned there and looked at him wonderingly, he thought.
"After all, it must have been a good wind that blew you to Tappahannock," she observed.
Her friendliness – which impressed him as that of a creature who had met no rebuffs or disappointments from human nature, made an impetuous, almost childlike, appeal to his confidence.
"Do you remember the night I slept in your barn?" he asked suddenly.
She bent down to pick up a broken spray of lilac.
"Yes, I remember."
"Well, I was at the parting of the ways that night – I was beaten down, desperate, hopeless. Something in your kindness and – yes, and in your courage, too, put new life into me, and the next morning I turned back to Tappahannock. But for you I should still have followed the road."
"It is more likely to have been the cup of coffee," she said in her frank, almost boyish way.
"There's something in that, of course," he answered quietly. "I was hungry, God knows, but I was more than hungry, I was hurt. It was all my fault, you understand – I had made an awful mess of things, and I had to begin again low down – at the very bottom." It was in his mind to tell her the truth then, from the moment of his fall to the day that he had returned to Tappahannock; but he was schooling himself hard to resist the sudden impulses which had wrecked his life, so checking his words with an effort, he lowered the spade from his shoulder, and leaning upon the handle, stood waiting for her to speak.
"Then you began again at Baxter's warehouse the morning afterward?" she asked.
"I had gone wrong from the very base of things, you see," he answered.
"And you are making a new foundation now?"
"I am trying to. They're decent enough folk in Tappahannock, aren't they?" he added cheerfully.
"Perhaps they are," she responded, a little wistfully, "but I should like to have a glimpse of the world outside. I should like most, I think, to see New York."
"New York?" he repeated blankly, "you've never been there?"
"I? Oh, no, I've never been out of Virginia, except when I taught school once in Georgia."
The simple dignity with which she spoke caused him to look at her suddenly as if he had taken her in for the first time. Perfectly unabashed by her disclosure, she stood before him as calmly as she would have stood, he felt, had he possessed a thousand amazed pairs of eyes. Her confidence belonged less to personal experience, he understood now, than to some inherited ideal of manner – of social values; and it seemed to him at the moment that there was a breadth, a richness in her aspect which was like the atmosphere of rare old libraries.
"You have, I dare say, read a great many books," he remarked.
"A great many – oh, yes, we kept our books almost to the last. We still have the entire south wall in the library – the English classics are there."
"I imagined so," he answered, and as he looked at her he realised that the world she lived in was not the narrow, provincial world of Tappahannock, with its dusty warehouses, its tobacco scented streets, its red clay roads.
She had turned from the gate, but before moving away she looked back and bowed to him with her gracious Southern courtesy, as she had done that first night in the barn.
"Good-night. I cannot thank you enough," she said.
"Good-night. I am only paying my debt," he answered.
As he spoke she entered the house, and with the spade on his shoulder he passed down the avenue and struck out vigorously upon the road to Tappahannock.
When he came down to breakfast some hours later, Mrs. Twine informed him that a small boy had come at daybreak with a message to him from Bullfinch's Hollow.
"Of course it ain't any of my business, suh," she continued impressively, "but if I were you I wouldn't pay any attention to Kit Berry or his messages. Viciousness is jest as ketchin' as disease, that's what I say, an' you can't go steppin' aroun' careless whar it is in the air an' expect to git away with a whole morality. 'Tain't as if you were a female, either, for if I do say it who should not, they don't seem to be so thin-skinned whar temptation is concerned. 'Twas only two weeks ago last Saturday when I went to drag Bill away from that thar low lived saloon (the very same you broke into through the window, suh) that Timmas Kelly had the imperence to say to me, 'This is no place for respectable women, Mrs. Twine.' 'An, indeed, I'd like to know, Mr. Kelly,' said I to him, 'if it's too great a strain for the women, how the virtue of the men have stood it? For what a woman can't resist, I reckon, it's jest as well for a man not to be tempted with.' He shet up then tight as a keg – I'd wish you'd have seen him."
"In his place I should probably have done the same," admitted Ordway, as he took his coffee from her hands. He was upon excellent terms with Mrs. Twine, with the children, and even with the disreputable Bill.
"Wall, I've done a lot o' promisin', like other folks," pursued Mrs. Twine, turning from the table to pick up a pair of Canty's little breeches into which she was busily inserting a patch, "an' like them, I reckon, I was mostly lyin' when I did it. Thar's a good deal said at the weddin' about 'love' and 'honour' and 'obey', but for all the slick talk of the parson, experience has taught me that sich things are feelin's an' not whalebones. Now if thar's a woman on this earth that could manage to love, honour and obey Bill Twine, I'd jest like for her to step right up an' show her face, for she's a bigger fool than I'd have thought even a female could boast of bein'. As for me, suh, a man's a man same as a horse is a horse, an' if I'm goin' to set about honourin' any animal on o'count of its size I reckon I'd as soon turn roun' an' honour a whale."
"But you mustn't judge us all by our friend Bill," remarked Ordway, picking up the youngest child with a laugh, "remember his weakness, and be charitable to the rest of us."
Mrs. Twine spread the pair of little breeches upon her knee and slapped them into shape as energetically as if they had contained the person of their infant wearer.
"As for that, suh," she rejoined, "so far as I can see one man differs from another only in the set of his breeches – for the best an' the worst of 'em are made of the same stuff, an' underneath thar skin they're all pure natur. I've had three of 'em for better or for worse, an' I reckon that's as many specimens as you generally jedge things by in a museum. A weak woman would have kept a widow after my marriage with Bob Cotton, the brother of William, suh – but I ain't weak, that's one thing can be said for me – so when I saw my opportunity in the person of Mike Frazier, I up an' said: 'Wall, thar's this much to be said for marriage – whether you do or whether you don't you'll be sure to regret it, an' the regret for things you have done ain't quite so forlorn an' impty headed a feelin' as the regret for things you haven't.' Then I married him, an' when he died an' Bill came along I married him, too. Sech is my determination when I've once made up my mind, that if Bill died I'd most likely begin to look out for another. But if I do, suh, I tell you now that I'd try to start the next with a little pure despisin' – for thar's got to come a change in marriage one way or another, that's natur, an' I reckon it's as well to have it change for the better instead of the worst."
A knock at the door interrupted her, and when she had answered it, she looked back over her shoulder to tell Ordway that Mr. Banks had stopped by to walk downtown with him.
With a whispered promise to return with a pocket-full of lemon drops, Ordway slipped the child from his knee, and hurriedly picking up his hat, went out to join Banks upon the front steps. Since the day upon which the two men had met at a tobacco auction Banks had attached himself to Ordway with a devotion not unlike that of a faithful dog. At his first meeting he had confided to the older man the story of his youthful struggles, and the following day he had unburdened himself with rapture of his passion for Milly.
"I've just had breakfast with the Trends," he said, "so I thought I might as well join you on your way down. Mighty little doing in tobacco now, isn't there?"
"Well, I'm pretty busy with the accounts," responded Ordway. "By the way, Banks, I've had a message from Bullfinch's Hollow. Kit Berry wants me to come over."
"I like his brass. Why can't he come to you?"
"He's sick it seems, so I thought I'd go down there some time in the afternoon."
They had reached Trend's gate as he spoke, to find Milly herself standing there in her highest colour and her brightest ribbon. As Banks came up with her, he introduced Ordway, who would have passed on had not Milly held out her hand.
"Father was just saying how much he should like to meet you, Mr. Smith," she remarked, hoping while she uttered the words that she would remember to instruct Jasper Trend to live up to them when the opportunity afforded. "Perhaps you will come in to supper with us to-night? Mr. Banks will be here."
"Thank you," said Ordway with the boyish smile which had softened the heart of Mrs. Twine, "but I was just telling Banks I had to go over to Bullfinch's Hollow late in the afternoon."
"Somebody's sick there, you know," explained Banks in reply to Milly's look of bewilderment. "He's the greatest fellow alive for missionarying to sick people."
"Oh, you see it's easier to hit a man when he's down," commented Ordway, drily. He was looking earnestly at Milly Trend, who grew prettier and pinker beneath his gaze, yet at the moment he was only wondering if Alice's bright blue eyes could be as lovely as the softer ones of the girl before him.
As they went down the hill a moment afterward Banks asked his companion, a little reproachfully, why he had refused the invitation to supper.
"After all I've told you about Milly," he concluded, "I hoped you'd want to meet her when you got the chance."
Ordway glanced down at his clothes. "My dear Banks, I'm a working man, and to tell the truth I couldn't manufacture an appearance – that's the best excuse I have."
"All the same I wish you'd go. Milly wouldn't care."
"Milly mightn't, but you would have blushed for me. I couldn't have supported a comparison with your turtle-dove."
Banks reddened hotly, while he put his hand to his cravat with a conscious laugh.
"Oh, you don't need turtle-doves and things," he answered, "there's something about you – I don't know what it is – that takes the place of them."
"The place of diamond turtle-doves and violet stockings?" laughed Ordway with good-humoured raillery.
"You wouldn't be a bit better looking if you wore them – Milly says so."
"I'm much obliged to Milly and on the whole I'm inclined to think she's right. Do you know," he added, "I'm not quite sure that you are improved by them yourself, except for the innocent enjoyment they afford you."
"But I'm such a common looking chap," said Banks, "I need an air."
"My dear fellow," returned Ordway, while his look went like sunshine to the other's heart, "if you want to know what you are – well, you're a downright trump!"
He stopped before the brick archway of Baxter's warehouse, and an instant later, Banks, looking after him as he turned away, vowed in the luminous simplicity of his soul that if the chance ever came to him he "would go to hell and back again for the sake of Smith."
