Part 7

I scrambled in my bag for the little gift to her, leaped out, and sent the man on home with my baggage.

He greeted me jauntily. He was just sitting there counting his blessings. He could eat three as hearty meals a day as he had ever et, and when night come sleep sound as a mouse in a shuck pen—the Lord had been good to the old man.

I wasn’t hypocrite enough to take the hand extended. I wanted to shake the life out of his smiling old body.

“Has he been good to the old lady?” I asked. He only stared at me. “Do you know you told me you swam your horse through swollen streams once to get to a little log church because you knew your congregation would be waiting for you there? You wanted to preach that sermon that day that some soul might be saved that you might never reach again. You said you didn’t want the devil to get anybody. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” he quavered, “I remember.”

“Well,” I stormed, “it’s my honest belief that he will get you. I wonder what the God you have preached all these years means to do with men like you who are mean to their wives and cloak their meanness to poor feeble old women under smooth-sounding texts.”

He stood up, his faded blue eyes flashed, his pallid lips under the straggly white moustache worked. When he dropped back in his chair, having uttered no word, I thought maybe I had killed him. But I did not care. He would have gone to his Maker with a little preparation he would otherwise not have had. I stood over him silent, inexorable.

“She got mad because——”

“Never mind what she got mad about,” I said. “For fifty-nine years and six months she didn’t get mad. And she’s not mad now. I saw her slipping out of the back of your house just a minute ago. She’s been doing up your night work. You ought to go over there and get down on your knees—the knees you have worn out praying the Lord to make you the sort of a man you have not desired to be—and ask her to forgive you, and bring her home.”

Some good honest blood left in the old veins crept up and tinged the pallid, sunken cheeks. And, suddenly, all my fierceness was gone. I was pleading for the love that had betrayed them at the end of a lifetime. I had his old, old hands in mine that looked so young and strong by contrast, and I was leading him back to their courtship days, to the time when their one little child was born and she almost lost her life. Some of the story I knew from him, and some of it I knew from her. Before I finished the tears were dropping down his cheeks. “The old man has some lonely hours,” he said. Gayly I told him they were over; gayly I pressed my gift into his hand, and I fairly pushed him into her gate.

As I hurried on I suddenly realized that the rain was over, that the eastern hills were sparkling under a giant rainbow, and that Ellinor Baxter was rushing toward me with outstretched hands. Ellinor threw as many of her pupils as she could on her assistant, and, with the help of one of the older girls, took my pupils in my absence.

“How radiant you look!” I said as I kissed her. “I was afraid you would be all dragged out with the children.”

“The children,” she said, vaguely, and then flushing like a rosy girl she plunged into stories of the children’s good behaviour. She turned and walked homeward with me. Was it that fleeting brightness in the sky that made her seem so young and bright and strangely changed?

_May 15th._

School closed to-day. Commencement was quite a triumph. Monday morning I went to work in the schoolroom, examinations and commencement exercises on hand. Suddenly the play I had seen with Miss Jackson and thought so bad came into my mind. The more I thought of it the better it seemed. I decided on tableaux, my ideas got from that play. There were just fourteen days in which to work it out, but the children hailed it with joy. It was something new; it was something different. Ellinor’s help was invaluable. Marsville was delighted with it. Ellinor _is_ changed. If there was anybody here to love I’d think she was in love. She was running to angles, and now she’s got some pretty curves, the gray hairs are quite hidden by the new way she is doing her lovely, heavy, red-brown hair, and her soft brown eyes—they are looking out on the spring world with a new, wistful expression in them. She smiles so easily and she hums snatches of tender old songs.

_May 22d. Midnight._

This afternoon there was an unfamiliar knock at the door and I ran down without waiting for mammy. It was Mr. Elliott. He looked so foreign to the old place, so New Yorkish standing there, that quite without warning, in the way I do things, while my lips were speaking a welcome and he was following me into the sitting-room, something within me was singing: “How could I know I should love thee afar, when I did not love thee anear?” But that something within me was not singing about Mr. Elliott, although I saw the glad light in his eyes. My own eyes saw the sun-shot green May-mist of the trees in Madison Square, the clock’s big face above the treetops, against the sky’s soft blue the radiant, triumphant Diana. My ears heard the roll of wheels on the Avenue, the clang of cars on Broadway; my veins felt the beat of the city’s hurrying, feverish life.

Out under the pines where mammy brought tea and helped me, with the dignity of a departed day, I still felt alien to it all. Mr. Elliott praised the beaten biscuit, and she told him as a mark of special favour the story of receiving my great aunt’s teeth when she was dying. I could not seem to belong to the scene—the big waving pine plumes against the spring sky, the ancient house drowsing in peace, the soft sweep of the hills, the mountains against the sky like a string of sapphires. But when Mr. Elliott said good-bye, when he caught my hands and poured out a flood of eager words, “Would I? Could I?” I came back to reality.

Did it mean _that_, this feel of the city? Could I go back and live there with Mr. Elliott—dear, charming, nice Mr. Elliott. For one swift instant I was swept by his belief in what we together might make of life, and it seemed so infinitely more than I could make of life alone. For one swift instant that old terror—the inevitableness of human change—pierced me like a sword. Always I have felt a contemptuous sort of pity for Jane Joyner, who lives near, toothless and untidy and incapable as she is, with the house running over with dirty children. Was Jane to be pitied? Jane whose youth and beauty were not dead but had passed into another form of life—lived in her children. Was she out of harmony with life’s great laws? Big and fierce my heart cried out, “No!” It was I who was outside of life, not Jane. Her man’s arm went round her shoulders nights when she stood over the kitchen stove. Her baby lifted its dirty, loving, laughing little face to hers as it clutched her knees. Taking my lonely after-supper walk I had seen them through the open kitchen door. What had I? A dream that was bodiless, life emptied of the big, vital things. And if I sent Mr. Elliott away as I sent the others, the boy lovers who came over the mountains to tell me what he is telling me now? What have I left that is more than I refuse? In the bare, honest moment I faced it. Bleak and stark in its honesty, the truth faced me. After work hours when I walk in the twilight and look in Jane Joyner’s kitchen the thing that comes close to my heart is a dream without a body—nothing more.

“I thought I was happy until you came along,” Mr. Elliott was saying. “Then I found out how lonely my gayety was.”

He is strong and fine, capable of making a woman happy, and I hold the future of our two lives in my hands. And then he was drawing me to him. Almost, his lips touched mine. The quick revolt, the wave of physical nausea—it was as though an icy, sinister wind had swooped down on my blooming flowers and shrivelled them.

With a desolate little smile I drew back from him, an alien standing outside of all that might have been mine. I bade him good-bye, and to-night, when I walked by Jane’s kitchen, open to the soft night, I turned my eyes away, afraid to look in on the sweet little home scene. In all my life I have never felt so alone.

_Wednesday Morning._

Mr. Elliott sent back a wonderful basket of fruit. It came over on the hack and the whole village is agog over it. The gossip has disturbed dear old mammy greatly. She suggests that we still the gossip and flatter our neighbours by giving a party. Then they won’t know what to think. I have consented. Mammy is a woman of action. The party comes off this afternoon. The house hums with activity.

_Wednesday Afternoon._

The party has passed into history. I got only the littlest taste of the contents of that beautiful basket Mr. Elliott sent me. Everybody was here, and they all seemed to have such a good time. Even the reconciled Ducketts tottered over. What a success I seem to be at reuniting severed hearts. If my book is a failure I may set up an establishment of the sort—go into a trance and vision dazzling futures for people. Well, how do I like the idea? Seven days ago had I put the question to myself my spirit would have flung back in bitterness, “Physician, heal thyself.”

For seven nights, no matter which way I willed my feet to go, they have led me past Jane’s kitchen door. Alone in the soft spring darkness, in the soft wet darkness some of the nights, I have faced my life. I have looked in that open door till the bitterness and the loneliness have gone out of me. Last night when her man’s arms went about her as she dished their supper, when her child’s arms reached up to her, I looked in, not in bitterness, not in pity of self, not in aching loneliness, but in love. It is wonderful when you can look in on untidy Janes at their kitchen tasks and feel close to their happiness. Life’s supremest gift is hers. Almost, it was mine. Not a makeshift, not a compromise—life’s supremest gift. Across sunlit waves a boat like a white-winged gull set sail for me. Almost, it reached me. How my heart went out to that white drifting boat of prophecy! How the waves sang! Bobby’s _loved one_. Sunlit waves and flashing white-winged boat are gone. But the singing soul of those words shall keep my heart young. It shall be tender to the young and happy, pitiful to the old and alone, compassionate to all untouched by love, whether they scoff in unbelief or whether they would lay down their lives for love.

Oh, how tired I am! And how heavy the silence is here in the bridelike, white loveliness of my May garden! And how this silence differs from its fall silences! The silence holds resignation in the fall—this is tense with expectancy. The snowballs that have come so late this year are swaying, they seem to be beckoning to some one, but there is no wind. And the lilies of the valley, late, too—my flower children delayed their blooming till I came home—are swaying; they are pouring out their fragrance—it is poignantly, deliciously sweet, but I feel no wind.

Something is the matter with this garden and with me. I am quivering all over as if with intense excitement. The party has tired me out. Just then, when John opened the gate, I almost leaped from this bench.

The letters John has brought me are from Mr. Elliott and Dicky. I open Mr. Elliott’s first—a woman always opens a man’s letter first. It is a fine, manly letter, and it ends:

“You said you once knew Bob Haralson. He has been at death’s door—struck down without a moment’s warning—appendicitis—a knife quick or death operation. It was the day you came down from Boston. I remember date because you came down from Boston. Haralson is creeping about. I saw him yesterday.”

The lines of mountains dance dizzily. I shut my eyes—shut out the spring glory, my fingers making a pressing blackness against my eyeballs. I try to imagine the world this spring day with Bobby gone out of it. Then my heart leaps madly. It is explained—_explained_.

I can’t sit still, so I climb to the hilltop. I am calmer in motion. I can see the village from the hilltop. It is being claimed by the twilight, the soft, slow, lingering spring twilight. There must be a lot of moisture to make such a brilliant aftermath. The heavens are so pink they have tinged the eastern hills. League on league the cloud waves blush pink as the heart of a seashell. The whole world glows. My mood catches the sky’s glowing mood. It is explained. He has been ill unto death, but he is not dead—he is alive—_alive_.

Something drops from my belt and I pick it up and stare at it stupidly. It is Dicky’s little letter. Dicky will know about Bobby. She will explain their presence together that night at Mouquin’s.

“Caroline, is your right hand paralyzed that I don’t hear from you? Do a lot of little tow-headed mountaineers and a garden that I know is at its loveliest now mean more to you than I do? I can’t understand your silence. I am coming home. I am to have my vacation now, and I am to keep on having it. Somebody’s with me. He is the secret of the prolonged vacation. I guess it will be in June. That’s the loveliest time of all. He will be here only a day or two, three at the longest, and I hate to think of him at that dinky little Marsville hotel. Hotel! Ye gods! Come to New York and we will show you some hotels. Dearest, won’t you, won’t you, have him home with us? There are some such ducks of places to spoon these moonlit nights in that heavenly rose garden of yours.”

Did I cry out in that sharp pain, or was it some wounded thing out there in the shadow of the woods? Steadily I finish the letter. It is to-day—now, at twilight—when the hack gets in, that Dicky and her lover are coming. She apologizes that we do not know earlier, but mammy and I are equal to any emergency. I do feel sorry for mammy, but I walk on straight into the sunset glare, leaving mammy to her fate. That is my only sensation—I am sorry for mammy. She does love to splurge when company comes.

Far down the road I see a buggy. It is coming this way. There are two people in it, but it is too far away to recognize faces. It is two men. It stops. One man gets out, the other turns the buggy around and drives back toward the village. The man who got out of the buggy walks on in the rose-red haze that wraps the world. The lilies of the valley that I thrust in my belt send out a sudden fragrance—it is the trembling of my body that has shaken them. I stop because I can’t walk on. I lean against a friendly tree-trunk.

The man comes on, moving slowly, feebly, I see as he gets nearer. I think of trivial things, as we do in crisic moments. Bobby is taller than I thought. The hat he is wearing adds distinction to one who is already distingué. The crease in his trousers will be copied by the young men of Marsville. From somewhere in me a faint satisfaction stirs that the party has left me wearing my best new gown, my hair done in a New York way.

Almost at my side Bobby stops, panting a little. I speak first. Women always do. I feel sure Eve opened the conversation when Adam waked from the sleep that deprived him of a rib and supplied him with a wife.

“So you have come again—and not alone this time.” It is not in the least what I meant to say.

“Did you know that I came?” Bobby’s low voice holds a note of surprise. “How did you know? But I suppose the boy told you.”

“I was in the garden. I saw you. I know why you came, and why you left.”

“Why did I leave?”

“You ran from a youthful ideal.”

“Men have done more foolish things,” Bobby’s answer comes gravely.

“And wiser.” I hate the mocking laughter that escapes my lips.

“I don’t understand you.” His face has grown whiter; it has changed subtly. “Has Elliott been here? Is it Elliott?”

I sweetly assure him that Mr. Elliott has been here, and I manage to leave the impression that he may be coming again.

This time Bobby’s face goes close to black. With a mocking little bow he bids me good-bye, turns, goes down the road. He marches straight ahead. I have never seen a lion stalk through an African jungle, but I think of one as I look at him. Where is he going? Where is Dicky’s lover going? A dumb sort of fright grips me. I spin down the road to where he marches breast forward with never a backward look—if a woman can spin in these narrow-not-made-to-overtake-anybody’s-lover New York frocks.

“Bobby,” I cry, hard upon him, “stop!”

He turns. Not the Bobby of my letters, not the Bobby of my dreams, not the Bobby of Washington Square, a politely impatient-to-be-gone stranger.

Always, it is the unexpected that overtakes me. To my amazed surprise I wet with salty tears my New York finery.

“I’m tired, Bobby,” I gasp. “I’ve been having a party—and I’m not used to having parties. That’s what makes me such a cat. And, oh, Bobby, you’ll have to pardon things—Dicky just sprung your coming on us.”

“Dicky didn’t know that I was coming.” He speaks slowly, he takes my face in his hands and looks down at me, a long, deep look. The hard, black look on his own face has lifted.

As I try to tell him that Dicky didn’t tell me he was ill, that I have just learned it from Mr. Elliott’s letter, as I try to tell him what the bright May world would be to Dicky with him gone out of it, and as I flounder that I hope they will be heavenly happy, I splash more tears on my pretty clothes.

Bobby’s face flashes—all that a woman could want or dream of comes into it.

“Dicky didn’t know I was in the hospital. I went in under an assumed name. When a fellow’s tied up with publishers and theatrical people like I am——” Bobby drops the subject as one that holds no further interest. “If I had died, would it have spoiled the May world for you, Caroline?” There is a sharp note of anxiety in his voice.

“Bobby, Bobby!” I cry, wildly. “Don’t ask me! What have you done with Dicky! Where is Dicky?”

“I am not Dicky’s keeper.” The light glows and glows in his face. “She’s got one, though, and it was odd we should all three have left town together. I smoked like a furnace all the way down as an excuse to keep away from them. Caroline”—Bobby’s arms close about me—“I am not Dicky’s—I am yours.”

Walking home in the twilight that is gray and tender as a dove’s breast, Bobby tells me that he _was_ afraid the night he ran away. He says he has tried and tried not to love me—that men like him should never marry—that they should live alone on the top of the Flat Iron. “But it is bigger than I,” he says, gravely. “It has swept me to your feet.”

“To my heart,” I correct, happily.

The hack lumbers around the curve, descends upon us. At sight of us Dicky and the strange young man who sits on the back seat with her—John and Ellinor are on the middle seat—roar with laughter.

“You sly fox!” Dicky cries. “How did you get here? We left him on the train, Caroline, and he sent his regards to you—and he said he was on his way to Colorado.”

“I am,” Bobby boldly declares. “I stopped by to see if Caroline would go with me. As to my getting here first, I live in New York. As rapid transit as is obtainable, say I.”

Dicky flings herself into my arms. “You owe it all to me,” she declares. “I found him deadly tiresome.” She beamed on Bobby. “All his talk was about you.

“You sly fox,” she whirled on him again. “You didn’t need to have me tell you about Caroline. You were hearing from her all the time, now, weren’t you? Why didn’t you tell me, Caroline?”

“I—I—I——” I stammered.

Bobby isn’t timid, he’s bold as a lion. “The reason is obvious,” he declares. “I wouldn’t let her. Had you known that I heard, too, it would have changed everything.”

The others descend from the hack. It goes on with Dicky’s baggage. I realize that John has been an unnecessarily long time helping Ellinor out of the carriage; but there are no surprises left in the world. I greet Dicky’s lover. As we take our leisurely way home I don’t even wonder what mammy will have for supper.

_May 30th._

“_Day’s at the morn Morning’s at seven; The hillside’s dew-pearled_”——

I am just back from taking a look at old Camel Back. The morning’s like an opal—it’s all a shifting mist shot through with sunshine. None of the mountains have shaken off their last night’s mist-blankets but that brave old blessed Camel Back. He knew I’d be up, and he gave me royal greeting. “Well,” he seemed to say, “haven’t I poured all the treasures of the earth perfumed with all the scents of Araby into your outstretched hands?”

I meant to tell Bobby about Camel Back—for so long I have told my fancies to a pictured Bobby—but when I thought of it last night, just before he left for the “dinky” little hotel with Dicky’s doctor—he was busy fitting a piece of cardboard in which he had cut a round hole on a certain finger of my left hand, and, anyway, it is not easy to tell fancies to an eager man who is murmuring realities in one’s ears—like this: “Dearest one, will you hurry, oh, hurry, and get the gingham, and the barred muslin, and the bias bombazine fixed up, and let’s get married quick.”

The morning’s at seven. At eight all of us, Bobby and Dicky’s doctor, Ellinor, too, are going to breakfast in my rose garden. Mammy planned it last night. She came to the sitting-room door and asked them all with the manner of a duchess.