Читать книгу A Daughter of Witches - Joanna E. Wood - Страница 4

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He was to see her daily during the summer, breathe the same air with her, commune with her familiarly, and in a measure share the same experiences. This had been all Sidney Martin’s thought, from the time he left Vashti Lansing haloed by the yellow after-glow, until the Monday following, when he entered the avenue leading up to the Lansing house.

This time he and his belongings had been driven over from Brixton. The drive had been long—a good ten miles, over dusty mountain roads, between fields crisped and parched by the pitiless sun; but at every turn of the road Sidney’s fanciful imagination had figured forth a radiant form which beckoned him on. How sweet the welcoming sign would be when the farewell gesture had been so gracious! And now he had arrived. When, where would he see her first? Would the glory of the setting sun have left her face? Would she—and then he saw her.

In the wide angle made by the wing of the house there grew a great mass of hollyhocks, perfumeless, passionless flowers, fit for the garden of Proserpine. They were in full bloom. Not the pin-cushiony, double flowers of the “improved”—save the mark!—hollyhock, but the exquisite, transparent, cup-like single ones. In every shade, from crimson to pink, from salmon to white, from lemon to a rich wine colour, they grew there, stiff, stately, severe, their greyish green foliage softening the brilliancy of their blossoms. Scores of yellowish-white butterflies fluttered about them, sometimes entering boldly to the heart of the flowers, sometimes poising upon the button-like buds which crowned the tapering stems. And in the midst of this pure sweetness stood Vashti.

Sidney sprang from the musty carriage and went towards her, going, as it seemed to him, into a more exalted atmosphere at a step.

And as he saw her then, he saw her ever afterwards—not, perhaps, wholly as man looks at woman, rather as the enthusiast views perfection, as the devotee adores the Faith made visible. He saw her not as an individual woman, but as the glorious typification of her sex.

Ah, mysterious medley of mind and body! Ah, pitiful delusion which suggests a sequence of spirit and shape!

She gave him her hand cordially enough, not a small hand, but one exquisitely proportioned to her stature.

“We are so glad to see you,” she said. “Father is in the far-away meadow at the hay; Mabella will be here in a moment.”

“Is your hand better?” he asked.

“Yes, oh quite!” she replied, pleased that he had remembered.

Temperance and the driver carried the trunk upstairs; the driver departed and Temperance came to greet Sidney. It was afternoon, and Temperance was busy at her patchwork. She sewed dexterously while she talked.

“Terrible weather, ain’t it?” she began. “My soul! Seems to me the Lord’s clean forgot us here. The paint on the shed’s fair blistered, and the cat’s thin with the heat. The grain’s done for, and the hay’s no better’n rakings, and as for the roots—well, there’ll be none if it don’t rain, and do it quick, too. ‘Drink, and praise God,’ the preacher’s got painted on his well by the way, and the well’s been dry these five weeks. Look at that sky! It’s dry as bass-wood. My chickings is going about with their mouths open, and there’s nothing in the ponds but weeds and frogs. They say frogs grow in water, but I never seen the beat of the frogs this year. They say the Frenchers eats ’em. It’s a pity our men couldn’t learn, and we’d pay a sight less for butchers’ meat. My soul!”—Temperance’s lecture upon the drought was brought to an abrupt conclusion. Mabella, not seeing Sidney standing in the shadow, had come stealing up behind Miss Tribbey, and suddenly seizing her round the waist swung her round in a breathless whirl.

“My soul!” said Miss Tribbey again, releasing herself violently, and feeling her head and patting her person mechanically, as if to be certain she was intact. “You ain’t bridle-wise yet, M’bella. It’s cur’us you don’t seem to get sense.”

Mabella laughed.

Miss Tribbey continued with an ill-sustained show of bad temper, “You kin laugh, but it’s discouragin’.”

“It is,” agreed Mabella blithely. “I’m like Nathan Peck.”

“Go ’long with you!” said Temperance, tossing her head. “Nathan ain’t none too brainy, but I never seen any such carryin’s on as them with him!”

Temperance beat a retreat to the kitchen. Mabella laughing turned to Vashti, and for the first time caught sight of Sidney.

“Oh!” she said with a little gasp; then pulling herself together, advanced with outstretched hand. The ready rose dyed her cheek. She looked like some pretty culprit child. Her eyes were blue as a gentian flower—“Lansing blue” the neighbours called them. Her mouth expressed all the sweetness of a pure and loving nature. Her air was full of blithe gaiety. She seemed the incarnation of summery youth. There was something in her manner, too, of tremulous excitement—as of one not yet knowing life’s secret, but in sight of the mystery, eager yet afraid of passing its portal.

Sidney was greatly won by her pretty air of deprecation, which mutely apologized for the small whirlwind she had created by her entrance.

“Come,” said Vashti to Sidney. “It’s too bad to keep you standing here.” So they left the hollyhocks.

“Who is Nathan Peck?” asked Sidney of Mabella.

“Temperance Tribbey’s beau,” she said with a little laugh. “They’ve been keeping company for nineteen years.”

“Don’t they know their own minds yet?”

“Nathan does, but Temperance doesn’t believe in being hasty,” said Vashti with what, in a less majestic creature, might have been a sneer.

“And to tell the truth she doesn’t want to leave us,” said Mabella, who invariably found the best motive for other people’s actions. “She’s the dearest old thing!”

“Father declares,” said Vashti, “that you are to do exactly as you like. He’s working at the hay. They’re working late now and we take them out something to eat at four o’clock. If you would like to come with us——”

“Oh, yes,” said Sidney, “I should like it of all things.”

“Well, we’ll be going in half an hour or so. But wouldn’t you like to see your room? It’s the east chamber. Go up the stairs and turn to the right; it’s the second door.”

“Thanks,” said Sidney. “I would like to get rid of the dust a bit.”

He went up the dusky oak stair. The house was carefully darkened to keep out the heat and to discourage the flies. He found his room easily. His trunk was there. The air was fragrant with the perfume from a nosegay of sweet peas and mignonette which stood in a willow-pattern bowl of old blue. Associating each gracious deed with her gracious presence, he said to himself:

“Vashti—Queen Vashti—has been here.” Then he murmured to himself, “Vashti!”

“The first sweet name that led

Him down Love’s ways.”

When he descended in flannels a little later, he found the two girls waiting on the porch. Vashti was sitting on the steps. Mabella was leading a long-suffering cat up and down by its forepaws, a mode of progression which evidently did not please the cat, whose tail switched viciously at each step. It was released as Sidney stepped out of the hall, and relieved its feelings by deliberately walking over and scratching the old collie’s nose, as he lay sleepily waiting for the signal to start. The collie, rudely awakened from his dream, sneezed and turned an appealing look at Mabella, who caught him by his feathery ears and expressed her sympathy in words somewhat unintelligible to the human intellect, but evidently well understood by Bunker.

“Don’t forget them cups,” called Temperance after them. “And don’t spill all that milk afore you get there. It won’t make the crops grow.” Then she betook herself indoors, to muse upon the advisability of making hot biscuits for supper, and to commune with herself upon the absurdity of men who wore flannel trousers.

“My soul!” she said, in recounting the experience to one of her neighbours, “it gave me a turn when I saw him in them white things. First off, I says, ‘He’s forgot to dress himself.’ Then I saw they was white trousers. Poor crittur! He needs something to set himself off; he’s poor looking alongside of Lanty.”

But Miss Tribbey’s judgment was not to be trusted in respect to masculine good looks, her one unit of comparison being yellow-haired Lanty Lansing, who, tall, broad-shouldered and straight-limbed, was a man among a thousand. Sidney Martin had his fair share of good looks. Under any circumstances it would have been impossible to take him for anything but a gentleman, a gentleman by breeding, education, and natural taste. He, too, was tall like Lanty, but much more slender. He had grey eyes—the dreamy eyes of Endymion, slender, nervous hands, and graceful gestures. He walked with something of a scholar’s stoop, and had the pallor of the student. Above all, his face was irradiate with kindliness towards every living thing. His eyes had the dilating pupils of those who are dreamers of dreams. It might be that the ideal would take him greater lengths than the truth. About his mouth lay always a touch of pity—pity for the world about him, which, to his eyes, was so blind to the true good, so bent upon burdening itself with baleful creeds which disintegrated the universal brotherhood of man.

The three young people, escorted by the collie, left the house, and turning away from the road, proceeded along a lane which was really a continuation of the avenue without the grateful shade of the trees. The dusty way was strewn with fragrant hay which had fallen from the waggons on their way to the barns. They passed the two broad, shallow ponds, overgrown, as Miss Tribbey had said, with water-weeds and bulrushes. Only a shallow, unwholesome little pool of water remained in each; thirsty birds fluttered about the margin, and, as the three passed, the frogs plunged into the water from every side. The collie walked sedately into the middle of one of the pools, then came and shook himself beside Mabella, spattering her skirts.

The heat was breathless; the earth, beneath the inquisition of the sun, suffered but was mute. And presently they saw the hay-makers, the two sweating horses in the mower, the man tossing the windrows into coils. A great oak tree stood solitary in one corner, and thither the girls directed their steps; a brown earthen jug of water, covered by the men’s coats, stood in its shadow. Mabella took off her sunbonnet and waved it wildly by one string. One of the men sent back an answering shout, and tossed a forkful of hay into the air. The sun glinted from the burnished steel of the fork to the yellow hair of its wielder.

“That’s Lanty,” said Mabella to Sidney, with a certain shy personal pride in her accent.

“Our cousin, Lansing Lansing,” amended Vashti.

“Does he live with you?” asked Sidney.

“No! Oh, no! He has a farm of his own, but his haying is all done, and he has come over to help Dad.”

“The farmers help each other here, when they can,” said Mabella.

Sidney felt enthusiasm surge within his breast; was not this practical communism?

The men had left their work and were coming towards them.

“That’s Nathan Peck,” said Mabella, “on the left.”

Sidney saw him; a serious, sunburnt man, with mild, light-coloured eyes and straight, straggly hair. He was very thin, and wore a woollen muffler around his neck.

“Do you see that scarf? Temperance gave him that three years ago; he’s never been seen without it since.” Mabella whispered this hastily to Sidney.

“Warm devotion, isn’t it?” inquired Sidney as he rose to go and meet his host.

“Isn’t he fun?” asked Mabella of Vashti.

“It all depends on taste,” said Vashti, indifferently. Mabella did not hear her. She was gazing at her cousin Lanty as he came towards her some yards in advance of the others. Clad in blue jeans, with his shirt open at the throat and his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, Lanty was a man to win ninety-nine women out of a hundred. The odd woman would see, perhaps, too great a capacity for enjoyment in his face; too little of self restraint, too much generosity, too little cool judgment; but if she were discerning enough, she might pierce yet deeper to that natural nobility of character which, through miry places and sloughs of despond, would yet triumphantly set Lanty Lansing upon the solid rock of men’s respect.

“Well—you’re a sight for sore eyes,” he said, flinging himself at the feet of his cousins. “It’s worth working for to get over to the shade—and you.”

His first words had seemed to address Mabella; his glance took in both his cousins, and each girl took the meaning of the words home to her heart, and doled out a niggard portion to the other. Mabella’s confidence had given place to a shy eagerness to please the man she loved. Her eyes dwelt upon him, eager to catch each glance, and she felt that as often as his eyes lighted upon her an unconscious tenderness deepened his voice.

The situation was perfectly apparent to Sidney when he arrived with old Lansing a moment later. Yet Vashti Lansing’s blinded eyes saw nothing of it. Rapt in a superb egotism, she erred much in underestimating her fellows. A more dangerous thing, perhaps, than to over-estimate ourselves. Some instinct made her aware of the splendour of her form; besides that, the women of her race had all been mageful creatures. She had an unfaltering belief in the potentiality of her own will. Long ago they had burned one of her forbears as a witch-woman. They said she caused her spirit to enter into her victims and commit crimes, crimes which were naively calculated to tend to the worldly advantage of the witch. Vashti thought of her martyred ancestress often; she herself sometimes felt a weird sensation as of illimitable will power, as of an intelligence apart from her normal mind, an intelligence which wormed out the secrets of those about her, and made the fixed regard of her large full eyes terrible. The film of vanity dimmed them somewhat, but when some rude hand should rend that veil away, their regard might be blasting.

Lanty’s wide hat was cast with apparent carelessness upon the grass between him and Mabella; their fingers were interlaced beneath it, or, rather, Mabella’s trembling fingers nestled in Lanty’s palm. He held them tighter and tighter. A little tremor from her heart communicated with his heart as the electric spark traverses the cable. At the same instant they looked at each other, and read life’s meanings in each other’s eyes. For the moment—unfaltering, steadfast, penetrating—blue eyes met the blue. There was the pause of a heart-beat. Then Mabella’s filmed with sudden self-consciousness, and triumph lighted the man’s bolder eyes. Mabella almost wrenched her hand free and raised it involuntarily to where her heart, grown too great with its treasure of love, throbbed heavily. Lanty rose to his feet, bareheaded in the sunshine, blinded by the glory and promise of the love he had seen in those kindred eyes. He stood for a moment looking down at her; she looked back at him. Her lips were tremulous, but there was an appealing trust in their sweetness. Lanty could not trust himself farther.

“I’ll be off to my hay,” he said in vibrant tones. “I hope to see a great deal of you,” he added, turning to Sidney. “You must come over and see me; whenever you want a horse to ride, there’s one at your disposal. Good-bye, girls, till supper time. Good-bye, Mabella.” She looked at him, and he went off to his work, scarce believing in his own happiness, seeing all golden about him, all fair before him—and this passed amid a group of people, one at least of whom should have had sharp eyes.

One person indeed had noted all—Nathan Peck’s light eyes were eloquent of mute sympathy. He, good soul, loved bustling Temperance Tribbey with all his being. Whilst Lanty and Mabella had rested with their hands clasped beneath the old wide hat, Nathan’s gnarled fingers had caressed the ends of his muffler. Temperance was always and invariably right, that went without saying, and yet—nineteen years!—surely she was a little hard on them both? Nathan rose with something like a sigh, and proceeded to his work thoughtfully. Sidney talked to Mr. Lansing and feasted his eyes on the suave grace of his daughter. Mabella, her heart too full for careless speech, rose, and, under pretence of chasing the collie, contrived to start down the lane alone. As she reached the bend which would hide her from Lanty, she turned. He was leaning upon his fork, gazing after her. She waved her hand swiftly to him, then turned abruptly and proceeded upon her way, a demure little figure in her pink sunbonnet.

Life stretched before her in a new aspect; the gate was opened, but the way was unfamiliar, and her feet faltered before it. She arrived home very soon, and sought Temperance in the kitchen.

Temperance was watering her geraniums in the window, and thinking a small kitchen of her own would be more cosy than the great kitchen of Lansing House.

“Temperance,” said Mabella, catching hold of a corner of Miss Tribbey’s apron, “Temperance, you weren’t cross this afternoon when I pulled you about?”

Miss Temperance looked at her, and set down the old tea-pot which she used as a watering-can.

“Say?” insisted Mabella, pleating up the corner of the apron.

“What ails the child?” said Temperance—a sudden memory of Mabella’s childhood coming to her, again she saw her a yellow-haired baby with irresistible ways.

“But did you mind?” asked Mabella, her lips beginning to quiver.

“Bless it! No, indeed. My lamb, what kind of a cross old stick do you think I am?”

“Temperance, are you very fond of Nathan?”

“My soul!” said Temperance. “What next—Nathan?”

“Because you ought to be if you’re not,” said Mabella. “Oh, you ought to be. When a person cares about one you ought to love them—love them with all your soul. It’s so little to give in return; so——” and then Mabella was in Miss Tribbey’s arms, crying as if her heart would break.

And blustering Miss Tribbey petted her and quieted her, and got her out of the way before Vashti and Sidney entered with the dishes from the field, taking her upstairs and putting her to bed as she had done long before when Mabella was a little motherless baby.

“You lay still there,” said Temperance, pausing by the door. “You lay still there, and I’ll fetch up your tea.”

“You’re a dear,” said Mabella with a catch in her voice.

Miss Tribbey departed. Wise in her kind old fashion she asked no questions. Miss Tribbey had been young in years like Mabella once, and her heart was young yet.

“Pore girl!” said Temperance to herself, resuming the watering of her geraniums. “Pore Mabella! She ain’t got no mother.”

Perhaps all the dew which fell upon the geraniums did not come from the old tea-pot. Miss Tribbey’s mother had been alive when lanky Nathan Peck began “keeping company” with Temperance. Up-stairs in a certain box there yet were quilts that she had “patched” in anticipation of the wedding which Miss Tribbey’s sense of duty had deferred all these years.

Miss Tribbey sighed, and went and carefully considered her countenance in the little square of greenish glass which served as a mirror in her kitchen. She turned away with something like a sob in her throat. “I’m losin’ my looks,” she said. Then after a moment’s pause she drew herself a little more erect, and going to a drawer put on a huge and fresh white apron. She was meeting the ravages of Time with the defences at her disposal. Brave Temperance!

When some two hours later Nathan Peck entered for his supper with the others, he thought that never, surely in all the world, could there be a more soul-satisfying sight than his “Temp’rins.”

“She beats all the young ’uns yet, by jing, if she don’t!” he said to himself as he soused himself with soap and water by the door before he came in.

“Here’s the comb, Nat,” said Temperance, handing him that useful article. He took it, combed his straggly hair straight down over his eyes, and then looked at Temperance appealingly through the ragged fringe.

Temperance’s heart was very soft to-night. She took the comb and parted his hair. When she had finished, she let the palm of her hand smooth over the top and rest an instant. He caught it, and the two looked at each other. What were years and hard-wrought hands to them? They saw themselves young and beautiful in each other’s eyes. That sufficed them.

Meanwhile Lanty had passed through the kitchen to the front porch, and not finding Mabella there had come back to the kitchen.

“Well, Temperance,” he said cheerily, “how’s the world using you? And Temperance—where’s Mabella?”

“She’s layin’ down,” said Temperance; “she had a sort o’ spell when she came in and I made her go to bed.”

“What kind of a spell?” demanded Lanty, his heart standing still.

“Nerves,” said Miss Tribbey briefly, avoiding the anxious blue eyes of her favourite. She did not know how far matters had gone, nor how clear an understanding there was between the young people. Miss Tribbey was too staunch a woman to betray her sex even in a good cause (and the making of a match between these two Miss Tribbey regarded as a distinctly good cause).

“Is it—is it her head?” asked Lanty miserably.

Miss Temperance eyed him severely—but she had misjudged her own strength.

“It’s jist nothin’ but nerves,” she said—“girls’ nerves; they’re naterally nervous, girls is, and M’bella ain’t one of your coarse-grained sort. She’s easily upset and tender-hearted as a chicken. My soul! how all the brute beasts love her and how she sets store by them. I tell you that girl can’t pass a hen without sayin’ something pleasant to it. She’ll be all right to-morrow; but Lanty”—she quickened her speech as they heard steps coming to the kitchen—“Lanty, she’s got no mother.”

Lanty caught her hand—“I’ll be everything to her, if she’ll let me,” he said.

Then the others came in. Vashti, her father, and Sidney from the porch, and Nathan from the back doorsteps, where he had been hugging his happiness by himself.

“Where’s M’bella?” demanded her uncle as they sat down. Vashti looked at Temperance for the answer.

“She’s layin’ down—got a headache with the heat.”

Nathan looked up with such sparkling intelligence that Miss Tribbey was forced to reduce him by a look. So he obliterated all expression from his face and fell to his supper with a gusto.

“Well, I declare,” said the old man; “she must be terrible bad if she couldn’t stay up for Mr. Martin’s first meal with us.”

“Oh, you mustn’t mind me,” said Sidney hastily, “and I do wish you would call me something a little more familiar than ‘Mr. Martin.’ My father always called me Sid.”

“Sid you are, then,” said old Lansing heartily; “it’s mighty handy, that name. If there’s anything I hate it’s a name a mile long. Nothing like a short name for a dog or a person, I say. For horses and sich it don’t matter much, but when you want t’ call a dog there’s nothing like a good plain name.” The old man ran on garrulously, now and then arresting himself to say the others were quiet. Considering that their quietude was somewhat compulsory, as he talked all the time, it was rather astonishing he found it food for comment.

“Well—M’bella do miss considerable,” he said; “she’s always got something to say, M’bella has. Sometimes ’taint over-wise, but it’s always well-meaning. M’bella ain’t one of your bristle-tongued women. I tell you I’ve known women with rougher tongues than a cat’s.”

“Men’s tongues is a good deal like dogs’, I notice,” said Miss Temperance scathingly—“that long they can’t keep ’em between their teeth. Mighty loose hung, men’s tongues is.”

“When is the Special Meeting, father?” asked Vashti. Sidney thought how gratefully her soft voice sounded across the strident tones of her father and Temperance.

“Wednesday night,” he answered. “You’ll go, Sid? And you’ll be there, Lansing?” The last words were spoken in a tone which challenged denial. But Lanty was in a mood of Quakerish peace. He simply nodded. Old Lansing looked very pleased.

“Special meeting!” said Sidney. “What for? What sort of meeting?”

“To pray for rain,” said Vashti. “If we do not have rain, the poor people will be ruined and all of us will suffer. Already the hay is lost; we should have had the meeting earlier.”

“Then you think—you believe—you believe the meeting will do good?”

“I believe in the answer to prayer,” she said a little coldly; “my father is senior deacon in the church.”

This seemed hardly a reason for her personal beliefs, but Sidney did not say so.

He began to see her in a new light—a noble daughter of a tottering faith. And as one admires the devotion of a daughter to an unworthy parent, so he admired Vashti in this guise also. The loyalty which made her blind to the faults of a creed was perhaps more admirable than a clearer vision which would have made her a renegade to the faith of her fathers. So Sidney Martin thought as they sat out on the front porch, watching the fireflies flitting in the darkness, living sparks of light, and listening to the cadence of Lanty’s violin as he played snatches of old love songs, putting his heart into them—for a little time before he had heard a window softly raised, and he knew that Mabella, too timorous to meet him face to face yet, was listening to and drinking in the message of his music.