Oldfield Part 5

Nevertheless, the doctor was again a trifle disappointed to find his wife content with firing a single shot, and he presently said, trying to urge her on:--

"I have not disputed the fact that Anne Watson is a good woman. Tom no doubt made the promises that such men always make when they want to win some pretty girl, and he doubtless hoped to be strong enough to keep them. But I cannot allow a patient of mine to die or to fall into melancholy because he has failed to keep promises that many good men break; or because his wife lacks common sense; no matter how good she may be or what sort of religion she may be living up to. If Tom wants to play cards,--as I think that he does, as I am nearly sure that he does,--I shall certainly find him a partner if I can. I would play with him myself if I knew how."

"Let me do it, doctor," said Lynn. "I know something about several games. It would give me real pleasure to do anything in my power for your patient."

Mrs. Alexander said nothing more in opposition; she merely looked her thoughts. When, therefore, it was arranged, as the young man was leaving, that he should come on the following morning to go with the doctor to see Tom Watson about the game of cards, the lady merely gave her smooth auburn head a side-wise toss, as if to say they would all see how it turned out.

VIII

AT OLD LADY GORDON'S

Lynn rode slowly by the Watson house, thinking of its tragedy, which had thus touched him so soon after his coming to this quiet village, the seeming abode of peace. It was his first partial realization that the folded green hills cannot shut away the pain of the world. He was too young and too strong, and had not suffered enough in mind or body, to know that quiet and peace only make the heart ache more keenly with the sorrow of living.

And this was no more even now than a partial perception. He was but twenty-two, yet in the springtime of life; and the earth also was still in the season of its perpetual youth. The green of new leaf.a.ge now tinted the thinning white of the blossoming orchards; the green and the white and the last rosy sweetness of apple blossoms were yet melting slowly into the rich verdure of the hillsides. But the snowy spray of all the exquisite flowering drifted fast before the incoming summer tide. Already the wild flowers were almost done blooming in the woods, and the scented meadows were growing red with clover blossoms.

The largest, richest fields lying on both sides of the big road, knee-deep in clover and dotted with cattle, belonged to the Gordon estate. Ultimately they would all be his own, but he was not thinking of this as he looked at them that day. He had never thought of making Oldfield his home, having long cherished other plans. Yet, as he looked at the old house, it was a pleasant sight on that May morning, with its low white walls bowered in dense shrubbery and its mossy roof overhung by giant elms. There were many maples, also, and a cypress tree stood beside the gate, swinging its sombre plumes so close to the ground that the young man did not see a cart standing before the gate until he was almost upon it. Coming nearer, he saw that it belonged to a butcher who had driven in from the country, and that it was well filled with his wares. The butcher stood astride a plank which had been laid across the front wheels, and he was busily engaged in turning over the pieces of meat, evidently seeking something to please the mistress of the house.

Old lady Gordon sat at the open window in her accustomed place, looking grimly on; and the small Frenchman who managed her farm waited beside the cart, standing in silence, glancing anxiously from its contents to the mistress and back again. The butcher scowled, as he tossed the steaks, the joints, and roasts about, thinking angrily how much more trouble it always was to please old lady Gordon than all the rest of the easy-going people living along his semi-weekly route. Finally, however, he found a piece which seemed promising, and he handed it to the small Frenchman, who took the huge joint,--holding it as if it were a sword,--and jauntily carried it across the lawn to the window and held it up for the mistress to decide upon. She gave only one contemptuous glance at it; one was enough to cause its rejection with great scorn.

"No, I won't have that!" she called out in her loud, deep, imperious voice, speaking to the butcher over her manager's head. "How many times must I tell you that I don't like the bony parts?"

Monsieur Beauchamp suddenly dropped the joint as if it had burnt him, and started as if he had been stung. His face flushed scarlet, and he drew himself up to his fullest height.

"Ah, madame," he said poignantly yet proudly, "I am stab to ze soul to hear you say zat you do not like ze Bonapartes!"

"For gracious' sake!" old lady Gordon exclaimed, taken quite off her guard; and dropping her turkey-wing fan in her start of amazement.

In another moment she remembered, and forthwith did what she could to soothe the little Frenchman's deeply wounded feelings. She turned away her head as her grandson drew near, and put up the turkey-wing fan to hide the smile which she could not control, when her gaze chanced to meet his as he looked on, a silent and interested spectator of the scene.

"Why, Mister Beauchamp," she said, quite gravely, as soon as she could speak at all, "I am amazed at your thinking that I meant any disrespect to your relations. How in the world could you think such a thing? I give you my word of honor, that I have always believed the Bonapartes to be the only human beings ever created expressly to rule over the French."

Monsieur had begun to soften almost as soon as the mistress had begun to explain, and by the time the explanation was finished, he was fairly beaming with delight. One hand was already holding his hat, but the other was free, and this he now laid upon his heart, bringing his small heels together in a most impressive bow. And then, smiling and quite happy again, he picked up the rejected joint of mutton and carried it back to the cart very cheerfully indeed. The turning over of its contents was accordingly resumed for some time longer, until old lady Gordon consented at last to allow the butcher to leave a large roast.

She shouted after him, nevertheless, as he rattled away; telling him at the top of her strong voice that he need not think that she would take another piece as tough and lean as this piece was; that he need have no such expectation the next time he came round.

She told Lynn the story of the Frenchman when the young man had entered the room in which she always sat and, with her permission, had thrown himself down on the couch under the window. But she could not answer his question about Monsieur Beauchamp immediately, because Eunice, the fat black cook, chanced to come in just at that moment for a consultation over the dinner, and the meals in old lady Gordon's house were always the subjects of very grave consideration, requiring a considerable length of time.

While the mistress and the cook were thus conferring, the young man gazed carelessly, and yet curiously, around this large low room in which his grandmother lived, and had spent the greater part of her life; and in which his father had been born. The low ceiling had been covered with canvas years before, but the original white of the canvas had long since turned to a smoky brown. The walls, which had never been plastered, were also covered with canvas, and afterward had been hung with old-fas.h.i.+oned wall-paper in hunting scenes. These had faded into a general effect of hazy dimness, but Lynn's keen young eyes made out the hunters, the hounds, and the game, as he lay idle with his long arms under his handsome dark head, wondering what sort of man his grandfather had been.

He had heard it said that rooms are like the people who live in them, and, recalling the saying, he wondered again whether this room was now as it used to be in his grandfather's time. There stood his grandfather's secretary in one corner, still filled with papers, just as he must have left it. The bed in the opposite corner must also have stood in the same place for many a year. It had been a very stately edifice, a magnificent structure, in its day. It even yet upheld a heavy tester of faded crimson damask, gathered to the centre under a great golden star of tarnished splendor. It had evidently once been of imposing height, and it was still of unusual width, but it had lost something of its height with age, as human beings do. It had been much too high for old lady Gordon to climb into and out of, as easily as she liked, when she began to grow stouter and more indolent, and it was not her way to submit to any inconvenience which she could avoid. So that the thick mahogany legs of the grand old bed had been sawed off by degrees--as old lady Gordon's ease required--till it now squatted under its big, dusty red tester like some absurd turbaned old Turk. Lynn smiled as he looked at it, letting his gaze wander on to the tall chest of drawers, to the high-backed split-bottomed chairs, to a great oaken chest at the foot of the bed--to all the homely, comfortable, unbeautiful things.

Looking at his grandmother, who was still absorbed in the consultation with the cook, the young man suddenly felt how like her face his own was; feeling it with the curiously mingled uneasiness and satisfaction which come to most of us when we recognize ancestral traits in our own spirits, our own minds, or our own bodies. She was a large, tall old woman, still handsome and even shapely, despite her many years and her great weight. Her chin was square and her forehead broad, yet her grandson was somehow pleased to think that his own chin was more delicately rounded, and that his forehead was higher than hers while not less broad, and that his mouth was clearer cut. Still, the strong likeness was there, in every one of the features of their two faces and most of all in their eyes--long, large, deep, thick-lashed, heavy-browed, and as black as human eyes ever are; and now as old lady Gordon turned her head, the young man saw with a kind of shock that his grandmother's eyes were almost as young, too, as his own. For young eyes in an old face are not a pleasant sight to see. It seems better for the ageless, unwearied spirit, thus looking out, to have grown old with the wearied body, so that both together may be ready for the Rest.

Old lady Gordon noticed her grandson's gaze, as soon as Eunice had gone from the room, and recognized the admiration which partly occupied his thoughts. She accordingly smiled at him, settling comfortably back in her broad, low rocking-chair. She wore a loose flowing wrapper of fine white muslin, as she always did in warm weather. In the winter she always wore the same garment made of fine white wool, covering it with a long black cloak on the rare occasions upon which she left the house during cold weather. It was a most unusual dress and one of peculiar distinction, but old lady Gordon took neither of these facts into the slightest account. She wore the fine white muslin in the summer because it was cooler than anything else; and she wore the white wool in the winter for the reason that, while warm and soft, it would wash with less trouble than colored stuffs, when she dropped things on it at the table, as she did at almost every meal. It is, perhaps, often just as well that we cannot know the causes which bring about many pleasing and even poetic results. Old lady Gordon's servants, especially Dilsey the washerwoman, held opinions somewhat different from hers concerning the greater convenience of constantly wearing white in winter as well as in summer. But old lady Gordon never took that into account either; neither that nor anything whatsoever that ever touched her own comfort at all adversely.

"Come and hand me my bag, I want a cough-drop," she said to Lynn that day, yawning. "It's too far round on the back of the chair for me to reach it."

Lynn sprang to serve her and handed her the bag. It was the first time that he had seen it; that is to say, it was the first time that he had really observed the bag; he must, of course, have seen it, since no one ever saw old lady Gordon without it. During the day it always hung on the back of the chair in which she sat when not at the table; when she sat at the table it always hung on the k.n.o.b of the dining-room chair.

Through the night it always swung from the post of her bed close to her hand. When she drove out in her ancient coach the bag went with her. And a wonderful bag it was! There were many more things in it than mere cough-drops. There were various other sorts of drops--drops for the gouty pain which sometimes a.s.sailed old lady Gordon's toe, and drops of good old brandy for cramp after over-eating. And there were candles and matches, all ready for lighting if she should chance to grow wakeful through the night, and always plenty of novels; and numerous simple toilet articles, such as a hairbrush and comb, together with biscuits and hair-oil and tea-cakes and handkerchiefs and an occasional piece of pie. It would indeed be hard to think of anything that old lady Gordon could have needed or desired, during the day or the night; or even have fancied that she wanted, without finding it ready to her hand in that wonderful bag. There was a hand-bell in it, too, though the bell usually lay at the very bottom of the bag, under everything else, because there was hardly ever any occasion for ringing it. The bag was a very gradual evolution, like most complete inventions. Old lady Gordon herself had given a good deal of thought for a good many years to the bringing of it to its ultimate state of perfection; and Eunice the cook and Patsey the housemaid had both concentrated their attention upon it more and more as the mistress's wants and demands increased; until it had now become so comprehensive that Eunice rarely had to be summoned out of her cabin, at midnight, to give old lady Gordon a lunch; and Patsey was able, as a rule, to sleep the whole night through on her pallet in the pa.s.sage outside the mistress's door; no matter whether that lady might suddenly crave refreshment, or whether several kinds of drops might be needed in consequence of a too hearty supper.

When old lady Gordon had taken the cough-drops out of the bag, and Lynn had replaced it on the back of her chair, within easier reach, she answered his question, which he had almost forgotten in his wondering observation of the bag.

"You were asking about little Beauchamp," she said. "Your grandfather found him somewhere and brought him home with him a long time ago. He has been here ever since. I don't remember how long ago that was. I don't know anything about him before he came. I hardly noticed him, in fact, until after your grandfather's death, when I found him useful in helping me manage the farm."

The grandson looked at the grandmother in silence, paying little heed to what she was saying of the Frenchman. He was wondering why she said "your grandfather" instead of saying "my husband." He had already noted that she invariably said "your father" instead of saying "my son." He knew little of women's ways, having lost his mother before he could remember, so that his life had been mostly among men, and he knew nothing whatever of his grandmother. Yet he felt, nevertheless, that a wife and mother who had loved her husband and her son would not speak of them to her grandson as "your grandfather" and "your father," as his grandmother did. He had also a curious, half-amused, half-indignant feeling that her doing so was intended to make him feel somehow responsible for something which she disliked, and did not wish to a.s.sume responsibility for herself.

"I never thought of asking your grandfather where he found him," old lady Gordon went on indifferently. "Most likely it was in New Orleans.

The few foreigners in this country mostly came from there. Your grandfather used to go there pretty often with flatboat-loads of horses.

But it doesn't matter where Beauchamp came from in the first place. He's mighty useful to me now, wherever it was. I really don't see how I could get along without him. He is a faithful, honest, industrious little soul. Of course that bat in his belfry flies out now and then--as you saw and heard. I try to remember it, but I forget sometimes. And how could a body guard against such an unheard-of thing as that was?" She laughed lazily, fanning herself with the turkey-wing, and rocking slowly and heavily. "He isn't a bit luny about anything else, and he is just as useful to me as if he didn't believe he was the son of Napoleon Bonaparte. I don't care if he thinks he's Julius Caesar himself. What's the odds--since it never interferes with his work? And his wife's a treasure too, in a different way. There's nothing French or flighty about her. She belongs around here--somewhere in the Pennyroyal Region.

I don't know or remember where he picked her up. She is a great, slow-witted, homely, slab-sided drudge, almost twice his size. And such a worker! She never turns her head when he calls her the 'Empress Maria.' She just goes straight along, hoeing the garden and making b.u.t.ter. But--all the same--she thinks the sun rises and sets in him."

The young man laughed. "Fine! And he no doubt thinks she hung the moon."

His grandmother looked at him more attentively than she had done hitherto. She had never been thrown with men of quick mind, and was not accustomed to such ready response. She liked quickness of perception as she liked all bright and pleasant things; and she disliked slowness of understanding as she disliked everything tiresome--like the sybarite that she was.

"Certainly he does. That's always the way," she in turn responded, smilingly. "The worse mated the married seem to be--to outsiders, the better they appear to suit one another. Talk about 'careful, judicious selection!'" Old lady Gordon made an inarticulate but eloquent sound of scornful incredulity. "If you were to rush out there in the big road this minute--with your eyes shut--and seize the first pa.s.ser-by, you would have just as much chance of knowing what you were doing--what you were getting--as you ever will have!"

Lynn wondered again what sort of a man his grandfather could have been.

And his young mother, whom he had never known? Had this cynical old woman disapproved of her, had she been unkind to her? There is always something repellent to wholesome youth in the cynicism of the old.

Feeling this, Lynn said rather coldly that he had thought little of such matters, he had been too much absorbed in other things, in laying life plans which must be quite apart from all thoughts of love and marriage for a good many years. The mere mention of these cherished plans brought a flush to his dark cheeks, and caused him to sit more proudly erect.

They were seldom far absent from his mind, and the main thought lying nearest the heart is never long unspoken by frank young lips. It was less than a year since he had been graduated from the Harvard Law School, but his deep-laid plans lay far back of his graduation. He could hardly remember when he had not seen the path of his ambition straight and distinct before him. It was a steep one, to be sure, and hard and long, as the road to the heights must ever be. But he had faced all this wholly undaunted, knowing the power within himself, and the additional strength which fortune had given him. Yet he was a modest young fellow, and simple-hearted as well as single-minded. There was in him little vanity in his personal gifts, little pride in his inherited possessions.

He simply recognized these as lucky accidents, for which he could claim no credit; holding them merely as the means whereby he might hope, more confidently than most young men, to reach the utmost limit of his ambition. The right to practise law was already his, and the rest of the way upward must open as he pressed earnestly and untiringly onward,--the bar, the bench, the supreme bench, those must be within the winning of any man having fair ability, unbounded capacity for hard work, and abundant means to wait for its fruition; and he knew himself to be possessed of all these. This seemed to him the highest ambition possible to an American, as perhaps it was, in those days when the ermine was still held unspotted, high above the mire of politics.

And yet, notwithstanding these lofty aims and matured plans, Lynn Gordon was very young, hardly more than a boy, after all, in many things, so that he soon began to talk with boyish openness of the herculean task which he thus had set himself in sober earnest. His grandmother listened with such intense interest, such thorough understanding, and such complete sympathy as surprised herself far more than it surprised her grandson. She was taken wholly unawares,--not dreaming of finding him anything like this,--having looked forward to his coming with but lukewarm enthusiasm.

The old who have been disappointed in almost everything that they have ever set their hearts upon, cease, after a while, to expect anything, and learn to s.h.i.+eld themselves against further disappointment by real or a.s.sumed indifference. Old lady Gordon in her fierce pride had never owned, even to herself, how deep and bitter and lasting had been her disappointment in her own son. It counted for nothing with her that he had been what many would have considered a good man, though not an intellectual man in the estimation of any one. To his mother his goodness had seemed but the negative virtue of an undecided character and a mediocre mind. For the best love of a nature like hers cannot be born of mere toleration, even in a mother's heart. This mother--being what she was--might perhaps have come nearer to forgiving the things which were lacking, had this only child been a daughter. A woman like old lady Gordon never expects much of another woman, even though she be her own daughter. But she always expects everything of every man, especially when he belongs to her own family, and thus it was that old lady Gordon never could wholly forgive her only son. Least of all could she ever quite forgive him for being his father over again; an almost unpardonable offence which other poorly gifted children have committed in the eyes of other embittered mothers, who have illogically expected, as poor old lady Gordon had expected, to gather figs from thistles.

When she had first faced the truth in the prime of life, her fierce pride had raised the iron s.h.i.+eld of pretended indifference, and she had upheld it so long that it had gradually grown into the rusty armor of age's insensibility. And yet, through all its steely coldness, the young man's warm words now struck fire. A deep glow came into the impa.s.sive, handsome old face, and a warm light into the hard, fine old eyes, as she looked at this spirited, strong, determined, capable young fellow, with his brilliant face aglow, and his intelligent eyes alight. She suddenly felt him to be much more her own spirit and flesh and blood than his father had ever been. It seemed for an instant as if her own strenuous youth, with its impa.s.sioned visions of conquest--so long forgotten--came rus.h.i.+ng back through the eloquent lips of her grandson.

IX

A ROMANTIC REGION

But, alas, the habits of age are always fixed, and its enthusiasms are mostly fleeting. At breakfast, on the next morning, old lady Gordon was as stolidly absorbed in the food which she was eating as she usually was in her meals. Her cynicism, her indifference, too, had all come back.

Both came promptly into play, when Lynn chanced to remember his promise to play cards with the sick man, and mentioned it, which he had forgotten to do on the day before, in the intenser interest of the talk about his own future. The old lady smiled sardonically and chewed on deliberately, while the young man gave an account of what had taken place at the doctor's house.

"Anne won't allow it," she finally said. "If anything could have changed her or have taken the nonsense out of her, it would have been seeing Tom go to destruction, mainly because she went to meeting. A woman like Anne takes to religion just as immoderately as a man like Tom takes to gambling."

Lynn did not speak at once. He was feeling the uneasiness which comes over right-minded youth at any sign of irreligion in the old.

"I thought every man liked his wife to go to church, however seldom he might go himself," he finally advanced hesitatingly.