Westways: A Village Chronicle Part 55

"Do you know that he is on the verge of complete financial ruin?"

"What does that matter? I can-I can bear anything-give up anything-"

"You have the woman's-the good woman's-indifference about money. Do you talk to him about it?"

"No. We get on at once to the causes of trouble-this unrighteous war-that I can't stand."

"Ah, Mrs. Penhallow, there must be in the North and South many families divided in opinion; what do you suppose they do? This absolute silence is fatal. You two are drifting apart-"

"Oh, not that! Surely not that!"

"Yes! The man is worried past endurance. If he really were to fall ill-a serious typhoid, for instance, the South and your brother and John, everything would be forgotten-there would be only James Penhallow. It would be better to talk of the war-to quarrel over it-to make him talk business-oh, anything rather than to live as you are living. He is not ill. Go home and comfort him. He needs it. He has become a lonely man, and it is your fault. He was here to-day in the utmost distress about you-"

"About me?"

"Yes."

"There is nothing the matter with me!"

"Yes, there is-oh, with both of you. This war will last for years-and so will you. All I have to say is that my friend, James Penhallow, is worth all the South, and that soon or late he will stand it no longer and will go where he ought to be-into the army."

"You are talking nonsense-he will never leave the mills." He had called up her constant fear.

"It is not nonsense. When he is a broken man and you and he are become irritable over a war you did not make and cannot end, he will choose absence and imperative duty as his only relief."

As she stood up, red and angry, she said, "You have only hurt and not helped me." She said no other word as he went with her to the wagon. He looked after her a moment.

"Well, well! There are many kinds of fools-an intelligent fool is the worst. I didn't help her any, and by George! I am sorry."

When at twilight the doctor came home from distant visits to farms, he met Leila near to his door. "I want to see you a minute," she said, as she slipped out of her saddle.

"A woman's minute or a man's minute?"

"A man's."

She secured her mare as he said, "Well, come in. It's rather amusing, Leila. Sit down. I've had James Penhallow here to say his wife's breaking down. I've had Mrs. Penhallow here to say James Penhallow is ill. Except the maids and the cats and you, all Grey Pine is diagnosing one another. And now, you come! Don't tell me you're ill-I won't have it."

"Please don't joke, Doctor. I am troubled about these dear people. I talked to Mr. Rivers about it, and he is troubled and says it is the mills and money. I know that, but at the bottom of it all is the war. Now Aunt Ann is reading the papers again-I think it is very strange; it's confusing, Doctor."

"Here," reflected the doctor, "is at least one person with some sense."

She went on, speaking slowly, "Uncle Jim comes home tired. Aunt Ann eats her dinner and reads, and is in bed by nine. The house is as melancholy as-I feel as if I were in a mousetrap-"

"Why mouse-trap, my dear?"

"It sounds all right. The mouse is waiting for something awful to happen-and so am I. Uncle Jim talked of asking people to stay with us. It's just to please Aunt Ann. She said, 'No, James, I don't want any one.' He wished to please her. She really thinks of nothing but the war and Uncle Jim, and when Uncle Jim is away she will spend an hour alone over his maps. She has-what do you call it-?"

"Is obsession the word you want?"

"Yes-that's it."

"Now, Leila, neither you nor I nor Mark Rivers can help those two people we love. Don't cry, Leila; or cry if it will help you. When you marry, be sure to ask, 'what are your politics, Jeremiah?'" His diversion answered his purpose.

"I never would marry a man named Jeremiah."

"I recommend a well-trained widower."

"I prefer to attend to my husband's education myself. I should like a man who is single-minded when I marry him."

"Well, for perversion of English you are quite unequalled. Go and flirt a bit for relief of mind with Mark Rivers."

"I would as soon flirt with an undertaker. Why not with Dr. McGregor?"

"It would be comparable, Leila, to a flirtation between a June rose and a frost-bitten cabbage. Now, go away. These people's fates are on the lap of the G.o.ds."

"Of the G.o.d of war, I fear," said Leila.

"Yes, more or less." He sent her away mysteriously relieved, she knew not why. "A little humour," he reflected, "is as the Indians say, big medicine."

Whether the good doctor's advisory prescription would have served as useful a purpose in the case of Ann Penhallow, he doubted. That heart-sick little lady was driven swiftly homeward, the sleigh-runners creaking on the frozen snow: "Walk the horses," she said to Billy, as they entered the long avenue, "and quit talking."

While with the doctor and when angrily leaving him, she was the easy victim of a storm of emotions. As she felt the healthy sting of the dry cold, she began the process of re-adjustment we are wise to practise after a time of pa.s.sion when by degrees facts and motives begin to rea.s.sume more just proportions. He had said, the war would last long. That she had not believed. Could she and James live for years afraid to speak of what was going on? The fact that her much-loved Maryland did not rise as one man and join the Confederacy had disturbed her with her first doubt as to the final result of the great conflict. She thought it over with lessening anger at the terrible thing McGregor had said, "You two are drifting apart." This sentence kept saying itself over and over.

"Stop, Billy." She was back again in the world of everyday. "Get in, Mr. Rivers. We are both late for our Dante." As she spoke, an oppressed pine below which he stood under a big umbrella was of a mind to bear its load no longer and let fall a bushel or so of snow on the clergyman's cover. His look of bewilderment and his upward glance as if for some human explanation routed from Ann's mind everything except amus.e.m.e.nt over this calamity.

"You must not mind if I laugh." She took for granted the leave to laugh, as he said, "I don't see where the fun comes in. It is most disagreeable." The eloquent eyes expressed calamity. It was really felt as if it had been a personal attack.

"It was a punishment for your utterly abominable politics." For the first time for months she was her unfettered self. His mind was still on his calamity. "I really staggered under it."

"Shake it off and get in to the sleigh. My husband ought to have all the big pines cut down." Rivers's mind had many levels. Sometimes they were on spiritual heights, or as now-almost childlike.

"To stay indoors would be on the whole more reasonable," he said, "or to have these trees along the avenue shaken."

"I'd like the job," ventured Billy.

"Keep quiet," said Mrs. Ann.

"It is most uncomfortable as it melts," said Rivers.

Ann thought of John Penhallow's early adventure in the snow, and seeing how strangely real was Mark Rivers's discomfort, remarked to herself that he was like a cat for dislike of being wet, and was thankful for her privilege of laughing inwardly.

Billy, who was, as Leila said, an unexpectable person, contributed to Ann Penhallow's sense of there being still some available fun in a world where men were feebly imitating the vast slaughters of nature. He considered the crushed umbrella, the felt hat awry, and the disconsolate figure. "Parson do look crosser than a wet hen."

Then too Rivers's laugh set free her mirth, and Ann Penhallow laughed as she had not done for many a day. "That is about my condition," said Rivers. "I shall go home and get into dry clothes. Billy, you're a poet."

"Don't like n.o.body to call me names," grunted Billy.

"I wish James had heard that," cried Ann, while Rivers gathered up the remains of his umbrella.