Oldfield Part 20

"_Jamais! Jamais!_--not to ze death!" cried monsieur, shrieking with mingled rage and pain.

The judge, from his calm height, looked silently down on the pathetic little form stretched at his feet, at the gray head resting now on the hard earth, and, seeing the dignity, the tragedy, which strangely invested it, a great surge uplifted the deep pity for the mystery and the sorrow of living which always filled his sad heart.

"As you please about that, Mr. Beauchamp. But you must allow me to pull off your boot before your leg becomes worse swollen. You are risking permanent injury by keeping it on; the hurt seems more serious than any mere sprain," he said, with the gentle patience that great strength always has for real weakness.

And then this stately gentleman, this famous judge, knelt down in the dust of the common highway, beside this poor distraught, angry, resisting, atom of humanity, and tenderly released the injured ankle from the pressure that was torturing it.

"Now, that's better," he said, rising, and looking round in some perplexity. "Ah, yonder is a cart coming up the big road. I can get the driver of it to take you home."

He spoke to the negro who was driving the swaying oxen, and gave him some money, and stood waiting until he saw the Frenchman lifted carefully and safely into the cart, and well started on the way toward his home. Then the judge went on his own lonely, homeless road to the tavern. The lengthening shadows of the hills were already darkening the valley, although a wonderful golden light still lingered above the summits, making the new moon look wan. There was only daylight enough for the judge to see old lady Gordon sitting alone at her window, and seeing her, he was reminded that it was his duty to tell her of the accident which had befallen the manager of her farm.

She looked up suddenly, almost eagerly, at the sound of his approach, and peered into the gloaming with the sad intentness of weary eyes which are no longer sure of what they see. When she recognized the judge, she suddenly settled heavily back in her chair with an abrupt movement of angry disappointment. She did not thank him for coming to tell her, and she did not ask him to come in. She merely nodded with the rude taciturnity which, with her, always marked some disturbance of mind.

XXIV

OLD LADY GORDON'S ANGER

For this breaker from a sea of troubles, gradually overspreading all Oldfield, had now gone so far that it had stirred, at last, even the long unstirred level of old lady Gordon's vast indifference.

It had been many a long year since she had been moved to such anger as she was feeling on that day; few things seemed to her worth real anger; she accepted almost everything with careless, almost amiable, tolerance.

Selfishness as absolute as hers often wears a manner very like good nature, because it is far too great to be moved by trifles.

Poor old lady Gordon! She had managed to sink her disappointment in self-indulgence, as wretchedness too often sinks itself in opium. She had eaten rich food because the eating of it helped to pa.s.s the dull days of her distasteful life; she had read all the novels within her reach--good, bad, and indifferent--because reading was not so tiresome as thinking, when there was nothing pleasant to think about; she had laughed at many follies and mistakes which she saw clearly enough, because it seemed to her useless to try to prevent folly or the making of mistakes.

And yet none knew the true from the false better than this honest, scornful old pagan, who had buried more than one talent, more than ordinary intelligence, under habitual sloth of mind and body; and none had a more genuine respect for all that was finest and highest. But her own early striving toward it had met too complete a defeat for her--being what she was--to go on striving or to think it worth while for others to strive. A nature like hers can never submit, unembittered and unhardened, to wrong and unhappiness; nor is it ever winged by the spiritual so that it may rise above its false place in the world. It can only beat itself against the stone wall of environment, or recoil in fatalistic indifference. And in this last poor old lady Gordon had found refuge so long ago that she had quite forgotten the pain--and the pleasure--which comes with suffering through loving.

And then, after she had thus lived through many wasted days, and many empty nights, it seemed as if this grandson had come at the eleventh hour to open the door of her prison-house. She had not believed it at first; more than a half-century is so long to wait for everything which the heart most craves, that it cannot believe at once when its supreme desire seems about to be granted at last. But, nevertheless, old lady Gordon's pleasure and pride in her grandson had grown fast and steadily through those perfect days and weeks of summer. It had pleased her more and more to hear his strong, gay young voice ringing through the silence of the dull old house. It had pleased her more and more to look at his bright, handsome young face across the table, which had been lonely so long. It had pleased her most of all to have his cheering young presence--so over-flowing with hope and spirits--at her side, through the dreary hours of the lingering twilight, when she had been forced, in the solitude of the old time, to face alone the dreaded muster of disappointment's mocking spectres.

Thus had old lady Gordon regarded her grandson in the beginning of her acquaintance with him. But she gradually began to know him, to see him as he really was, to think that he might be what he meant to be. And so, little by little, this hard, embittered, lonely old soul came finally to believe that a grudging fate was, after all, about to grant to her age the true son of her own heart, of her great pride, of her unbounded ambition--the son whom it had so cruelly denied to her youth and maturity. Then there came a strange and piteous stirring of all her long-numbed sensibilities; a powerful, and even terrible, uprising of all her intensest feelings. It was as if a mighty old grapevine, long stripped of fruit and foliage, long fallen away from every living thing, long trailing along the earth--deeply covered with mould and weeds--as if such a mighty, twisted, hard old grapevine were suddenly to put forth strong new tendrils, and, entwining them around a young tree, should thus begin to rise again toward the last light of life's sunset.

And now, just as this late warmth was sending its rays through the chill veins of unloved and unloving old age,--the coldest and the saddest thing in the whole world,--old lady Gordon once more found herself facing the same danger which had wrecked all her earlier hopes. She had shut her keen old eyes to it at first, and had merely smiled, although she had seen her grandson's interest in Doris quite clearly ever since its commencement. The girl seemed to her so far beneath her grandson in station as to be safely outside any serious consideration. For no Brahmin was ever more deeply imbued with the prejudice of caste than this slothful old lady Gordon; and no consideration other than a serious one could disturb her in the least. Moreover, she rested for a while upon her confidence in Lynn's singleness of purpose, believing in his determination to allow nothing to turn him from the pursuit of his ambition. But later, as the summer days went by and she saw him giving more and more of his time to this yellow-haired, brown-eyed, sweet-spoken, soft-mannered daughter of the village news-monger, and less and less to the thought and study of his chosen profession, a doubt entered her mind, and began to rankle like a thorn in the flesh. As she was left more and more alone, till she had scarcely any of her grandson's society, which was now become so sweet, she had time to remember the folly and weakness of his father, and the folly and wickedness of his grandfather. These dark memories, surging back, as she brooded in solitude, brought old bitterness to her new uneasiness; and yet, recalling many mistakes which she had made in the old time through the rashness of inexperience, she still kept silence, resolving not to fall into such errors again. She did not speak slightingly of the girl, recalling that as one of her most fatal errors; and she was also withheld by a grim sense of justice which was always lurking, half-forgotten, within her hard old breast. She accordingly wisely confined herself to pa.s.sing comments upon Sidney, and to occasional references to Uncle Watty, directing most of her witty, satirical talk toward love and marriage in the abstract. One day she read Lynn a couple of lines from an old novel which said that:--

"Falling in love is like falling downstairs; it is always an accident, and nearly always a misfortune."

She had many such dry and stinging epigrams at her sharp tongue's end in those days, when she was using wit, satire, irony, and ridicule as weapons to defend her late-coming happiness. Poor old lady Gordon! it was very hard. Selfishness always makes opposition bitterly hard, and it is hard indeed to have been compelled to wait through the s.p.a.ce of a generation for the supreme desire of the heart. It was harder than a nature so imperious as hers could endure, to meet such ign.o.ble interference at this eleventh hour, now that its late fulfilment seemed so near, now that she herself had so little time for longer waiting.

So thus it was that scornful impatience gradually gave way to bitter anger, to the fierce, compelling anger of the autocrat long unused to having her will crossed, much less lightly set aside, and, least of all, to having it totally disregarded. It was lightly and even gayly that Lynn had gone his own way in opposition to hers; but when their wills had clashed slightly once or twice, old lady Gordon had seen that they were made of the same piece of cold steel. She had recognized the fact with a queer mixture of pride and displeasure, but the recognition had turned her away from all thought of force, and she had henceforth resorted to subtler measures. She had tried--with a gentleness so foreign to her nature that it was pathetic--to keep him at her side, as a tigress might softly stretch out a paw--every cruel claw sheathed in velvet--to draw a cub away from danger. But this too failed, as the efforts of the old to hold the young always must fail when nature calls.

And thus it was that the lingering twilights of those last summer days found old lady Gordon again alone, as the judge had found her; again solitary at lonely nightfall; again--with the long night so near--gazing into the gathering darkness at the ghostly a.s.semblage of all her dead hopes.

Lynn did not come that night until she had turned and tossed through more than one sleepless hour. At breakfast the next morning they had little to say to one another. It was nearly always so now, although Lynn had scarcely noted the fact that all ease and confidence had gone out of their companions.h.i.+p. He was always in haste of late to get away; every morning he went earlier to join Doris, forgetting all about the law books which lay on the table in his room, and which his grandmother used to go and look at and turn over--most piteously. She now used rarely to stir from her chair except to do this. Every evening he was later in leaving Doris, and slower in coming home; and he never lingered now on the dark porch to think over his plans. And day by day old lady Gordon's secret wrath burned more fiercely, although she still kept it carefully covered with the ashes of a.s.sumed indifference. But on the evening of the judge's visit her long-smouldering anger had, for the first time, burst into flame beyond her control. She had seen Lynn and Doris pa.s.sing on their way to the graveyard; she had watched the flutter of the girl's white skirt at her grandson's side all along the slow, winding way up to the high hilltop. The sight had been as wind and fuel to raging fire. It was well for the judge that he had not lingered while the flames thus raged; it was well for Lynn that he had been for the moment beyond the reach of his grandmother's burning contempt; it was well for Doris--though as innocent of all offence as one of the white lambs feeding on the hillside--well that her return was unseen in the gloaming; it had been well--most of all--for this fierce old spirit itself that certain strong, dark drops, from the bag hanging at the head of her bed, could lay for a few hours the mocking ghosts of dead hopes, all slain by folly and weakness, even as this last one seemed now being put to death before her very eyes.

The morning found her spent in strength; and the fire of her anger, although uncooled, was again covered by the silence of exhaustion. Moods of silence were, however, not unusual with her, and Lynn was too deeply absorbed in his own pleasant thoughts to observe his grandmother's ominous brooding. When the meal was over, with the exchange of hardly a dozen thoughtless words upon his part, and of taciturn responses upon her side, Lynn took up his hat and went out of the house and toward the gate. Pausing under the cypress tree, he looked back and smiled and waved his hand; and then he went swiftly along the big road toward the silver poplars.

Old lady Gordon sat quite still in her chair, gazing after him with darkly drawn brows, with her turkey-wing fan lying forgotten on her lap, and her novel cast, neglected, on a chair by her side. She had not told Lynn of the accident to the manager of the farm; she had not spoken of her intended visit to the Frenchman on that morning; she had not asked her grandson to go with her, although she walked with difficulty and even with pain, and longed with age's helplessness to have him near by to lean upon. When Lynn was quite out of sight she arose--a fine, majestic old figure in her loose white drapery--and started across the fields, making her slow, painful way to the Beauchamp cottage. She found the Frenchman in bed, and, seeing how seriously he was hurt, and remembering the farm work which must go undirected, she was not in a better humor when she turned her face homeward. Still she held her wrath with an iron hand, exercising perhaps the greatest self-control that she had ever brought to bear upon anything during her whole life. She even forced herself to make some gruffly civil response when Lynn came back to dinner at noon, and hastened away again as soon as he could, with a few hurried, happy words and another gay smile and careless wave of his hand. But all through the afternoon hours of that long, dull, solitary day old lady Gordon's anger grew as thunder clouds gather, and when, after supper, Lynn again took up his hat and turned, intending again to leave her, the brewing tempest suddenly burst upon him.

"Have you ever stopped to think where all this philandering must lead?

It's high time," she broke out, hoa.r.s.e with pa.s.sionate rage.

The young man, holding his hat in his hand, wheeled and looked at his grandmother in utter amazement, startled, almost alarmed, by the violence of her tone and by the suddenness of the attack.

"I don't understand. I don't know in the least what you mean," he said honestly enough, and yet, even as he spoke, a glimmering consciousness came into his open face.

"Oh, yes, you do. You know perfectly well, but I'll put it plainer if you want me to," she went on, roughly, sneeringly.

Lynn reddened, putting up his hand with a gesture imposing silence.

"Perhaps I do understand something of what you mean," he said hesitatingly, with the hesitation which every right-minded man feels at referring--however distantly--in any such connection to a girl whom he reveres. "And if I do understand anything of what you mean, you must allow me to tell you that there has been no philandering, nor any semblance of it."

"Then what do you call it?" she demanded, with even greater violence and roughness than before. "May I ask how you characterize this perpetual dawdling, all day and nearly all night, at the heels of a girl whose rank is hardly above that of a servant--a girl whom even the son of your father, or the grandson of your grandfather, could scarcely be fool or rake enough to think of--except as something to philander after."

She hurled the brutal words at him as she would have thrown stones in his face, far too furious to think or to care how they might hurt.

He recoiled, shocked, revolted, by the sight of such unrestrained anger in age. It seemed an incredibly monstrous thing. Then he stood still, looking at her with a cool courage which matched her flaming rage. He now moved farther away, but it was solely because he felt a sudden extreme repulsion.

"Pardon me," he said icily, moving still farther, still nearer the open door. "It is you who do not understand. There certainly is nothing that any one else can possibly have misunderstood. I have been scrupulously careful all along that there should not be. I have guarded every act, every word, every look--"

Old lady Gordon burst out laughing like a coa.r.s.e old man deep in his cups.

"Oh ho!" she scoffed. "So that's how the matter stands, is it? How high-minded! How prudently virtuous! How perfectly Sidney's daughter must understand. How highly the girl must appreciate it. Of course she does understand and appreciate your prudence, your thought--of yourself.

What woman wouldn't? Even a simpleton of a country girl must have been overcome by it. She can't help forgiving you for trying your best to make her fall in love with you, if you have been as steadfast--as you say you have--in warning her that you didn't mean to fall in love with her. How she must honor and admire you!" she taunted, with something masculine in her voice, and laughing again like a coa.r.s.e old man.

The shafts of her merciless scorn pierced the armor of the young man's cool calmness like arrows barbed with fire. It seemed to him for an instant as though flame suddenly wrapped him from head to foot. He felt literally scorched by a burning sense of shame, although, dazed and bewildered, he could not yet see whence it came. The blood rushed into his face, into his head; his eyes fell; he could not keep them on his grandmother's mocking, scornful face.

Old lady Gordon's fiery gaze did not fall, but it softened. A strange look, one which was hard to read, came to replace the expression of contemptuous anger. There was still some scorn in it, yet the scorn was curiously mingled with vanity.

"Well, after all, you are more like me than you're like the men of the family," she said abruptly, with a sudden return to her usual manner.

Lynn could not speak; he could not look at her. He silently bent down and took up his hat, which had dropped from his nerveless grasp, and with bowed head he went silently out into the s.h.i.+elding dusk.

XXV

THE REVELATION OF THE TRUTH

The first wound received by true self-respect is always a terrible thing. And the truer the self-esteem and the better founded, the more the slightest blow must bruise it. The deepest stabbing of the derelict can never hurt so much or be so hard to heal. It may indeed be doubted whether a touch on the real quick of a fine sense of honor ever entirely heals.

A man coa.r.s.er and duller than Lynn Gordon was, less high-minded, less essentially honorable, could not have suffered as he was suffering when he went out that night into the dusky peace of the drowsing village. Yet he could hardly tell at first whence came the blow which had wounded him so deeply. The suddenness of the arraignment had dazed him; the violence of the attack had stunned him; so that he was conscious mainly of a strange bewilderment of pain and humiliation, as though he had been struck down in the dark.

He went through the gate as if walking in a distressful dream, and turned toward the silver poplars, as he had turned at that time of the evening for many weeks, but turning through sheer force of habit, scarcely knowing whither he went. It was not yet quite nightfall; the starlight was just beginning to meet the twilight, only commencing to arch vast violet s.p.a.ces high above the dim trees on the far-folded hills. The silvery mists, ever lurking among the fringing willows of the stream murmuring through the meadows, were already rising to cloud the lowlands with fleecy whiteness, radiantly starred with fireflies. The few languid sounds of living heard in the day, now had all pa.s.sed away before the coming of night. Only the plaintive song of the white cricket came from the misty distance; only the lonely chime of the brown cricket rang from the near-by gra.s.s; only the chilling prophecy of the katydid's cry shrilled through the peaceful silence of the warm, fragrant gloaming.

But the softest dusk of heaven, the completest peace of earth, is powerless to calm the storm which beats upon the spirit. Lynn Gordon strode on as though to confront the full glare of life's fiercest turmoil. He was driven by such stinging humiliation as he had never expected to know; he was goaded by such pain of mind as made his very body ache. So that he thus went forward, swiftly, fiercely, for a score of paces, and then he stopped and stood still, arrested by a sudden thought which was as blasting as a flash of lightning. For an instant his hot and heavy-beating heart seemed to cease its rapid throbbing and to grow suddenly cold with sickening fear. Another moment and he felt as if a living flame wrapped him again from head to foot, so intolerable was the burning shame that flashed over him. Had Doris seen him--as his grandmother had seen him? Had Doris recognized in his guarded att.i.tude toward her an intended warning to guard her own heart--as his grandmother had said? Had Doris felt--as his grandmother had charged--that he had thus offered her the most unpardonable indignity that an honorable man can offer a modest woman?

Under the shock of the thought he recoiled from it as too monstrous to be true. That exquisite, spotless child! That sacred embodiment of peerless beauty! He could have groaned aloud as the unbearable thought clung like a flaming garment. Yet he could not cast it from him; and out of the smoke of memory there now came swirling many little half-forgotten incidents. Small things, which had then seemed at the time to be trifles light as air, now came back, seeming confirmations strong as proof of holy writ. Under the light of this fiery revelation one recollection stood out more distinctly than any other. He remembered giving Doris some simple little gift. He saw again in this dim, unpeopled dusk, even more clearly than he had seen it then, the bewitching brightness of her beautiful face, the soft radiance of her lovely, uplifted eyes, as he had put the bauble in her eager little hands. And now, while he still saw her thus, he heard his own voice saying an incredible thing. He now heard himself--not some dull, blundering, brutal dolt--saying something vague about its being strictly an "impersonal" sort of present.