"I suppose there is, grandfather, for all their fierce quarrelling. They have the kind of love that will die for you and yet will not so much as suffer you to live. That's the way Mrs. Revercomb loves, and it's the way Abel is loving me now."

"Let him larn, pretty, let him larn. He'll be worth twice as much at fifty as he is to-day, an' so will you for that matter. They're fools that say love is for the young, Molly, don't you believe 'em."

Sarah, meanwhile, passed slowly down the flagged walk under the gnarled old apple trees in the orchard. A few heavy-winged insects, awaking from the frost of the night, droned over the piles of crushed winesaps, and she heard the sound as though it came to her across a distance of forty years. They were not easy years; she was worn by their hardness, crippled by their poverty, embittered by their sorrows. "I've had a hard life," she thought. "I've had a hard life, an' it warn't fair." For the first time it occurred to her that the Providence she had served had not used her honourably in return. "Even Abner al'ays thought that Mary Hilliard was the prettiest," she added, after a minute.

As she crossed the lawn at Jordan's Journey, Uncle Abednego, the butler, appeared at the back door, and detained her with an excited wave of the hand.

"Lawd A'mighty, dar's bad times yer, Miss Sary!" he cried, "Miss Angela she's been mos' dead fur goin' on two hours, en we all's done sont Cephus on de bay horse arter Marse Jonathan!"



CHAPTER XV

SHOWS THE TYRANNY OF WEAKNESS

Three days later the bay horse returned at a gallop with Jonathan Gay in the saddle. At the head of the steps Kesiah was standing, and she answered the young man's anxious questions with a manner which she tried to make as sympathetic as the occasion required. This effort to adjust her features into harmony with her feelings had brought her brows together in a forbidding scowl and exaggerated the harsh lines between mouth and chin.

"Am I in time?" he asked in a trembling voice, and his hand reached out to her for support.

"The immediate danger is over, Jonathan," she answered, while she led him into the library and closed the door softly behind them. "For hours we despaired of her recovery, but the doctors say now that if there is no other shock, she may live on for months."

"I got your note last night in Washington," he returned. "It was forwarded by mail from Applegate. Is the doctor still with her?"

"No, he has just gone. The rector is there now. She finds him a great comfort."

"It was so sudden, Aunt Kesiah—she appeared well when I left her. What caused the attack?"

"A talk she had had with Mr. Chamberlayne. It seems he thought it best to prepare her for the fact that your Uncle Jonathan left a good deal of his property—it amounts to an income of about ten thousand a year, I believe, to Reuben Merryweather's granddaughter when she comes of age. Of course it wasn't the money—Angela never gave that a thought—but the admission that the girl was his illegitimate daughter that struck so heavy a blow."

"But surely she must have suspected—-"

"She has never suspected anything in her life. It is a part of her sweetness, you know, that she never faces an unpleasant fact until it is literally thrust on her notice. As long as your uncle was so devoted to her and so considerate, she thought it a kind of disloyalty to inquire as to the rest of his life. Once I remember, twenty years ago, when that poor distraught creature came to me—I went straight to Angela and tried to get her to use her influence with her uncle for the girl's sake. But at the first hint, she locked herself in her room and refused to let me come near her. Then it was that I had that terrible quarrel with Mr. Gay, and he hardly spoke to me again as long as he lived. I believe, though, he would have married Janet after my talk with him except for Angela's illness, which was brought on by the shock of hearing him speak of his intention." She sighed wonderingly, her anxious frown deepening between her eyebrows. "They both seemed to think that in some way I was to blame for the whole thing," she added, "and your uncle never forgave me. It's the same way now. Mr. Chamberlayne spoke quite angrily to me when he saw the effect of his interview. He appeared to think that I ought to have prevented it."

"Could it have been kept from her, do you suppose?"

"That looked impossible, and of course, he broke it to her very gently. He also, you know, has all his life had a sentiment about Angela, and that, I think is why he never married. He told me once that she came nearer than any woman he had ever seen to representing every man's ideal."

"What I can't understand is why she should have been so upset by the discovery?"

"Well, she was very fond of your uncle, and she has cherished quite romantically the memory of his affection for her. I think—for that is Angela's way—that he means much more to her dead than he did living—and this, she says, has blackened the image."

"But even then it seems incomprehensible that it should have made her really so ill."

"Oh, you don't know her yet, Jonathan. I remember your uncle used to say that she was more like a flower than a woman, and he was always starting alarms about her health. We lived in a continual panic about her for several years, and it was her weakness, as much as her beauty, that gave her her tremendous power over him. He was like wax in her hands, though of course he never suspected it."

The tread of Mr. Mullen was heard softly on the staircase, and he entered with his hand outstretched from the starched cuff that showed beneath the sleeve of his black broadcloth coat. Pausing on the rug, he glanced from Kesiah to Jonathan with a grave and capable look, as though he wished them to understand that, having settled everything with perfect satisfaction in the mind of Mrs. Gay, he was now ready to perform a similar office for the rest of the household.

"I am thankful to say that I left your dear mother resting peacefully," he observed in a whisper. "You must have had a distressing journey, Mr. Gay?"

"I was very much alarmed," replied Gay, with a nervous gesture as if he were pushing aside a disagreeable responsibility. "The note took three days to find me, and I didn't know until I got here whether she was alive or dead."

"It is easy to understand your feelings," returned the rector, still whispering though Gay had spoken in his natural voice. "Such a mother as yours deserves the most careful cherishing that you can give her. To know her has been an inspiration, and I am never tired of repeating that her presence in the parish, and occasional attendance at church, are privileges for which we should not forget to be thankful. It is not possible, I believe, for any woman to approach more closely the perfect example of her sex."

"Perhaps I had better go up to her at once. We are deeply grateful to you, Mr. Mullen, for your sympathy."

"Who would not have felt?" rejoined the other, and taking up his hat from the table, he went out, still treading softly as though he were walking upon something he feared to hurt.

"Poor mother! It's wonderful the way she has with people!" exclaimed Gay, turning to Kesiah.

"She's always had it with men—there's something so appealing about her. You'll be very careful what you say to her, Jonathan."

"Oh, I'll not confess my sins, if that's what you mean," he responded as he ascended the staircase.

The room was fragrant with burning cedar, and from the dormer-windows, latticed by boughs, a band of sunlight stretched over the carpet to the high white bed in which his mother was lying. Her plaintive blue eyes, which clung to him when he entered, appeared to say; "Yes, see how they have hurt me—a poor frail creature." Above her forehead her hair, which was going grey, broke into a mist, and spread in soft, pale strands over the pillow. Never had her helpless sweetness appealed so strongly to his emotions, as when she laid her hand on his arm and said in an apologetic whisper:

"Dear boy, how I hated to bring you back."

"As if I wouldn't have come from the end of the world, dearest mother," he answered.

He had fallen on his knees by her bed, but when Kesiah brought him a chair, he rose and settled himself more comfortably.

"I wanted you, dear, but if you knew how I dreaded to become a drag on you. Men must be free, I know—never let me interfere with your freedom—I feel such a helpless, burdensome creature."

"If you could only see how young and lovely you look even when you are ill, you would never fear becoming a burden. In spite of your grey hairs, you might pass for a girl at this minute."

"You wicked flatterer!—but, oh, Jonathan, I've had a blow!"

"I understand. It must have been rough."

"And to think how I always idealized him!—how I had believed in his love for me and cherished his memory! To discover that even at the last—on his deathbed—he was thinking of that woman!"

She wept gently, wiping her eyes with a resigned and suffering gesture on the handkerchief Kesiah had handed her. "I feel as if my whole universe had crumbled," she said.

"But it was no affront to you, mother—it all happened before he saw you, and was only an episode. Those things don't bite into a man's life, you know."

"Of course, I knew there had been something, but I thought he had forgotten it—that he was faithful to his love for me—his spirit worship, he called it. Then to find out so long after his death—when his memory had become a part of my religion—that he had turned back at the end."

"It wasn't turning away from you, it was merely an atonement. Your influence was visible even there."

"I am sorry for the child, of course," she said sadly, after weeping a little—"who knows but she may have inherited her mother's character?"

"The doctor said you were to be quiet, Angela," remarked Kesiah, who had stood at the foot of the bed in the attitude of a Spartan. "Jonathan, if you begin to excite her, you'd better go."

"Oh, my boy, my darling boy," sobbed Mrs. Gay, with her head on his shoulder, "I have but one comfort and that is the thought that you are so different—that you will never shatter my faith in you. If you only knew how thankful I am to feel that you are free from these dreadful weaknesses of men."

Cowed by her helplessness, he looked down on her with shining eyes.

"Remember the poor devil loved you, mother, and be merciful to his memory," he replied, touched, for the first time, by the thought of his uncle.

"I shall try, Jonathan, I shall try, though the very thought of evil is a distress to me," she replied, with a saintly look. "As for the girl, I have only the tenderest pity for the unfortunate creature."

"That's like you, mother."

"Kesiah says that she has behaved very well. Didn't you say so, Kesiah?"

"Yes, Mr. Chamberlayne told me that she appeared perfectly indifferent when he spoke to her. She even remarked, I believe, that she didn't see that it concerned her."

"Well, she's spirit enough. Now stop talking, mother, I am going."

"God bless you, my darling boy—you have never failed me."

Instead of appeasing his conscience, the remark completed his descent into the state of disenchantment he had been approaching for hours. The shock of his mother's illness, coming after three days of marriage, had been too much for his unstable equilibrium, and he felt smothered by an oppression which, in some strange way, seemed closing upon him from without. It was in the air—in the faded cretonne of the room, in the grey flashes of the swallows from the eaves of the house, in the leafless boughs etched delicately against the orange light of the sky. Like most adventurers of the emotions, he was given to swift despondencies as well as to vivid elations, and the tyranny of a mood was usually as absolute as it was brief. The fact was there while it lasted like the physical sensation of hunger or gratification. When it departed he seldom spurred his imagination to the pursuit of it.

"So it's over," he said under his breath, as he looked through the lacework of ivy on the small greenish panes to the desolate November fields, "and I've been a damn fool for the asking!"

At the end of the week Blossom returned to the mill, and on the afternoon of her arrival, Gay met her in the willow copse by the brook. To the casual observer there would have appeared no perceptible change in his manner, but a closer student of the hearts of lovers might have drawn an inference from the fact that he allowed her to wait five minutes for him at the place of meeting. True, as he explained passionately, his mother had asked for him just as he was leaving the house, and it was clearly impossible that he should refuse his mother! That he was still ardent for Blossom's embraces was evident to her glance, but the affair was settled, the mystery solved, and there was no longer need that he should torment himself. That the love of his kind is usually a torment or nothing had not, at this stage, occurred to either of the lovers. He was feeling strongly that, having conducted himself in so honourable a manner there was nothing more to be expected of him; while she assured her heart that when his love had proved capable of so gallant a sacrifice, it had established the fact of its immortality. The truth was that the fire still burned, though the obstacles, which had supplied fuel to the flames, were consumed, and a pleasant warmth rather than a destroying blaze was the result. Had Gay sounded the depths of his nature, which he seldom did, he would have discovered that for him passion was a kind of restlessness translated into emotion. When the restlessness was appeased, the desire in which it had revealed itself slowly evaporated.

"How is your mother?" was Blossom's first eager question, "oh, I do hope she is better!"

"Better, yes, but we're still awfully anxious, the least shock may kill her—Aunt Kesiah and I are walking on pins and needles. How are you, Beauty? Did you enjoy your visit?"

He kissed her lips, and she clung to him with the first expression of weakness she had ever shown.

"How could I when it ended like that?"

"Well, you're married anyway—that ought to satisfy you. What does it feel like?"

"I can't believe it—and I haven't even any ring."

"Oh, the ring! If you'd had it, you'd have dropped it about somewhere and let out the secret."

"I wish it had been in church and before a clergyman."

"Are you trying to make me jealous again of the Reverend Orlando? I'm an old married man now, and it is hopeless."

"Do you really feel married, Jonathan?"

"The deuce I don't! If I did I'd be galloping down the turnpike."

"I wonder why you did it?" she questioned a little wistfully, "you take it so lightly."

"I could only take it lightly after I'd done it—that's why, darling."

"If I could believe in it I shouldn't mind the secrecy," she said, "but I feel so wicked and underhand that I hardly dare hold up my head before the folks at home. Jonathan, when do you think we may come out and confess?"

For a moment he did not answer, and she watched the frown gather slowly between his eyebrows.

"There, there, Blossom, don't begin that already," he responded irritably, "we can't make it public as long as my mother lives—that's out of the question. Do you think I could love you if I felt you had forced me to murder her? Heaven knows I've done enough—I've married you fair and square, and you ought to be satisfied."

"I am satisfied," she replied on the point of tears, "but, oh, Jonathan, I'm not happy."

"Then it's your own fault," he answered, still annoyed with her. "You've had everything your own way, and just because I get in trouble and come to you for sympathy, you begin to nag. For God's sake, don't become a nagging woman, Blossom. A man hates her worse than poison."

"O Jonathan!" she cried out sharply, placing her hand on her breast as though he had stabbed her.

"Of course, I'm only warning you. Your great charm is poise—I never saw a woman who had so much of it. That's what a man wants in a wife, too. Vagaries are all right in a girl, but when he marries, he wants something solid and sensible."

"Then you do love me, Jonathan?"

"Don't be a goose," he rejoined—for it was a question to which he had never in his life returned a direct answer.

"Of course, I know you do or you wouldn't have married me—but I wish you'd tell me so—just in words—sometimes."

"If I told you so, you'd have no curiosity left, and that would be bad for you. Come, kiss me, sweetheart, that's better than talking."

She kissed him obediently, as mildly complaisant as she had once been coldly aloof. Though the allurement of the remote had deserted her, she still possessed, in his eyes, the attraction of the beautiful. If the excitement of the chase was ended, the pleasure of the capture was still amply sufficient to make up the difference. He laughed softly as he kissed her, enjoying her freshness, her surrender, her adoration, which she no longer attempted to hide.

When he parted from her several hours afterwards, he had almost recovered the casual gaiety which had become his habit of mind. Life was too short either to wonder or to regret, he had once remarked, and a certain easy fatalism had softened so far the pricks of a disturbing conscience.

The walk from the pasture to the house led through a tangle of shrubbery called by the negroes, the Haunt's Walk, and as he pushed the leafless boughs out of his way, a flitting glimpse of red caught his eye beyond a turn in the path. An instant later, Molly passed him on her way to the spring or to the meadows beyond.

"Good day, Mr. Jonathan," she said, while her lips curved and she looked up at him with her arch and brilliant smile.

"Good day to yourself, cousin," he responded gaily, "what is your hurry?"

As he made a movement to detain her, she slipped past him, and a minute afterwards her laugh floated back.

"Oh, there's a reason!" she called over her shoulder.

A sudden thought appeared to strike him at her words, and turning quickly in the path, he looked after her until she disappeared down the winding path amid the tangle of shrubbery.

"Jove, she is amazingly pretty!" he said at last under his breath.



CHAPTER XVI

THE COMING OF SPRING

The winter began in a long rain and ended in a heavy snow which lay for a week over the country. In the chill mornings while she dressed, Molly watched the blue-black shadows of the crows skimming over the white ground, and there was always a dumb anxiety at her heart as she looked after them.

On Christmas Eve there had been a dance at Piping Tree, and because she had danced twice with Gay (who had ridden over in obedience to a whim), Abel had parted from her in anger. For the first time she had felt the white heat of his jealousy, and it had aroused rebellion, not acquiescence, in her heart. Jonathan Gay was nothing to her (though he called her his cousin)—he had openly shown his preference for Blossom—but she insisted passionately that she was free and would dance with whomsoever she pleased. To Abel's demand that she should give up "round dances" entirely, she had returned a defiant and mocking laugh. They had parted in an outburst of temper, to rush wildly together a few days later when they met by chance in the turnpike.

"You love him, but you don't love him enough, honey," said Reuben, patting her head. "You love yourself still better than him."

"Three months ago he hardly dared hope for me—he would have kissed the dust under my feet—and now he flies into fits of jealousy because I dance with another man."

"'Tis human natur to go by leaps an' starts in love, Molly."

"It's a foolish way, grandfather."

"Well, I ain't claimin' that we're over-wise, but thar's al'ays life ready to teach us."

When the snow thawed, spring appeared so suddenly that it looked as if it had lain there all winter in a green and gold powder over the meadows. Flashes of blue, like bits of fallen sky, showed from the rail fences; and the notes of robins fluted up from the budding willows beside the brook. On the hill behind Reuben Merryweather's cottage the peach-trees bloomed, and red-bud and dogwood filled the grey woods with clouds of delicate colour. Spring, which germinated in the earth, moved also, with a strange restlessness, in the hearts of men and women. As the weeks passed, that inextinguishable hope, which mounts always with the rising sap, looked from their faces.

On the morning of her birthday, a warm April day, Molly smiled at herself in the mirror, and because the dimples became her, wondered how she could manage to keep on smiling forever. Blushing and paling she tried a ribbon on her hair, threw it aside, and picked up another.

"I am thankful for many things," she was thinking, "and most of all I am thankful that I am pretty. I suppose it's better to be good like Judy Hatch, but I'd rather be pretty."

She was at the age when the forces of character still lie dormant, and an accident may determine the direction of their future development. It is the age when it is possible for fortune to make a dare-devil of a philosopher, a sceptic of a worshipper, a cynic of a sentimentalist.

When she went down the flagged walk a little later to meet Abel by the blazed pine as she had promised, she was still smiling to herself and to the blue birds that sang joyously in the blossoming trees in the orchard. At the end of the walk her smile vanished for she came face to face with Jim Halloween, who carried a new-born lamb in his arms.

"Many happy returns of the day," he began with emotion. "I thought a present like this would be the most acceptable thing I could bring to you—an' ma agreed with me when I asked her advice."

"It's very good of you—and how darling it is! I'll take it back and make it comfortable before I start out."

Taking the lamb into her arms, she hid her face in its wool while they returned to the house.

"It ain't so young as it looks, an will begin to be peart enough befo' long," he remarked. "Something useful as well as ornamental, was what I had in mind to bring you. 'Thar's nothin' mo' suitable all round for the purpose than a lamb,' was what I said to ma. 'She can make a pet of it at first, an' then when it gets too big to pet, she can turn it into mutton.'"

"But I wouldn't—I'd never let it be killed—the little darling!"

"Now, that's foolishness, I reckon," he returned admiringly, "but thar's something downright takin' in foolishness as long as a woman is pretty. I don't mind it, an' I don't reckon ma would unless it turned to wastefulness. Is thar' any hope you've changed yo' mind since the last time I spoke about marriage?"

"No, I haven't changed, Mr. Halloween."

He sighed not passionately, but with a resigned and sentimental regret.

"Well, in that case, it's a pity I've wasted so much time wantin' you, I reckon," he rejoined. "It ain't sensible to want what you can't have, an I've always tried to be sensible, seein' I'm a farmer. If I hadn't set my fancy on you I'd have waited on Blossom Revercomb as likely as not."

They had reached the house, and she did not reply until she had entered the living-room and placed the lamb in a basket. Coming out again, she took up the thread of the conversation as she closed the door behind her.

"I wonder all of you don't turn your eyes on Blossom," she observed.

"Yes, she's handsome enough, but stiff-mouthed and set like all the rest of the Revercombs. I shouldn't like to marry a Revercomb, when it comes to that."

"Shouldn't you?" she asked and laughed merrily.

"They say down at Bottoms," he went on, "that she's gone moonstruck about Mr. Jonathan, an' young Adam Doolittle swears he saw them walkin' together on the other side of old orchard hill."

"I thought she was too sensible a girl for that."

"They're none of 'em too sensible. I'm the only man I ever saw who never had a woman moonstruck about him—an' it makes me feel kind of lonesome to hear the others talk. It's a painful experience, I reckon, but it must be a fruitful source of conversation with a man's wife, if he ever marries. Has it ever struck you," he inquired, "that the chief thing lackin' in marriage is conversation?"

"I don't know—I've never thought about it."

"Now, I have often an' over again, ma bein' sech a silent person to live with. It's the silence that stands between Blossom Revercomb an' me—an' her brother Abel is another glum one of the same sort, isn't he?"

"Do you think so? I hadn't noticed it."

"An' you seein' so much of him! Well, all folks don't observe things as sharply as I do—'twas a way I was born with. But I passed him at the fork as I came up, an' he was standin' just as solemn an' silent while Mr. Chamberlayne, over from Applegate, was askin' him questions."

"What questions? Did you hear them?"

"Oh, about his mother an' prospects of the grist-mill. The lawyer went on afterward to the big house to do business with Mr. Jonathan."

They had reached the point in the road where a bridle path from the mill ran into it; and in the centre of the field, which was woven in faint spring colours like an unfinished tapestry, Molly descried the figure of Abel moving rapidly toward her. Dismissing her companion, she ran forward with her warm blood suffusing her face.

"Abel," she said, "tell me that you are happy," and lifted her mouth to his kiss.

"Something in the spring makes me wild for you, Molly. I can't live without you another year, and hear the blue birds and see the green burst out so sudden. There is a terrible loneliness in the spring, darling."

"But I'm here, Abel."

"Yes, you're here, but you aren't near enough, for I'm never sure of you. That's the cause of it—shall I ever be sure of you even after we are married? You've got different blood in you, Molly—blood that doesn't run quiet,—and it makes me afraid. Do you know I've been to look at the pines this morning, and I am all one big ache to begin on the house."

"But you're happy—say you're happy."

"How can I be happy, when I'm wanting you with every drop of my blood and yet never certain that I shall have you. The devil has a lot to do with it, I reckon—for there are times when I am half blind with jealousy and doubt of you. Did you ever kiss a man before me, Molly?"

She laughed, moved by an instinct to torment him. "You wouldn't have asked me that three months ago, and you wouldn't have cared."

"It's different now. I've got a right to know."

"You'll never know anything because you have the 'right' to," she returned impatiently. "I hate the word—how silly you are, Abel."

"If you'd call me mad you'd come nearer to it, I reckon. It's the way of the Hawtreys—we've always gone neck and crop over the fences without giving a thought to the damage we've done by the way. My mother went like that at religion—she's gone over so hard to religion that she hasn't left a piece of her for common humanity. All the world is divided for her between religion and damnation. I believe she thinks the very eggs in the hen-house are predestined to be saved or damned. And with me it's the same, only it isn't religion, but you. It's all you to me, Molly, even the spring."

"You're so wholehearted, and I'm so lightminded. You ought to have loved a staid, sober woman. I was born passionate and changeful just as you were born passionate and steady."

"Don't, Molly, if you only knew how you hurt me when you talk like that. You've flown into my heart like a little blue bird into a cage, and there you'll beat and flutter, but you can't get out. Some day you'll rest there quiet, sweetheart."

"Don't call it a cage, and never, never try to hold me or I'll fly away."

"Yet you love me, Molly?"

She threw her arms about his neck, rising on tiptoe while she kissed his mouth. "I love you—and yet in my heart I don't really believe in love," she answered. "I shouldn't be surprised to wake up any morning and find that I had dreamed it."

"It makes me want to curse those that put your mind out of joint when you were little and innocent."

"I don't believe I was ever little and innocent—I was born out of bitterness."

"Then I'll cure you, darling. I'll love you so hard that you'll forget all the terrible things you knew as a child."

She shook her head, gaily and yet with a touch of scorn for his assurance. "You may try with all your strength, but when a sapling has been bent crooked you can't pull it straight."

"But you aren't crooked, Molly," he answered, kissing her throat above her open blouse.

She glowed at his kiss, and for one instant, it seemed to them that their spirits touched as closely as their bodies, while the longing and the rapture of spring drew them together.

"You're mine now, Molly—I've got you close," he said as he held her.

At his words the rosy waves upon which they had floated broke suddenly on the earth, and turning slowly they walked hand in hand out of the field into the turnpike. A strange shyness had fallen over them, for when Molly tried to meet his eyes, she found that her lashes trembled and fell;—yet this shyness was as delicious as the ecstasy from which it had come.

But Nature seldom suffers such high moments to pass before they have been paid for in physical values. As the lovers passed into the turnpike, there came the sound of a horse at a trot, and a minute later Jonathan Gay rode toward them, leaning slightly over the neck of his bay. Seeing them, he lifted his hat and brought down his horse to a walk, as if prompted by a sudden desire to look closer in Molly's face. Her rapture evidently became her, for after his first casual glance, he turned again quickly and smiled into her eyes. Her look met his with the frankness of a child's and taken unawares—pleased, too, that he should so openly admire her—she smiled back again with the glow of her secret happiness enriching her beauty.

In a moment Gay had passed on, and turning to Abel, she saw that a frown darkened his features.

"He had no right to look at you like that, and you oughtn't to have smiled back, Molly," he said sternly.

Her nature leaped instantly to arms. "I suppose I've a right to my smiles," she retorted defiantly.

"No you haven't—not now. An engaged woman ought to be proper and sober—anybody will tell you so—ask Mr. Mullen. A girl may flirt a little and nobody thinks any harm of it, but it's different afterwards, and you know it."

"I know nothing of the kind, and I refuse to be preached to. I might as well marry Mr. Mullen."

The taunt, though it was uttered half in jest, appeared to torment him beyond endurance.

"How can you talk to me like this, after what you said five minutes ago?" he demanded.

His tone approached, unfortunately, the ministerial, and as he spoke, her anger flamed over her as hotly as her happiness had done a few minutes earlier.

"That was five minutes ago," she retorted with passion.

Stopping in the road, he caught her arms and held them to her sides, while the thunder cloud blackened his forehead. Two playthings of Nature, swept alternately by the calm and the storm of elemental forces, they faced each other in the midst of mating birds and insects that were as free as they.

"Do you mean that you've changed, and in five minutes?" he asked.

"I've always told you I could change in three," she retorted.

"I don't believe it—you are behaving foolishly."

"And you are wise, I suppose—preaching and prating to me as if you stood in the pulpit. When you were begging me so humbly for a kind word, I might have known that as soon as you got the kind word, you'd begin to want to manage me body and soul—that's a man all over."

"I merely said that an engaged woman ought not to smile too free at other men—and that you ought not to even more than others, because there is something so inviting about you. Mr. Mullen would say the same thing from the pulpit—and what one man can say in the pulpit, I reckon, another may repeat in the road."

"No, he mayn't—not if he wants to marry me."

"If I promise not to say a word more about it, will you get over your temper?"

"If you keep your promise, but how am I to know that you won't burst out again the next time I look at a man?"

"Only try to look at them a little differently, Molly, not quite so wide-eyed and red-lipped—but primmer and with lowered lashes, just a bit contemptuous, as if your were thinking 'you might as well be a stick or a stone for all the thought I am giving you.'" The mental picture appeared to afford him satisfaction, for he resumed after a moment. "I believe if you'd practise it a while before the glass you could do it—you are so clever."

"Why on earth should I make myself ugly just to please you?"

"It wouldn't be making yourself ugly—I can't endure an ugly woman. All I want you to be is sober."

"Then what made you fall in love with me? It certainly was not for soberness."

He shook his head hopelessly, puzzled for the first time by the too obvious contradiction between the ideal and the actual—between the phantom of a man's imagination and the woman who enthralls his heart.

"To save my life I couldn't tell you why I did," he replied. "It does seem, a bit foolish to fall in love with a woman as she is and then try to make her over into something different."

"Judy Hatch was the person God intended for you, I'm sure of it."

"Well, I'm not, and if I were I'd go ahead and defeat his intentions as I'm doubtless doing this minute. Let's make up now, so you'd as well stop talking silliness."

"It's you that talks silliness, not I—as if I were going through life lowering my lashes and looking contemptuous! But you're your mother all over again. I've heard her say a dozen times that a girl who is born homely ought to get down on her knees and thank the Lord for protecting her from temptation."

"You never heard me say it, did you?"

"No, but I shall yet if I live long enough—and all because of your ridiculous jealousy."

The humour of this struck him, and he remarked rather grimly:

"Good God, Molly, what a vixen you are!" Then he broke into a laugh, and catching her to him, stopped her mouth with kisses.

"Well, we're in it," he said, "and we can't get out, so there's no use fighting about it."



CHAPTER XVII

THE SHADE OF MR. JONATHAN

Old Reuben, seated in his chair on the porch, watched Molly come up the flagged walk over the bright green edgings of moss. Her eyes, which were like wells of happiness, smiled at him beneath the blossoming apple boughs. Already she had forgotten the quarrel and remembered only the bliss of the reconciliation.

"I've had visitors while you were out, honey," said the old man as she bent to kiss him. "Mr. Chamberlayne and Mr. Jonathan came up and sat a bit with me."

"Was it on business, grandfather?"

"'Twas on yo' business, Molly, an' it eased my mind considerable about what's to become of you when I'm dead an' gone. It seems old Mr. Jonathan arranged it all befo' he died, an' they've only been waitin' till you came of age to let you into the secret. He left enough money in the lawyer's hands to make you a rich woman if you follow his wishes."

"Did they tell you his wishes?" she asked, turning from Reuben to Spot as the blind dog fawned toward her.

"He wants you to live with Miss Kesiah and Mr. Jonathan when I'm taken away from you, honey, an' you're to lose all but a few hundred if you ever marry and leave 'em. Old Mr. Jonathan had sharp eyes, an' he saw I had begun to fail fast befo' he died. It's an amazin' thing to think that even after all the morality is wrung out of human natur thar'll still be a few drops of goodness left sometimes at the bottom of it."

"And if I don't do as he wished? What will come of it, then, grandfather?"

"Then the bulk goes to help some po' heathens over yonder in China to the Gospel. He was a strange man, was old Mr. Jonathan. Thar warn't never any seein' through him, livin' or dead."

"Why did he ever come here in the beginning? He wasn't one of our people."

"The wind blew him this way, pretty, an' he was never one to keep goin' against the wind. When the last Jordan died childless an' the place was put up to be sold, Mr. Jonathan read about it somewhar, an' it looked to him as if all he had to do was to come down here an' bury himself alive to git rid of temptation. But the only way to win against temptation is to stand square an' grapple with it in the spot whar it finds you, an' he came to know this, po' sinner, befo' he was done with it."

"He was a good soldier, wasn't he?" asked Molly.

"So good a soldier that he could fight as well on one side as on t'other, an' 'twas only an accident that sent him into the army with me instead of against me. I remember his telling me once when I met him after a battle that 'twas the smell of blood, not the cause, that made him a fighter. Thar's many a man like that on both sides in every war, I reckon."

"I wonder how you can be so patient when you think of him!" she said passionately as he stopped.

"You'll understand better when you're past seventy," he answered gently. "Thar's a softness like a sort of green grass that springs up an' covers you when you begin to git old an' worn out. I've got it an' Spot's got it—you can tell by the way he won't trouble to git mad with the chickens that come peckin' around him. As soon as it's safely spread over you, you begin to see that the last thing to jedge anybody by is what you've known of the outside of 'em."

"I can't feel about him as you do, but I don't mind takin' his money as long as you share it," returned the girl in a softer voice.

"It's a pile of money such as you've never heard of, Molly. Mr. Chamberlayne says thar'll be an income of goin' on ten thousand dollars a year by the time you're a little older."

"Ten thousand dollars a year just for you an' me!" she exclaimed, startled.

"Thar warn't so much when 'twas left, but it's been doublin' on itself all the while you were waitin'."

"We could go everywhere an' see everything, grandfather."

"It ain't for me, pretty. Mr. Jonathan knew you wouldn't come into it till I was well on my way to the end of things."

Kneeling at his side, she caught his hands and clung to him sobbing.

"Don't talk of dying! I can't bear to think of your leaving me!"

His trembling and knotted hands gathered her to him. "The young an' the old see two different sides of death, darlin'. When you're young an' full of spirit, it looks powerful dark an' lonely to yo' eyes, but when you're gittin' along an' yo' bones ain't quite so steady as they once were, an' thar seem to be mo' faces you're acquainted with on the other side than on this one—then what you've been so terrible afeared of don't look much harder to you than settlin' down to a comfortable rest. I've liked life well enough, but I reckon I'll like death even better as soon as I've gotten used to the feel of it. The Lord always appears a heap nearer to the dead, somehow, than He does to the livin', and I shouldn't be amazed to find it less lonely than life after I'm once safely settled."

"You've seen so many die that you've grown used to it," said Molly through her tears.

For a moment he gazed wistfully at the apple boughs, while his face darkened, as if he were watching a procession of shadows. In his seventy years he had gained a spiritual insight which penetrated the visible body of things in search of the truth beneath the ever-changing appearance. There are a few blameless yet suffering beings on whom nature has conferred a simple wisdom of the heart which contains a profounder understanding of life than the wisdom of the mind can grasp—and Reuben was one of these. Sorrow had sweetened in his soul until it had turned at last into sympathy.

"I've seen 'em come an' go like the flakes of light out yonder in the orchard," he answered almost in a whisper. "Young an' old, glad an' sorry, I've seen 'em go—an' never one among 'em but showed in thar face when 'twas over that 'twas the best thing had ever happened. It's hard for me now to separate the livin' from the dead, unless it be that the dead are gittin' closer all the time an' the livin' further away."

"And you're never afraid, grandfather?"

"Well, when it comes to that, honey, I reckon if I can trust the Lord in the light, I can trust him in the darkness. I ain't as good a Christian as my ma was—she could beat Sarah Revercomb when it came to sayin' the Bible backwards—but I've yet to see the spot of natur, either human or clay, whar we couldn't find the Lord at work if we was to dig deep enough."

He stopped at sight of a small figure running under the apple trees, and a minute later Patsey, the Gay's maid, reached the flagged walk and panted out a request that Miss Molly should come to the house for a birthday present which awaited her there.

"Won't you go with me, grandfather?" asked the girl, turning to Reuben.

"I ain't at home thar, Molly," answered the old man. "It's well enough to preach equality an' what not when you're walking on the opposite side of the road, as Abel would say, but it don't ring true while yo' feet are slippin' an' slidin' over a parlour floor."

"Then I shan't go without you. Where you aren't welcome is a place I can stay away from."

"Thar, thar, honey, don't be runnin' arter Abel's notions till you find out whar they're leadin' you. Things are better as they are or the Lord wouldn't have made 'em so, an' He ain't goin' to step a bit faster or slower on o' count of our ragin'. Some folks were meant to be on top an' some at bottom, for t'otherwise God Almighty wouldn't have put 'em thar. Abel is like Sarah, only his generation is different."

"Do you really think he's like his mother?" asked Molly a little wistfully.

"As haw is like haw. They're both bent on doin' the Lord's job over again an' doin' it better, an' thar manner of goin' to work would be to melt up human natur an' pour it all into the same pattern. It ain't never entered Sarah's head that you can't fit the same religion to every man any mo' than you can the same pair of breeches. The big man takes the big breeches an' the little man takes the small ones, an' it's jest the same with religion. It may be cut after one pattern, but it's mighty apt to get its shape from the wearer inside. Why, thar ain't any text so peaceable that it ain't drawn blood from somebody."

"All the same I shan't go a step without you," persisted the girl.

"Then find my stick an' straighten my collar. Or had I better put on my Sunday black?"

"No, I like you as you are—only let me smooth your hair a little. Run ahead, Patsey, and say we're both coming."

Slipping her arm in his, she led him through the orchard, where the bluebirds were fluting blissfully in the apple-trees. To the heart of each spring was calling—but to Molly it meant promise and to Reuben remembrance. Though the bluebirds sang only one song, they brought to the old man and to the girl a different music.

"I've sometimes thought Mr. Mullen better suited to you than Abel, Molly," said Reuben presently, uttering an idea that had come to him more than once. "If you'd been inclined to fancy him, I don't believe either Mrs. Gay or Miss Kesiah could have found any fault with him."

"But you know I couldn't care for him, grandfather," protested Molly impatiently. "He is like one of Mrs. Bottom's air plants that grow without any roots."

"Well, he's young yet an' his soul struts a trifle, but wait till he's turned fifty an' he'll begin to be as good a Christian as he is a parson. It's a good mould, but he congealed a bit too stiff when he was poured into it."

They reached the grape arbour as he finished, and a minute later Abednego lead them into the library, where Kesiah placed Reuben in a comfortable chair and hastened to bring him a glass of wine from the sideboard. At Molly's entrance, Gay and Mr. Chamberlayne came forward to shake hands with her, while Mrs. Gay looked up from her invalid's couch and murmured her name in a gentle, reproachful voice. The pale blue circles around the little lady's eyes and faintly smiling mouth were the only signs of the blighting experience through which she had passed. As she turned her angelic gaze on old Jonathan's daughter there was not an instant's doubt in the minds of those about her that she would accept the blow with the suffering sweetness that enhanced her beauty.

"We wanted to give you a little reminder of us on your birthday, Molly," she said, taking up an amethyst cross on a slender chain from the table beside her, "and Jonathan thought you would like a trinket to wear with your white dresses."

"I was right, wasn't I, cousin?" asked Gay, with his genial smile.

Mrs. Gay flushed slightly at the word, while Reuben cast a grateful glance at him over the untasted glass of wine in his hand.

Without drawing a step nearer, Molly stood there in the centre of the room, nervously twisting her handkerchief in and out of her fingers. She was physically cramped by her surroundings, and the reproachful gentleness in Mrs. Gay's face embarrassed her only less than did the intimate pleasantry of Jonathan's tone. Every detail of the library—the richness and heaviness of the furniture, the insipid fixed smiles in the family portrait, the costly fragility of the china ornaments—all these seemed to unite in some occult power which overthrew her self-possession and paralyzed her emotions.

Pitying her shyness, Gay took the chain from his mother's hand, and, slipping it around Molly's neck, fastened it under the bunch of curls at the back. Then he patted her encouragingly on the shoulder, while he spoke directly to Reuben.

"It looks well on her don't you think, Mr. Merryweather," he inquired.

"Yes, it's a pretty gift an' she's much obliged to all of you," replied Reuben, with the natural dignity which never deserted him. "She's a good girl, Molly is," he added simply. "For all her quick words an' ways thar ain't a better girl livin'."

"We are very sure of that," said Mr. Chamberlayne, speaking in Gay's place. "She is a kinswoman any of us may be proud of owning." And going a step nearer to her, he began explaining her father's wishes in the shortest words at his command.

They were all kind—all honestly anxious to do their duty in aiding the atonement of old Jonathan. Their faces, their voices, their gestures, revealed an almost painful effort to make her appear at ease. Yet in spite of their irreproachable intentions, each one of them was perfectly aware that the visit was very far from being a success. They admired her sincerely, but with the exception of Gay, who was bothered by few moral prejudices, they were one and all nervously constrained in manner. To Mr. Chamberlayne she represented merely an attractive object of charity; to Kesiah she appeared as an encroaching member of the inferior order; to Mrs. Gay she embodied the tragic disillusionment of her life. In time they would either forget these first impressions or grow accustomed to them; but while she stood there, awkward and blushing, in the middle of the library, where old Jonathan had worked out his repentance, even the lawyer found his legal eloquence tripping confusedly on his tongue, and turned at last in sheer desperation to stare with a sensation of relief at the frowning countenance of Kesiah. When, after a hesitating word of thanks, the girl held out her hand to Reuben, and they went away arm in arm, as they had come, a helpless glance passed from Jonathan to Mrs. Gay and from Mrs. Gay into vacancy.

"Like most eccentric bequests made in moments of great moral purpose, it was, of course, a mistake," said the lawyer. "Had Jonathan known the character of the miller, he would certainly have had no objection to Molly's choice—if she has, indeed, a serious fancy for the young man, which I doubt. But in his day, we must remember, the Revercombs had given little promise of either intelligence or industry except in the mother. Granting this," he added thoughtfully, "it might be possible to have the conditions set aside, but not without laying bare a scandal which would cause great pain to sensitive natures—-"

He glanced sympathetically at Mrs. Gay, who responded almost unconsciously to the emotional suggestion of his ideal of her.

"Oh, never that! I could not bear that!" she exclaimed.

"The whole trouble comes of the insane way people arrange the future," remarked Jonathan with irritation. "He actually believed, I dare say, that he was assuring the girl's happiness by that ridiculous document. But for mother I'd fight the thing in the courts and then give Molly her share outright and let her marry the miller."

The lawyer shook his head slowly, with his eyes on Mrs. Gay. "Before all else we must consider your mother," he answered.

For the first time Kesiah spoke. "I am quite willing to take the girl when Reuben dies," she said, "but why in the world did he put in that foolish clause about her living with Jonathan and myself?"

Without looking at her Mr. Chamberlayne answered almost sharply. "The whole truth of the matter is that there was a still more absurd idea in his mind, dear lady," he replied. "I may as well let you know it now since I combated it uselessly in my last interview with him. At the bottom of his heart Jonathan remained incorrigibly romantic until his death, and he clung desperately to the hope that if Molly received the education he intended her to have, her beauty and her charm, which seemed to him very remarkable, might win his nephew's affections, if she were thrown in his way. That in short, is the secret meaning of this extraordinary document."

The uncomfortable silence was broken by a laugh as Gay rose to his feet. "Well, of all the ridiculous ideas!" he exclaimed in the sincerity of his amusement.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE SHADE OF REUBEN

Arm in arm Reuben and Molly walked slowly home through the orchard. Neither spoke until the old man called to Spot at his doorstep, and then Molly noticed that his breath came with a whistling sound that was unlike his natural voice.

"Are you tired, grandfather? What is the matter?"

"It's my chest, daughter. Let me sit down a while an' it will pass. Who is that yonder on the bench?"

"Old Mr. Doolittle. Wait here a minute before you speak to him."

It was a perfect spring afternoon, and the air was filled with vague, roving scents, as if the earth exhaled the sweetness of hidden flowers. In the apple orchard the young grass was powdered with gold, and the long grey shadows of the trees barred the ground like the sketchy outlines in a impressionist painting.

On a bench at one end of the porch old Adam was sitting, and at sight of them, he rose, and stood waiting with his pipe in his hand.

"As 'twas sech a fine day an' thar warn't any work on hand for a man of my years, I thought I'd walk over an' pay my respects to you," he said. "I've heard that 'twas yo' granddaughter's birthday an' that she's like to change her name befo' it's time for another."

"Well, I'm glad to see you, old Adam," replied Reuben, sinking into a chair while he invited his visitor to another. "I've gone kind of faint, honey," he added, "an' I reckon we'd both like a sip of blackberry wine if you've got it handy. Miss Kesiah gave me something to drink, but my throat was so stiff I couldn't swallow it."

The blackberry wine was kept in a large stone crock in the cellar, and while she filled the glasses, Molly heard the voice of old Adam droning on above the chirping of the birds in the orchard.

"I've been settin' here steddyin' them weeds out thar over-runnin' everything," he was saying, "an' it does appear to a considerin' body that the Lord might have made 'em good grass an' grain with precious little trouble to Himself an' a mortal lot of satisfaction to the po' farmers."

"He knows best. He knows best," responded Reuben.

"Well, I used to think that way befo' I'd looked into the matter," rejoined the other, "but the deeper I get, the less reason I see to be sartain sure. 'Tis the fashion for parsons, an' for some people outside of the pulpit, to jump to conclusions, an' the one they've jumped the farthest to get at, is that things are all as they ought to be. If you ain't possessed of the gift of logic it takes with you, but if you are possessed of it, it don't. Now, I tell you that if a farmer was to try to run his farm on the wasteful scale on which this world is conducted, thar wouldn't be one among us as would trust him with next season's crops. 'Tis sech a terrible waste that it makes a frugal mind sick to see it."

"Let's be thankful that it isn't any worse. He might have made it so," replied Reuben, shocked by his neighbour's irreverence, yet too modest to dispute it with authority.

"Now, if that's logic I don't know what logic is, though I was born with the gift of it," retorted old Adam. "When twenty seeds rot in the ground an' one happens up, thar're some folks as would praise the Lord for the one and say nothin' about the twenty. These same folks are forever drawin' picturs of wild things hoppin' an' skippin' in the woods, as if they ever had time to hop an' skip when they're obleeged to keep one eye on the fox an' the hawk an' t'other on the gun of the hunter. Yet to hear Mr. Mullen talk in the pulpit, you'd think that natur was all hoppin' an' skippin'."

"You're a wicked unbeliever," said Reuben, mildly sorrowful, "an' you ought to go home and pray over your thankless doubts."

"I'm as I was made," rejoined the other. "I didn't ax to be born an' I've had to work powerful hard for my keep." Taking the glass of blackberry wine from Molly's hand, he smacked his lips over it with lingering enjoyment.

"Do you feel better, grandfather?" inquired the girl, in the pause.

"The wine does me good, honey, but thar's a queer gone feelin' inside of me. I'm twenty years younger than you, old Adam, but you've got mo' youth left in you than I have."

"'Tis my powerful belief in the Lord," chuckled the elder, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and placing the glass on the end of the bench. "No, no, Reuben, when it comes to that I ain't any quarrel with folks for lookin' al'ays at the pleasant side, but what staggers me is why they should take it as a merit to themselves when 'tis nothin' less than a weakness of natur. A man might jest as well pride himself that he can't see out of but one eye or hear out of but one ear as that he can't see nothin' but good when evil is so mixed up into it. Thar ain't all of us born with the gift of logic, but even when we ain't we might set silent an' listen to them that is."

A south wind, rising beyond the river, blew over the orchard, and the barred shadows swung back and forth on the grass.

"'Tis the eye of sense we see with," remarked Reuben quietly.

"Eh, an' 'tis the eye of sense you're weak in," responded old Adam. "I knew a blind man once that had a pictur of the world in his mind jest as smooth an' pretty as the views you see on the backs of calendars—with all the stink-weeds an' the barren places left out of it—an' he used to talk to us seein' ones for all the earth as if he were better acquainted with natur than we were."

"I ain't larned an' I never pretended to be," said Reuben, piously, "but the Lord has used me well in His time an' I'm thankful to Him."

"Now that's monstrous odd," commented the ancient cynic, "for lookin' at it from the outside, I'd say He'd used you about as bad as is His habit in general."

He rose from the bench, and dusted the seat of his blue overalls, while he gazed sentimentally over the blossoming orchard. "'Tis the seventeenth of April, so we may git ahead with plantin'," he remarked. "Ah, well, it's a fine early spring an' puts me in mind of seventy years ago when I was courtin'. Thar ain't many men, I reckon, that can enjoy lookin' back on a courtin' seventy years after it is over. 'Tis surprisin' how some things sweeten with age, an' memory is one of 'em."

Reuben merely nodded after him as he went, for he had grown too tired to answer. A curious stillness—half happiness, half indifference—was stealing over him, and he watched as in a dream, the blue figure of old Adam hobble over the sun-flecked path through the orchard. A few minutes later Molly flitted after the elder, and Reuben's eyes followed her with the cheerful look with which he had faced seventy years of life. On a rush mat in the sunshine the old hound flicked his long black ear at a fly of which he was dreaming, and from a bower of ivy in the eaves there came the twitter of sparrows. Beyond the orchard, the wind, blowing from the marshes, chased the thin, sketchy shadows over the lawn at Jordan's Journey.

While he sat there Reuben began to think, and as always, his thoughts were humble and without self-consciousness. As he looked under the gnarled boughs of the orchard, he seemed to see his whole life stretching before him—seventy years—all just the same except that with each he appeared a little older, a little humbler, a little less expectant that some miracle might happen and change the future. At the end of that long vista, he saw himself young and strong, and filled with a great hope for something—he hardly knew what—that would make things different. He had gone on, still hoping, year by year, and now at the end, he was an old, bent, crippled man, and the miracle had never happened. Nothing had ever made things different, and the great hope had died in him at last as the twenty seeds of which old Adam had spoken had died in the earth. He remembered all the things he had wanted that he had never had—all the other things he had not wanted that had made up his life. Never had a hope of his been fulfilled, never had an event fallen out as he had planned it, never had a prayer brought him the blessing for which he had prayed. Nothing in all his seventy years had been just what he had wanted—not just what he would have chosen if the choice had been granted him—yet the sight of the birds in the apple trees stirred something in his heart to-day that was less an individual note of rejoicing than a share in the undivided movement of life which was pulsing around him. Nothing that had ever happened to him as Reuben Merryweather would he care to live over; but he was glad at the end that he had been a part of the spring and had not missed seeing the little green leaves break out in the orchard.

And then while he sat there, half dreaming and half awake, the stillness grew suddenly full of the singing of blue birds. Spring blossomed radiantly beneath his eyes, and the faint green and gold of the meadows blazed forth in a pageant of colour.

"I'm glad I didn't miss it," he thought. "That's the most that can be said, I reckon—I'm glad I didn't miss it."

The old hound, dreaming of flies, flapped his long ears in the sunshine, and a robin, hopping warily toward a plate of seed-cakes on the arm of Reuben's chair, winged back for a minute before he alighted suspiciously on the railing. Then, being an old and a wise bird, he advanced again, holding his head slightly sideways and regarding the sleeping man with a pair of bright, inquisitive eyes. Reassured at last by the silence, he uttered a soft, throaty note, and flew straight to the arm of the chair in which Reuben was sitting. With his glance roving from the quiet man to the quiet dog, he made a few tentative flutters toward the plate of cake. Then, gathering courage from the adventure, he hopped deliberately into the centre of the plate and began pecking greedily at the scattered crumbs.



CHAPTER XIX

TREATS OF CONTRADICTIONS

As Molly passed down the Haunt's Walk, it seemed to her, also, that the spring had suddenly blossomed. A moment before she had not known that the path she trod was changing to emerald, that the meadows were spangled with wild-flowers, that the old oaks on the lawn were blushing in rose and silver. For weeks these miracles had happened around her, and she had not noticed. As oblivious to them as old Adam Doolittle was, she had remembered only that her birthday came on the seventeenth of April, when, except for some luckless mishap, the promise of the spring was assured.

A red-winged blackbird darted like a flame across the path in front of her, and following it into the open, she found Kesiah gathering wild azalea on the edge of the thicket.

At the girl's approach, the elder woman rose from her stooping posture, and came forward, wearing a frown, which, after the first minute, Molly saw was directed at the sunlight, not at herself. Kesiah's long, sallow face under the hard little curls of her false front, had never appeared more grotesque than it did in the midst of the delicate spring landscape. Every fragile blossom, every young leaf, every blade of grass, flung an insult at her as she stood there frowning fiercely at the sunbeams. Yet only five minutes before she had suffered a sharp recrudescence of soul—of that longing for happiness which is a part of the resurrection of the spring, and which may survive not only the knowledge of its own fruitlessness, but a belief in the existence of the very happiness for which it longs. All the unlived romance in her heart had come to life with the young green around her. Middle-age had not deadened, it had merely dulled her. For the pang of desire is not, after all, the divine prerogative of youth, nor has it even a conscious relation to the possibility of fulfilment. Her soul looked out of her eyes while she gazed over the azalea in her hand—yet, in spite of the songs of the poets, the soul in her eyes did not make them beautiful.

"I came down with Jonathan, Molly," she said. "You will doubtless find him at the brook." For an instant she hesitated in confusion and then added hurriedly, "We were speaking about you."

"Were you?" asked Molly a little awkwardly, for Kesiah always embarrassed her.

"We were both saying how much we admired your devotion to your grandfather. One rarely finds such attachment in the young to the old."

"I have always loved him better than anybody except mother."

"I am sure you have, and it speaks very well for both of you. We are all much interested in you, Molly."

"It's kind of you to think about me," answered Molly, and her voice was constrained as it had been when she spoke in the library at Jordan's Journey.

"We feel a great concern for your future," said Kesiah. "Whatever we can do to help you, we shall do very gladly. I always felt a peculiar pity and sympathy for your mother." Her voice choked, for it was, perhaps, as spontaneous an expression of her emotions as she had ever permitted herself.

"Thank you, ma'am," replied Molly simply, and the title of respect to which Reuben had trained her dropped unconsciously from her lips. She honestly liked Kesiah, though, in common with the rest of her little world, she had fallen into the habit of regarding her as a person whom it was hardly worth one's while to consider. Mrs. Gay had so completely effaced her sister that the rough edges of Kesiah's character were hardly visible beneath the little lady's enveloping charm.

"It is natural that you should have felt bitterly toward your father," began the older woman again in a trembling voice, "but I hope you realize that the thought of his wrong to you and your mother saddened his last hours."

To her surprise Molly received the remark almost passionately.

"How could that give me back my mother's ruined life?" she demanded.

"I know, dear, but the fact remains that he was your father—-"

"Oh, I don't care in the least about the fact," retorted Molly, with her pretty rustic attempt at a shrug, which implied, in this case, that the government of nature, like that of society, rested solely on the consent of the governed. What was clear to Kesiah was that this rebellion against the injustice of the universe, as well as against the expiation of Mr. Jonathan, was the outcome of a strong, though undisciplined, moral passion within her. In her way, Molly was as stern a moralist as Sarah Revercomb, but she derived her convictions from no academic system of ethics. Kesiah had heard of her as a coquette; now she realized that beneath the coqueteries there was a will of iron.

"You must come to us, some day, dear, and let us do what we can to make you happy," she said. "It would be a pity for all that money to go to the conversion of the Chinese, who are doubtless quite happy as they are."

"I wonder why he chose the Chinese?" replied the girl. "They seem so far away, and there's poor little Mrs. Meadows at Piping Tree who is starving for bread."

"He was always like that—and so is my sister Angela—the thing that wasn't in sight was the thing he agonized over." She did not confess that she had detected a similar weakness in herself, and that, seen the world over, it is the indubitable mark of the sentimentalist.

Analysis of Mr. Jonathan's character, however, failed to interest his daughter. She smiled sweetly, but indifferently, and made a movement to pass on into the meadow. Then, looking into Kesiah's face, she said in a warmer voice: "If ever you want my help about your store room, Miss Kesiah, just send for me. When you're ready to change the brine on your pickles, I'll come down and do it."

"Thank you, Molly," answered the other; "you're a nice light hand for such things."

In some almost imperceptible manner she felt that the girl had rebuffed her. The conversation had been pleasant enough, yet Kesiah had meant to show in it that she considered Molly's position changed since the evening before; and it was this very suggestion that the girl had tossed lightly aside—tossed without rudeness or malice, but with a firmness, a finality, which appeared to settle the question forever. The acknowledged daughter of Mr. Jonathan Gay was determined that she should continue to be known merely as the granddaughter of his overseer. Kesiah's overtures, had been—well, not exactly repulsed, but certainly ignored; her advice had melted to thin air as soon as it was spoken. As Molly flitted from her over the young weeds in the meadow, the older woman stood looking after her with a heaviness, like the weight of unshed tears, in her eyes. Not the girl's future, but her own, appeared to her barren of interest, robbed even of hope. The spirit that combats, she saw, had never been hers—nor had the courage that prevails. For this reason fate had been hard to her—because she had never yielded to pressure—because she had stepped by habit rather than choice into the vacant place. She was a good woman—her heart assured her of this—she had done her duty no matter what it cost her—and she had possessed, moreover, a fund of common sense which had aided her not a little in doing it. It was this common sense that told her now that facts were, after all, more important than dreams—that the putting up of pickles was a more useful work in the world than the regretting of possibilities—that the sordid realities were not less closely woven into the structure of existence than were the romantic illusions. She told herself these things, yet in spite of her words she saw her future stretching away, like her past, amid a multitude of small duties for which she had neither inclination nor talent. One thing after another, all just alike, day after day, month after month, year after year. Nothing ahead of her, and, looking back, nothing behind her that she would care to stop and remember. "That's life," she said softly to herself and went on her way, while Molly, glancing back, beheld her only as a blot on the sunshine.

"Poor Miss Kesiah," the girl thought before she forgot her. "I wonder if she's ever really lived?"

Then the wonder fled from her mind, for, as a shadow fell over her path, she looked up, startled, into the eyes of Gay, who had burst suddenly out of the willows. His face was flushed and he appeared a trifle annoyed. As he stopped before her, he cut sharply at the weeds with a small whip he carried.

"Don't, please," she said; "I hate to see people cut off the heads of innocent things."

"It is rather beastly," her returned, his face clearing. "Did you come out to find me, cousin?"

"Why should I, Mr. Jonathan?"

"You don't soften the blow—but why 'Mr. Jonathan'?"

"I thought it was your name."

"It's not my name to you—I say, Molly, do you mind my telling you that you're a brick?"

"Oh, no, not if you feel like it."

"I do feel like it tremendously."

"Then I don't mind in the least," and to prove it she smiled radiantly into his face. Her smile was the one really beautiful thing about Molly, but as far as her immediate purpose went it served her as successfully as a host.

"By George, I like your devotion to the old chap!" he exclaimed. "I hope a girl will stick by me as squarely when I am beginning to totter."

"Have you ever been as good to one?" she asked quite seriously, and wondered why he laughed.

"Well, I doubt if I ever have, but I'd like very much to begin."

"You're not a grandfather, Mr. Jonathan."

"No, I'm not a grandfather—but, when I come to think of it, I'm a cousin."

She accepted this with composure. "Are you?" she inquired indifferently after a minute.

While she spoke he asked himself if she were really dull, or if she had already learned to fence with her exrustic weapons? Her face was brimming with expression, but, as he reminded himself, one never could tell.

"I haven't any cousin but you, Molly. Don't you think you can agree to take me?"

She shook her head, and he saw, or imagined he saw, the shadow of her indignant surprise darken her features.

"I've never thought of you as my cousin," she answered.

"But I am, Molly."

"I don't think of you so," she retorted. Again, as in the case of Kesiah's advances, she was refusing to constitute a law by her acknowledgment.

"Don't you think if you tried very hard you might begin to?"

"Why should I try?"

"Well, suppose we say just because I want you to."

"That wouldn't help me. I can't feel that it would make any difference."

"What I want, you mean?"

"Yes, what you want."

"Aren't you a shade more tolerant of my existence than you were at first?"

"I suppose so, but I've never thought about it—any more than I've thought of this ten thousand a year. It's all outside of my life, but grandfather's in it."

"Don't you ever feel that you'd like to get outside of it yourself? The world's a big place."

For the first time she appeared attentive to his words.

"I've often wondered what it was like—especially the cities—New York, Paris, London. Paris is the best, isn't it?"

"Yes, Paris is the best to me. Have you ever thought that you'd like to wear pretty gowns and drive through a green park in the spring—filled with other carriages in which are wonderful women?"

"But I'd feel so miserable and countrified," she answered. "Are they any happier than I am—those wonderful women?"

"Perhaps not so happy—there's a green-eyed dragon gnawing at the hearts of most of them, and you, my nut-brown beauty, have never felt his fangs."

"I'd like to see them," she said after a minute, and moved slowly onward.

"Some day you may. Look here, Molly," he burst out impulsively, "I'm not going to be sentimental about you. I haven't the least idea of making love to you—I've had enough of that sort of rot, God knows—but I do like you tremendously, and I want to stand to you as a big brother. I never had a sister, you know," he added.

Something earnest and tender in his voice touched her generosity, which overflowed so easily.

"And I never had a brother," she rejoined.

"Then, that's where I'll come in, little cousin," he answered gently, and drawing her to him, kissed her cheek with a caress which surprised him by its unlikeness to the ordinary manifestations of love.

His hand was still on her shoulder, when he felt her start back from his grasp, and, turning quickly in the direction of her glance, he saw the miller looking at them from the thicket on the opposite side of the brook. The anger in Abel's face had distorted his handsome features until they appeared swollen as if from drink, and for a single instant Gay imagined that it was indeed whisky and not passion that had wrought so brutal a change in him.

"So you've made a fool of me, too, Molly?" he said when he had swung over the stream and stood facing her.

"You're all wrong, Revercomb," began Gay, and stopped the next instant, because Molly's hand had shot out to silence him.

"Will you be quiet?" she flung at him impatiently; and then fixing her eyes on Abel, she waited silently for him to finish his speech. That her lover's fiery temper had aroused her own, Gay realized as soon as he turned to her. Her face was pale, but her eyes blazed and never had he felt so strongly the tie of blood that united them as he did while she stood there waiting for Abel's accusations with a gesture which appeared to fling them back in disdain.

"I might have known 'twas all fool's play with you—I might have known you had flirted too much to settle down to an honest love," said Abel, breathing hard between his word as if each one were torn from him with a physical wrench at his heart. In losing his self-possession he had lost his judgment as well, and, grasping something of his love from the sincerity of his emotion, Gay made another ineffectual effort to present the situation in a fairer light.

"If you would only listen, my good fellow—if you would only let me explain things—-" he began.

"Will you be quiet?" said Molly a second time, and then facing him passionately she threw him a gesture of dismissal. "If you want to please me, you will go."

"And leave you alone with him?"

She laughed. "Do you think I'm afraid of an angry man, or that I've never seen one before?"

With that he obeyed her, turning from time to time on his way over the meadow to make sure that she did not need his support. In spite of the utter unreasonableness of the affair, in some unaccountable way his sympathies were on the side of the miller. The fellow was a boor, of course, but, by Jove! he was a magnificent boor. It had been long since Gay had seen such an outburst of primitive feeling—long since he had come so close to the good red earth on which we walk and of which we are made.

"You're out of your head, Abel," said Molly—Gay turned away from them—and the tone in which she spoke was hardly calculated to bring him back to the place he had deserted. "You will say things you'll regret, but I'll never forgive."

"I'm sick of your eternal forgiveness," he retorted. "I've been forgiven every time you got into a temper, and I suppose I'll be forgiven next every time you are kissed." The "rousing" which had threatened every Revercomb was upon him at last.

"Well, as a matter of fact it is time enough for you to forgive me when I ask you to," she returned.

"You needn't ask. It's too much this time, and I'll be damned before I will do it."

Bending over a grey skeleton of last year's golden-rod, she caressed it gently, without breaking its ghostly bloom. Years afterward, when she had forgotten every word he uttered, she could still see that dried spray of golden-rod growing against the April sky—she could still hear a bluebird that sang three short notes and stopped in the willows. In the quiet air their anger seemed to rush together as she had sometimes thought their love had rushed to a meeting.

"You have neither the right to forgive me nor to judge me," she said. "Do you think I care what a man imagines of me who believes a thing against me as easily as you do. If you went on your knees to me now I should never explain—and if I chose to kiss every man in the county," she concluded in an outburst of passion, "you have nothing to do with it!"

"Explain? How can a girl explain a man's kissing her, except by saying she let him do it?"

"I did let him do it," she gasped.

For an instant they gazed at each other in an anger more violent in its manifestation than their love had been. An observer, noticing them for the first time, would have concluded that they had hated each other for years, not that they had been lovers only a few minutes before. Nature, having wearied of her play, was destroying her playthings.

"I would marry no man on earth who wouldn't believe me in spite of that—and everything else," she said.

"Do you expect a man to believe you in spite of his eyes?"

"Eyes, ears—everything! Do you think I'd have turned on you like that before I had heard you?"

A sob, not of pity, but of rage, burst from her lips, and the sound sobered him more completely than her accusations had done. Her temper he could withstand, but that little childish sob, bitten back almost before it escaped, brought him again on his knees to her.

"I can't understand—oh, Molly, don't you see I am in torment?" he cried.

But the veil of softness was gone now, and the cruelty that is bound up in some inexplicable way in all violent emotion—even in the emotion of love—showed itself on the surface.

"Then stay there, for you've made it for yourself," she answered, and turned away from him. As his voice called her again, she broke into a run, flying before him over the green meadow until she reached the lawn of Jordan's Journey, and his pursuit ended. Then, hurrying through the orchard and up the flagged walk, she ascended the steps, and bent over Reuben in his chair.

"Grandfather, I am back. Are you asleep?"

The robin that had flown from the railing at her approach swung on the bough of an apple-tree and regarded her with attention.

"Grandfather," she said again, touching him, "oh, grandfather, wake up!"



CHAPTER XX

LIFE'S IRONIES

When he came down to breakfast next morning, Abel heard of Reuben's death from his mother.

"Well, you can't tell who's goin' to be the next," she concluded grimly, as she poured the coffee.

In spite of her austere manner and her philosophical platitude, Sarah was more moved in her heart than she had dared to confess. From the moment that she had heard of Reuben's death—when she had gone over with some of her mourning to offer Molly—she had ceased to think of him as an old man, and her mind had dwelt upon him as one who had been ruthlessly cut off in his prime—as he might have been had the end come some thirty or forty years before. Memory, that great miracle worker, had contrived to produce this illusion; and all Sarah's hard common sense could not prevent her feeling an indignant pity because Reuben's possibilities of happiness had been unfulfilled. Trouble after trouble and never anything to make up for them, and then to go this way while he was resting! "It's like that," she thought bitterly to herself, alluding to life. "It's like that!" And it seemed to her suddenly that the whole of existence was but a continual demonstration of the strong religious dogmas on which her house of faith had been reared. When you looked around you, she thought, with triumph, there wasn't any explanation of the seeming injustice except original sin. There was a strange comfort in this conviction, as though it represented the single reality to which she could cling amid the mutable deceptions of life. "Thar wouldn't be any sense in it if 'twarn't for that," she would sometimes say to herself, as one who draws strength from a secret source of refreshment.

In Abel the news of Reuben's death awoke a different emotion, and his first thought was of Molly. He longed to comfort her in his arms, and the memory of the quarrel of yesterday and even of the kiss that led to it seemed to increase rather than diminish this longing.

Rising from his untasted breakfast, he hurriedly swallowed a cup of coffee and took up his hat.

"I am going to see Molly, mother; would you like to send a message?"

Blossom, who was gazing out of the window with her eyes full of dreams, turned at his words.

"Give her my love, Abel," she said.

"Tell her he was a good man and had fewer sins to his account than most of us," added Sarah.

"Did you know, Abel, that old Mr. Jonathan left her ten thousand dollars a year as long as she lives with the Gays?" asked Blossom, coming over to where he stood.

He stared at her in amazement. "Where on earth did you hear that?" he asked.

A flush reddened her face.

"Somebody told me. I forget just who it was," she replied.

"When did it happen? How long have you known it?"

But she was on her guard now, wrapped in that soft, pale reticence which was the spiritual aspect of her beauty.

"It may have been only one of the darkies' stories. I didn't pay much attention to it," she answered, and busied herself about the geraniums in the window.

"Oh, you can't put any faith in the darkies' tales," rejoined Abel, and after leaving a message with his mother for a farmer with whom he had an appointment, he hastened out of the house and over the fields in the direction of Reuben Merryweather's cottage. Here, where he had expected to find Molly, Kesiah met him, with some long black things over her arm, and a frown of anxious sympathy on her face.

"The child is broken-hearted," she said with dignity, for a funeral was one of the few occasions upon which she felt that she appeared to advantage. "I don't think she can see you—but I'll go in and ask, if you wish it."

She went in, returning a minute later, with the black things still over her arm, and a deeper frown on her forehead.

"No—I'm sorry, but she doesn't wish to see any one. You know, the old hound died the same night, and that has added to her sorrow."

"Perhaps if I come back later?"

"Perhaps; I am not sure. As soon as the funeral is over she will come to us. You have heard, I suppose, of the change in—in her circumstances?"

"Then it is true? I heard it, but I didn't believe it."

Molly had fled suddenly into remoteness—not Reuben's death, but Mr. Jonathan's "provision," had swept her away from him. Like other mortals in other crises of experience, she was aware of a helpless, a rebellious, realization of the power, not of fate, but of money. No other accident of fortune could have detached her so completely from the surroundings in which he had known her. Though he told himself that to think of wealth as a thing to separate them was to show a sordid brutality of soul, he revolted the next instant from the idea that his love should demand so great a sacrifice. Like the majority of men who have risen to comparative comfort out of bitter poverty, he had at the same time a profound contempt and an inordinate respect for the tangible fact of money—a contempt for the mere value of the dollar and a respect for the ability to take stands of which that mystic figure was the symbol. Sarah's hard common sense, overlaid as it was by an embroidery of sentiments and emotions, still constituted the basic quality in his character, and Sarah would have been the last woman in the world to think lightly of renouncing—or of inviting another to renounce—an income of ten thousand dollars a year. He might dream that love would bring happiness, but she was reasonably assured that money would bring comfort. Between the dream and the assurance there would have been, in Sarah's mind at least, small room left for choice. He had known few women, and for one dreadful minute he asked himself, passionately, if Molly and his mother could be alike?

Unconsciously to himself his voice when he spoke again had lost its ring of conviction.

"Perhaps I may see her later?" he repeated.

"The funeral will be to-morrow. You will be there?"

"Yes, I'll be there," he replied; and then because there was nothing further for him to say, he bowed over his hat, and went down the flagged walk to the orchard, where the bluebirds were still singing. His misery appeared to him colossal—of a size that overshadowed not only the spring landscape, but life itself. He tried to remember a time when he was happy, but this was beyond the stretch of his imagination at the moment, and it seemed to him that he had plodded on year after year with a leaden weight oppressing his heart.

"I might have known it would be like this," he was thinking. "First, I wanted the mill, so I'd lie awake at night about it, and then when I got it all the machinery was worn out. It's always that way and always will be, I reckon." And it appeared to him that this terrible law of incompleteness lay like a blight over the over the whole field of human endeavour. He saw Molly, fair and fitting as she had been yesterday after the quarrel, and he told himself passionately that he wanted her too much ever to win her. On the ground by the brook he saw the spray of last year's golden-rod, and the sight brought her back to him with a vividness that set his pulses drumming. In his heart he cursed Mr. Jonathan's atonement more fervently than he had ever cursed his sin.

The next day he went to Reuben's funeral, with his mother and Blossom at his side, walking slowly across the moist fields, in which the vivid green of the spring showed like patches of velvet on a garment of dingy cloth. In front of him his mother moved stiffly in her widow's weeds, which she still wore on occasions of ceremony, and in spite of her sincere sorrow for Reuben she cast a sharp eye more than once on the hem of her alpaca skirt, which showed a brown stain where she had allowed it to drag in a forgetful moment. Only Archie was absent, but that was merely because he had driven over to bring one of the Halloween girls in Abel's gig. Sarah had heard him whistling in the stable at daybreak, and looking out of the window a little later she had seen him oiling the wheels of the vehicle. It had been decided at supper the evening before that the family as a unit should pay its respects to Reuben. From Sarah, comforting herself behind her widow's weeds with the doctrine of original sin, to Archie, eager to give his sweetheart a drive, one and all had been moved by a genuine impulse to dignify as far as lay in their power the ceremonial of decay. Even Abner, the silent, had remarked that he'd "never heard a word said against Reuben Merryweather in his life." And now at the end of that life the neighbours had gathered amid the ridges of green graves in the churchyard to bear witness to the removal of a good man from a place in which he had been honoured.

During the service Abel kept his eyes on Molly, who came leaning on Gay's arm, and wearing what appeared to him a stifling amount of fashionable mourning. He was too ignorant in such matters to discern that the fashion was one of an earlier date, or that the mourning had been hastily gathered from cedar chests by Kesiah. The impression he seized and carried away was one of elegance and remoteness; and the little lonely figure in the midst of the green ridges bore no relation in his mind to the girl in the red jacket, who had responded so ardently to his kiss. The sunlight falling in flecks through the network of locust boughs deepened the sense of unreality with which he watched her.

"It's a good service as such ready-made things go," observed Sarah as they went homeward, "but it seems to me that a man as upright as Reuben was is entitled to a sermon bein' preached about him when he's laid in his grave. What's the difference between the good man and the bad, if you're goin' to say the same words over the one and the other? I ain't a friend to flattery, but it can't hurt a man to have a few compliments paid him in the churchyard, and when all's said an' done, 'lookin' for the general Resurrection' can't be construed into a personal compliment to Reuben."

"When a man has been as pious as that he hasn't any use for compliments, livin' or dead," rejoined Abner.

"Well, I ain't contendin'," replied his mother. "The Lord knows thar ain't any of his kind left, the mo' 's the pity! Things have changed sence Reuben an' I was young, an' the very language Abel an' Blossom speak is different from ours. I reckon if old Mr. Jonathan was to ride along these roads to-day thar wouldn't be anybody, unless it was a nigger, to open the gate for him."

"You bet there wouldn't!" exclaimed Abel with fervour.

Abner, walking at Sarah's side, wore the unnerved and anxious expression of a man who is conscious that he is wearing his Sunday suit when it has grown too small to contain him. His agony was so evident that Blossom, observing it in the midst of her sentimental disturbances, remarked affectionately that he looked as if he "were tired to death."