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Book 2One
It seemed as if the long blue-and-gold autumn in the Platte valley would never end that year. All through November women still went about the town of Haverford in the cloth tailored suits which were the wear in 1902, with perhaps a little fur piece about the throat; no one had thought of putting on a winter coat. The trees that hung over the cement sidewalks still held swarms of golden leaves; the great cottonwoods along the river gleamed white and silver against a blue sky that was just a little softer than in summer. The air itself had a special graciousness. Even people who had some right to grumble that the rainfall had been scant and the corn burned in the tassel, came out into their yards every morning with the feeling that things would be better next year and life was a good gamble.
On such a morning Mrs. Alec Ramsay, widow of one of the founders of Haverford, was sitting by the wide window of her front parlour, in her favourite tapestry winged-chair. She was an old woman now, quite seventy, though the people of Haverford could scarcely realize it; she had been a commanding figure in their lives for so long. Moreover, she did not look her age; she was still erect and handsome, there was something regal in her carriage and manner. Her neighbours did remark that she had softened with time, had become more reflective and sympathetic. Ten years ago she would not have been sitting in a deeply cushioned chair at nine o`clock in the morning of a fine autumn day. She would have been driving into the country, or marketing on Main Street, or taking the fast train to Omaha for a day`s shopping. She still drove out, or walked, every afternoon; but in the morning she was rather quiet, as if she had to husband the energy that had once been an unfailing source. And she was more interested in other people, all people, now than she used to be. This morning she was looking out of her window to watch the children go by on their way to school; little boys in knee-pants and shirt-waists, little girls in starched gingham dresses. "Run, Molly, run!" she called to a little fat one who came scampering along just as the last bell began to ring.
When the bell stopped, and all the children of the town were safely penned in three red brick schoolhouses, then the older people came along, going to the post-office for their morning mail:
Doctor Bridgeman`s plump wife, who walked to reduce; Jerry Sleeth, the silent, Seventh-day Advent carpenter; Father MacCormac, the Catholic priest; flighty little Mrs. Jackmann, who sang at funerals--and on every other possible occasion. One after another they came along the sidewalk in front of the house, under the arching elm trees, which were still shaggy with crumpled gold and amethyst leaves.
Suddenly Mrs. Ramsay turned in her chair and spoke to her daughter, Madge Norwall, who had come down from Omaha on a visit. Mrs. Norwall was in the back room of the long double parlour, knitting a sweater for a son in college.
"Madge, there goes Lucy Gayheart. She`s so changed, poor child, you`d scarcely know her. She never used to pass without looking in."
The slender girl who was coming down the sidewalk did not glance to right or left, nor could one say that she was looking before her. She was definitely not looking at all, Mrs. Norwall thought. Her head was bent forward a little and her shoulders were drawn together, as if she were trying to slip past unnoticed. Mrs. Ramsay could not let her go by like that; she leaned forward and tapped on the window-pane with her big cameo ring. The girl stopped, flashed a glance at the window, smiled, waved her hand faintly, and hurried on.
Mrs. Ramsay watched the diminishing figure with a wistful, anxious look in her still lovely blue eyes,--a blue that was light and silvery clear, like the blue of sapphires. Lucy had always walked rapidly, but with a difference. It used to be as if she were hurrying toward something delightful, and positively could not tarry. Now it was as if she were running away from something, or walking merely to tire herself out.
Mrs. Norwall had come into the front room and was looking out over her mother`s shoulder.
"I wonder what it is," murmured Mrs. Ramsay. "Some people say it was a love-affair in Chicago. And some say it is because she lost her position there. I can`t see her taking a thing like that much to heart."
"And still others say," the daughter added, "that it`s because Harry Gordon jilted her and married Miss Arkwright."
"No such thing!" Mrs. Ramsay threw her head back with a flash of her old fire. "If there was any jilting done, Lucy did it. He`d have been glad enough to get her. I knew, the moment I saw them together, he`d married this lantern-jawed woman out of pique. Certainly Lucy is much too good for him."
"Harry`s a grand business man, and he`s very handsome," said Mrs. Norwall teasingly.
"Handsome on the outside, perhaps. I should call it fine-looking, myself. Rough Scotch at heart. I saw plenty of his kind in Scotland; never too proud to save a shilling, for all their swank and bluster."
Mrs. Norwall smiled and went on with her sweater. Mrs. Ramsay looked out of the window and watched the people going by; nodded and smiled if they happened to look in, but she scarcely saw them. Her thoughts were elsewhere. Presently she sighed and said, as if to herself:
"Whatever it was, I wish it hadn`t happened. Poor little Lucy!"
Mrs. Norwall glanced up from her work, almost startled by something beautiful in her mother`s voice. It was not the quick, passionate sympathy that used to be there for a sick child or a friend in trouble. No, it was less personal, more ethereal. More like the Divine compassion. And her mother used to be so stormy, SO personal! If growing old did that to one`s voice and one`s understanding, one need not dread it so much, the daughter was thinking.
Lucy Gayheart hurried on with no particular thought in her mind except that she would go home by another way; she would go up Main Street as far as the old high school, and turn west a good four blocks north of Mrs. Ramsay`s. She had loved and admired Mrs. Ramsay all her life, and for that reason she couldn`t bear to see her now. Once, since she first came home in September, Lucy had stopped at Mrs. Ramsay`s house, but it was all she could do to sit through a short call. Her throat closed up, and her mind seemed frozen stiff. Her old friend could not help her--only one person in Haverford could help her. She was going to the post-office now on the chance of seeing him, as she had gone on many another morning. All the business men went for their mail at about half past nine. Suddenly she remembered that the school-bell had rung a long while ago. She might be too late; she hurried faster.
The double doors of the post-office were hooked back because of the warm weather. Men were going in and coming out. Lucy went to her father`s box and slowly turned the combination lock about, purposely getting it wrong. She was waiting for someone. In a few moments Harry Gordon came in. The bank lock-box was a little way beyond Jacob Gayheart`s. He passed behind Lucy without seeing her, opened his box, and threw the letters into a leather bag he carried. As he turned to leave, Lucy stood directly in his way.
"Good morning, Harry."
He looked up, pulled off his hat, and exclaimed:
"Why, GOOD morning, Lucy!" As if he were very much surprised to see her here; as if she had never been away and never come back; as if there had never been any special friendship between them. His voice had just that impersonal cordiality he had with unimportant customers or their womenfolk. She might have been a girl from one of the farms on which he held a claim he would gladly be rid of. And his eyes seemed to look at her through thick glasses, though he never wore any. Keen, sparkling, pale blue eyes, as cold as icicles. He was not stiff with her,--perfectly casual; and he went out of the post-office and down the street with that easy, confident stride with which he used to go out on the diamond in old baseball days, when he was the best pitcher in the Platte valley and Lucy was a little girl watching from the grand-stand.
Again and again since she came back to Haverford they had met like this; and it was always just the same: the same affectation of surprise, the same look, the same tone of voice--to one who knew all the shades of his voice so well. If he had been embarrassed or curt, she might have got round it. But there was no breaking through this particular manner of his. Poor farmers couldn`t break through it when Harry proposed a settlement little to their advantage and much to his own. He had a natural vigorous heartiness which was as convincing as his fresh complexion. It was so open and unlike the manner of a skinflint, that a slowwitted man couldn`t realize he had agreed to a hard bargain until it was over and he was driving home in his wagon.
If she could only get a message to him, Lucy was thinking as she walked away. She wanted little more than a friendly look when he passed her on the street, the sort of look he used to give her, careless and jolly. It would be enough if he would stop on the street-corner occasionally and tell her a funny story in his real voice, which very few people ever heard, and look at her with the real kindness that used to be like a code sign between them whenever they met.
Lucy did not go directly home, though she knew Pauline was waiting for the morning paper. She went up to the north end of town, to the little Lutheran church, and sat down on the steps. It lay higher than the rest of Haverford, at the edge of the open country, and one could look out over the low hills, chequered with brown, furrowed wheat-fields, to the windings of the Platte River. She sat down there because she was tired, and then she forgot to think about the time. The sunlight fell warm on the wooden steps. An osage orange hedge shut out the only house that was near by, and the place was quiet and friendly. Presently she heard a bell,--the school-bell! Then it must be eleven o`clock. She hurried home as fast as she could.
Pauline was in the dining-room, setting the table. Lucy went straight to her.
"I`m sorry I forgot to bring the paper home, Pauline. I went for a walk and was gone longer than I meant to be."
"Oh, that`s all right!" said Pauline in the cheery tone which meant that it wasn`t right at all.
Lucy put the paper down and went quickly upstairs to her own room. Good heavens, why had she become so sensitive to people`s voices! Everyone she met spoke to her in an unnatural, guarded tone. Her father`s seemed to be the only honest voice in town.
Pauline called to her that lunch was ready. She came downstairs and took her place at the table, opposite her sister. Mr. Gayheart always lunched in town, at the Bohemian beer saloon. Pauline brought in a platter of mutton chops; the coffeepot and vegetables were already on the table. "Any important letters?" she asked as she sat down.
"Important? No." Lucy supposed she must mean a letter calling her back to Chicago.
Pauline chattered away. As a little girl Lucy had trained herself to close her mind when her sister went rambling on. (Even then it had seemed to her that most women talked too much.) Now, as then, she tried to keep her mind on something outside the house. Pauline had a very informal way of eating when they were alone; neglected her food to talk, and then gobbled. Lucy couldn`t dismiss things of that kind lightly as she used to. They chafed her and made her shrink into herself.
Suddenly Pauline came out with something which she really wanted to say, and then Lucy heard her.
"There, I nearly forgot after all! Mrs. Ramsay telephoned and said she very particularly wanted you to come in this evening. She wants just you, because I was there last week, the day after Madge came. You know we ALL liked Madge. Can you realize she has a boy in college this year?"
"Yes, I remember him. We called him Toddy. His real name was Theodore, wasn`t it? I suppose I`ll have to go."
"Of course you will. You were always a special favourite." Pauline gave a generous emphasis to this sentence. And it was generous of her, Lucy admitted; for Mrs. Ramsay had always treated Pauline like Pauline and Lucy like Lucy. But was generosity ever a grace when it came with a pull? Wasn`t it like the quality of mercy and the gentle dew? Her sister broke in upon her reverie.
"Lucy, you`re not eating anything again! That`s why you`ve lost your colour. You know, it`s not becoming to you to be pale. There`s a new preparation of cod-liver oil--"
Lucy interrupted her firmly. "Pauline, I took that medicine when I first came home to please you, not because I thought it would do me any good. It doesn`t help people to eat when they are not hungry. I worked too hard last summer, and had a kind of nervous smash-up at the end of it. The only thing that will help me is to be alone a great deal. That`s why I came home, and why I don`t go to see people. That`s why I begged you to leave the orchard, too. I didn`t lose my job, as some of our friends seem to think. My coming away put Professor Auerbach to a great deal of trouble. But he wouldn`t let me try to work when I was sick."
"Well, Lucy," said Pauline as she began gathering up the dishes, "that`s the most reasonable explanation of things you`ve given me yet. Of course I want to help you to get well. But if you expect people to help you, you must tell them a little about what is the matter. And you certainly have kept us in the dark."
"I know." Lucy spoke contritely, but she drew closer back within herself and looked at the floor. "I`m not a very reasonable person. You`ve had a good deal to put up with. I think I`m beginning to get a little steadier."
Pauline had spoken kindly, and she still meant to be kind when she went on:
"You must be plain and outspoken with your own folks, Lucy, and not theatrical. We aren`t that kind, and we don`t know how to behave."
"Yes, I understand, Pauline." Lucy spoke very low. She was not angry, but she went upstairs to her own room without once meeting her sister`s eyes.
A few moments later Pauline saw her go out of the house carrying an old carriage robe, and disappear into the apple orchard behind the garden.
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