Kitabı oku: «Miss Primrose: A Novel», sayfa 10

III
THE FORTUNE-TELLER

Autumn comes early in Grassy Fordshire. In late September the nights are chill and a white mist hovers ghostly in the moonlight among our hills. The sun dispels it and warms our noons to a summer fervor, but there is no permanence any longer in heat or cold, or leaf or flower – all is change and passing and premonition, so that the singing poet in you must turn philosopher and hush his voice, seeing about him the last sad rites of those little lives once blithe and green as his own was in the spring.

Ere October comes there are crimson stains upon the woodlands. "God's plums, father!" Robin cried, standing as a little boy on Sun Dial and pointing to the distant hills. A spell is over them, a purple and enchanted sleep, though all about them the winds are wakeful, and the sumac fire which blazed up crimson in the sun but a moment gone, burns low in the shadow of white clouds scudding before the gale. Here beneath them the bloom of the golden-rod is upon the land; fieldsful and lanesful, it bars your way, or brushes your shoulders as you pass. Only the asters, white and purple and all hues between, vie here and there with the mightier host, but its yellow plumes nod triumph on every crest, banks and hedgerows glow with its soldiery, it beards the forest, and even where the plough has passed posts its tall sentries at the furrow's brim.

In the lower meadows there is still a coverlet of summer green, but half hidden in the taller, rusting grasses, whose feathery tops ripple in the faintest wind, till suddenly it rises and whips them into waves, now ruddy, now flashing silver, while a foam of daisies beats against the gray stone hedges like waters tumbling on a quay.

There is cheerful fiddling in these dying grasses, and crickets scuttle from beneath your feet; there is other music too – a shrill snoring as of elder fairies oversleeping; startled insects leap upon you, flocks of sparrows flee from interrupted feasts, squirrels berate you, crows spread horrid tales of murder stalking in the fields.

Then leave the uplands – tripping on its hidden creepers; part the briers of the farthest hedgerow, and descend. Down in the valley there is a smell of apples in the air, pumpkins glow among the wigwams of the Indian-corn, and deeper still runs Troublesome among the willows, shining silver in the waning sun. There in the sopping lowlands they are harvesting the last marsh hay. A road leads townward, the vines scarlet on its tumbling walls; the air grows cooler —

"Oh, it is beautiful!" says Letitia, sadly – "but it is fall."

I observe in her always at this season an unusual quietness. She is in the garden as early as in the summer-time, and while it is still dripping with heavy dew, for she clings tenderly to its last flowers – to her nasturtiums, to the morning-glories on the trellis, and the geraniums and dahlias and phlox and verbenas along the path; but she gives her heart to her petunias, and because, she says, they are a homely, old-fashioned flower, whom no one loves any more. As she caresses them, brushing the drops from their plain, sweet faces, she seems, like them, to belong to some by-gone, simpler time. Some think her an odd, quaint figure in her sober gown, but they never knew the girl Letitia, or they would see her still, even in this elder woman with the snow-white hair.

Every fall gypsies camp in the fields near Troublesome on their way southward. It is the same band, Letitia tells me, that has stopped there year after year, and Letitia knows: she used to visit them when she was younger and still had a fortune to be told. It was a weakness we had not suspected. She had never acknowledged a belief in omens or horoscopes, or prophecies by palms or dreams, though she used to say fairies were far more likely than people thought. She had seen glades, she told us, lawn or meadow among encircling trees, where, long after sundown, the daylight lingered in a fairy gloaming; and there, she said, when the fire-flies danced, she had caught such glimpses of that elf-land dear to childhood, she had come to believe in it again. There was such a spot among our maples, and from the steps where we used to sit, we would watch the afterglow pale there to the starlit dusk, or that golden glory of the rising moon break upon the shadowy world, crowning the tree-tops and quenching the eastern stars. Then, sometimes, Dove and Letitia would talk of oracles and divination and other strange inexplicable things which they had heard of, or had known themselves; but Letitia never spoke of the gypsy band till three giggling village maids, half-fearful and half-ashamed of their stealthy quest, found their school-mistress among the vans! She flushed, I suppose, and made the best of a curious matter, for she said, simply, when we charged her with the story that had spread abroad:

"They are English gypsies, and wanderers like the Primroses from their ancient home. That is why they fascinate me, I suppose."

How often she consulted them, or when she began or ceased to do so, I do not know, but when I showed her the vans by the willows and the smoke rising from the fire, last fall, she smiled and said it was like old times to her – but she added, quaintly, that palms did not itch when the veins showed blue.

"Nonsense," I said, "we are both of us young, Letitia. Let us find the crone and hear her croak. I am not afraid of a little sorcery."

Paying no heed to her protestations I turned Pegasus – I have always a Pegasus, whatever my horse's other name – through the meadow-gate. A ragged, brown-faced boy ran out to us and held the bridle while I alighted, and then I turned and offered Letitia a helping hand. She shook her head.

"No, I'll wait here."

"Come," I said, "have you no faith, Letitia?"

"Not any more," she replied. "This is foolishness, Bertram. Will you never grow up?"

"It's only my second-childhood," I explained. "Come, we'll see the vans."

"Some one will see us," she protested.

"There is not a soul on the road," I said.

Shamefacedly she took my hand, glancing uneasily at the highway we had left behind us, and her face flushed as we approached the fire. An ugly old woman with a dirty kerchief about her head, was stirring broth for the evening meal.

"Tripod and kettle," I said. "Do you remember this ancient dame?"

"Yes," said Letitia, "it is – "

"Sibyl," I said. "Her name is Sibyl."

Letitia smiled.

"Do you remember me?" she asked, offering her hand. The old witch peered cunningly into her face, grinning and nodding as if in answer. Two or three scraggy, evil-eyed vagabonds were currying horses and idling about the camp, watching us, but at a glance from the fortune-teller, they slouched streamward. The crone's entreaties and my own were of no avail. Letitia put her hands behind her – but we saw the vans and patted the horses and crossed the woman's palm so that she followed us, beaming and babbling, to the carriage-side. There we were scarcely seated when, stepping forward – so suddenly that I glanced, startled, towards the camp – the gypsy laid a brown hand, strong as a man's, upon the reins; and turning then upon Letitia with a look so grim and mysterious that she grew quite pale beneath those tragic eyes, muttered a jargon of which we made out nothing but the words:

"You are going on a long journey," at which the woman stopped, and taking a backward step, stood there silently and without a smile, gazing upon us till we were gone.

Letitia laughed uneasily as we drove away.

"Did she really remember you?" I asked.

"No, I don't think so – which makes it the more surprising."

"Surprising?"

"Yes; that she should have said again what she always told me."

"And what was that?"

"That I was going on a long journey."

"Did she always tell you that?"

"Always, from the very first."

"Perhaps she tells every one so," I suggested.

"No, for I used to ask, and very particularly, as to that."

Why, I wondered, had she been so curious about long journeys? I had never known travel to absorb her thoughts. Why had she inquired, and always so very particularly, as she confessed, about that single item of gypsy prophecy, and the very one which would seem least likely to be verified? Never in my knowledge of Letitia's lifetime had there been any other promise than that of the fortune-teller that she would ever wander from Grassy Ford. I might have asked her, but she seemed silent and depressed as we drove homeward, which was due, I fancied, to the gypsy's rude alarm. For some days after she continued to remark how strangely that repetition of the old augury had sounded in her ears, and smiling at it, she confessed how in former years she had laid more stress upon it, and had even planned what her gowns would be.

"Did you guess where you were going?" I ventured to inquire.

"Well, I rather hoped – "

"Yes?" I said.

"You know my fondness for history," she continued. "I rather hoped I should see some day what I had read about so long – castles and things – and then, too, there were the novels I was fond of, like Lorna Doone. I always wanted to see the moors and the Doone Valley, and the water-slide that little John Ridd had found so slippery, when he first saw Lorna."

"You wanted to see England then," I said.

"Yes, England," she replied. "England, you know, was my father's country."

"The Doone Valley," I remarked, "would be Devon, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," she replied, "and it was Devon where father was a boy."

"And our old friend Robin Saxeholm came from Devon, you know," I said.

"So he did," she answered. Then we talked of Robin and his visit to Grassy Fordshire years ago, and what Letitia had forgotten of it I recalled to her, and what I could not remember, she supplied, so that it all came back to us like a story or a summer dream.

When she had gone up-stairs I sat for a long time smoking by the dying fire, and musing of some old-time matters which now came back to me in a clearer light. From thinking of my own youth, little by little, I came to Robin's – I mean the younger, who was now so soon to be a man. Tall and fair like the youth he was named for, though not red-haired, he had all but completed that little learning which is a "dangerous thing": he was a high-school senior now, and overwhelmed sometimes with the wonder of it, but a manly fellow for all that, one whom my eyes dwelt fondly on more often than he knew. In the spring-time he would have his parchment; college would follow in the fall – college! What could I do to give my son a broader vision of the universe, lest with only Grassy Ford behind him, he should think the outside world lay mostly within his college walls?

"You are going on a long journey."

The gypsy's words came back unbidden as I rose by the embers of the fire. "A long journey," I repeated; "and why not?"

IV
AN UNEXPECTED LETTER

During the winter a great piece of news stirred Grassy Ford, and in spite of the snow-drifts on our walks and porches furnished an excuse for a dozen calls that otherwise would never have been made so soon. Old Mrs. Luton was discovered in a state of apoplexy on our steps, but on being brought in and divested of her husband's coon-skin cap, a plush collar, a scarf, a shawl, a knitted jacket, and a newspaper folded across her chest, recovered her breath and told her story. Mrs. Neal, so Mrs. Luton said, had been heard to say, according to Mrs. Withers, who had it from Mrs. Lowell, who lived next door to Mrs. Bell – who, as the world knows, called more often than anybody else at the Neal farm-house, feeling a pity for the lonely woman there, as who did not? – Mrs. Neal had been heard to say, what Mrs. Luton would not have repeated for the world to any one but her dear Miss Primrose, who could be trusted implicitly, as she knew, and she had said it in the most casual way – Mrs. Neal, that is – but secretly very well pleased, though, Heaven knows, she, Mrs. Luton —

"Won't you have some coffee?" asked Letitia, for the breakfast was not yet cold.

"Yes, thank you, I will, for I'm as cold as can be," exclaimed her visitor, laughing hysterically, and she was profuse in her praise of Letitia's beverage, and inquired the brand. Her manner of sipping it as she sat in an easy-chair before the fire did away with all necessity for a spoon, but was a little trying to a delicate sense of hearing like Letitia's, and was responsible beside for what was wellnigh a disastrous deluge when in the midst of a copious ingurgitation she suddenly remembered what she had come to tell:

"Ffff– Peggy Neal's a-living in New York!" she splashed, her eyes popping. It would be impossible to relate the story as Mrs. Luton told it, for its ramifications and parentheses involved the history of Grassy Ford and the manifold relationships of its inhabitants, past and present, to say nothing of the time to come, for in speculations Mrs. Luton was profound.

Mrs. Neal, it seems, had broken her long silence and had been heard to allude to "my daughter Peggy in New York." Some years had passed since the farm-gate clicked behind that forlorn and outcast girl, and in all that time the mother had never spoken the daughter's name, nor had any one dared more than once to question her. Letitia had tried once, but once only, to intercede for the pupil she had loved, the manner of whose departure was well enough understood in the town and country-side, though where she had gone remained a mystery.

On leaving the farm that September evening, Peggy, with a desperate and tear-stained face, had been met by a neighbor girl, who as a confidant in happier hours, was intrusted with the story. It was not a long one. The mother had pointed to the gate.

"Look there!" she cried. "He went that way. I guess you'll find him, if you try, you – "

Then her mother struck her, Peggy said. She did not know it was the name which felled her.

Now after silence which had seemed like death to the lonely woman in the hills, Peggy had written home to her, to beg forgiveness, to say that in a life of ease and luxury in a great city, she could not help thinking of the farm, which seemed a dream to her; she could never return to it, she said, but she wondered if her father was living, and if her mother had still some heart for her wayward daughter, and would write sometimes. She said nothing of a child. That she was still unmarried seemed evident from the signature – "Your loving, loving Peggy Neal." That some good-fortune had befallen her in spite of that sad beginning in her native fields, was quite as clear, for the paper on which she had scrawled her message was of finest texture and delicately perfumed; and, what was more, between its pages the mother had found a sum of money, how much or little no one knew.

It was observed that the mother's face had relaxed a little. That she had answered her daughter's message was asserted positively by Mrs. Bell, though what that answer was, and whether forgiveness or not, she did not know. It was assumed, however, to have been a pardon, for the mother seemed pleased with the daughter's progress in the world, which must have seemed to her the realization, however ironical, of her discarded hopes; and it was she herself who had divulged the contents of the letter. To the cautious curiosity manifested by elderly ladies of Grassy Ford, who called upon her now more often than had been their wont, as she took some pleasure in reminding them, to their obvious discomfiture, and to all other hints and allusions she turned her deafer ear, while to direct questions she contented herself with the simple answer:

"Peggy's well."

"You hear from her often, I suppose?" some caller ventured. The reply was puzzling:

"Oh, a mother's apt to."

She said it so sadly, looking away across the farm, that Letitia's informant as she told the story burst into tears.

"She's a miserable woman, Miss Letitia, depend upon it. She's a miserable, broken-down, heart-sick creature for what she's done. 'You hear often, I suppose?' said I. 'A mother's apt to,' says she, and turned away from me with a face so lonesome as would break your heart."

For myself, as Letitia told me, I had my own notion of the mother's sad and evasive answer, but I held my peace.

It was the coldest winter we had known in years. For weeks at a time our valley was a bowl of snow, roads were impassable, and stock was frozen on the upland farms. Suddenly there came a thaw: the sun shone brightly, the great drifts sank and melted into muddy streams, and early one morning Farmer Bell, his shaggy mare and old top-buggy splashed with mire and his white face spattered, stopped at the post-office and called loudly to the passers-by.

"Old Neal's dead and I want the coroner."

To the crowd that gathered he told the story. Neal's wife, waiting up for him Christmas night, had made an effort to reach the Bells to ask for tidings, but the wind was frightful and the drifts already beyond her depth. She had gone back hoping that he was safe by his tavern fire, but she sat by her own all night, listening to the roaring of the wind and the rattling windows through which the snow came drifting in. At dawn, from an upper chamber, she peered out upon a sight that is seldom seen even in these northern hills. The storm was over, but the world was buried white; roads and fences and even the smaller trees were no longer visible, and the barn and a neighbor's cottage were unfamiliar in their uncouth hoods. For days she remained imprisoned on the lonely farm. She cut paths from the woodshed to the near-by barn and saved the cattle in their stalls. Then the thaw came, and she reached the Bells.

Hitching his mare to his lightest buggy, for the roads were rivers, the farmer drove through the slush and the remnant drifts to the corner tavern where Neal had been. The bartender stared blankly at his first question.

"Neal?" he stammered out at last.

"Yes, Neal! John Neal, confound you! Can't you speak?"

The man laid the glass he was wiping upon the bar.

"Neal left here Christmas day – along about four in the afternoon, when the storm began."

As Bell drove homeward he saw two figures at the Neal farm-gate – that gate which Peggy had closed behind her – and, coming nearer, he made out his own man Tom and the widow, lifting the body from the melting snow.

Peggy Neal did not come to her father's funeral. Letitia herself would have written the news to her, for the woman, dry-eyed and dumb and sitting by the coffin-side, had aged in a day and was now as helpless as a child.

"Shall I write to Peggy?" Letitia asked her, but she did not hear. Twice the question was repeated, but they got no answer, so Letitia wrote, and laid the letter on the casket, open and unaddressed. It was never sent.

V
SURPRISES

Jogging homeward from a country call one afternoon in May, I was admiring the apple-orchards and the new-ploughed fields between them, when I chanced upon my son Robin with a handful of columbine, gathered among the Sun Dial rocks.

"Oh," said he, "is that you, father?" It is an innocent way of his when he has anything in particular to conceal.

"At any rate," I replied, "you are my son."

He smiled amiably and I cranked the wheel, making room for him beside me.

"Columbine," I remarked.

"Yes."

"Letitia will be pleased," I said.

Now I knew it was for the Parker girl – Rita Parker, who blushes so when I chance to meet her that I know now how it feels to be an ogre, a much-maligned being, too, for whom I never had any sympathy before.

"I just saw a redstart," remarked my son.

"So?" I replied. "Did you notice any bobolinks?"

"Did I?" he answered. "I saw a million of them."

"You did?"

"Down in the meadows there."

"A million of them?"

"Almost a million," he replied. "Every grass-stalk had one on it, teetering and singing away like anything."

"Why, I didn't know Rita was with you."

"Rita!" he exclaimed, reddening.

"Why, yes," I said. "You saw so many birds, you know."

It was a little hard upon the boy, but I broke the ensuing silence with some comments on the weather, and having him wholly at my mercy then, I chose a subject which so long had charmed me, I had been on the point of telling him time and again, yet had refrained.

"Robin," said I, "you will be a graduate in a day or two. What do you say to a summer in England, boy?"

He caught my hand – so violently that the rein was drawn and Pegasus turned obediently into the ditch and stopped.

"England, father!"

"If we are spared," I said, getting the buggy into the road again.

"All of us!" he cried.

"No."

"But you'll come, father?" He said it so anxiously that I was touched. It isn't always that a boy cares to lug his father.

"I should like to," I said, "but – no."

"Why not?"

"I cannot leave," I replied. "Jamieson's going. We can't both go."

"Oh, bother Jamieson!" Robin exclaimed. "What does he want to choose our year for? Why can't he wait till next?"

"It's his wife," I explained. "She's ill again. But you go, Robin, and take Letitia."

"When do we start?"

"In June."

"This June?"

"Next month. I've laid out the journey for you on a map, and I've got the names of the inns to stop at, and what it will cost you, and everything else."

"But when did you think of it?" asked my son.

"Last fall."

"Last fall! Does Aunt Letty know?"

"Partly," I said. "She knows you're going, but not herself. It's a little surprise for her. You may tell her yourself, now, while I stop at the office."

He scrambled out and hitched my horse for me, so I held the flowers. He flushed a little as he took them.

"Father, you're a trump," he said.

I bowed slightly: it is wise to be courteous even to a son. I had stopped at the office to get the map, and an hour later Letitia met me in our doorway.

"Bertram!" she said, taking my hand.

"Robin told you?"

"Yes. Oh, it's beautiful, Bertram, but I cannot go."

"Nonsense," I said.

"But you?"

"I shall do very nicely."

"But the cost?"

"Will be nothing," I said. "The boy must not go alone."

"That's not the reason you are sending me, Bertram."

"It's a good one," I replied.

"No," she insisted, shaking her head.

"You have been good to the boy, Letitia," I explained. "This is only a way of saying that I know."

"You do not need to say it," she replied. "I have done nothing."

"You have done everything, Letitia – for us both."

The tears ran down her cheeks. My own eyes —

"You have loved Dove's husband and son," I told her. "We shall not forget it."

Her face was radiant.

"It has been nothing for me to do," she said. "Loving no one in particular, I have had the time to love every one, don't you see? Why, all my life, Bertram, I've loved other people's dogs, and other people's children" – she paused a moment and added, smiling through her tears – "and other people's husbands, I suppose."

"You will go?" I asked.

"I should love to go."

"You will go, Letitia?"

"I will go," she said.

That evening I took from my pocket a brand-new map of the British Isles – I mean brand-new last fall. Many a pleasant hour I had spent that winter at the office with a red guide-book and the map before me on my desk. With no little pride I spread it now on the sitting-room table which Letitia had cleared for me.

"What are the red lines, father?" asked my son. He had returned breathless from telling the Parker girl.

"Those in red ink," I replied, "I drew myself. It is your route. There's Southampton – where you land – and there's London – and there's Windsor and Oxford and Stratford and Warwick and Kenilworth – and here," I cried, sweeping my hand suddenly downward to the left – "here's Devonshire!"

"Where father was a boy," Letitia murmured, touching the pinkish county tenderly with her hand.

Ah, I was primed for them! There was not a question they could ask that I could not answer. There was not a village they could name, I could not instantly put my finger on. Those winter hours had not been spent in vain. I knew the inns – the King's Arms, the Golden Lion, the White Hart, the Star and Anchor, the George and Dragon, the Ring o' Bells! I knew where the castles were – I had marked them blue. I knew the battle-fields – I had made them crimson. For each cathedral – a purple cross. Each famous school – a golden star. Never, I believe, was there such a map before – for convenience, for ready reference: one look at the margin where I made the notes – a glance at the map – and there you were!

"Oh, it is beautiful!" exclaimed Letitia.

"Isn't it?" I cried.

"You should have it patented," said my son.

"Suppose," I suggested, "you ask me something – something hard now. Ask me something hard."

I took a turn with my cigar. Robin knitted his brows, but could think of nothing. Letitia pondered.

"Where's – "

She hesitated.

"Out with it!" I urged.

"Where's Tavistock?" she asked.

I thought a moment.

"Is it a castle?"

She shook her head.

"Is it a battle-field?"

"No."

"Is it just a town, then?"

"Yes, just a town."

"Did anything famous happen there?"

She hesitated.

"Well," she said, "perhaps nothing very famous – but it's an old little town – one that I've heard of, that is all."

Well, she did have me. It was not very famous, and only a – an idea came to me.

"Oh," I said, shutting my eyes a moment, "that town's in Devon."

Letitia nodded.

"See," I said. Adjusting my glasses, and peering a moment at the pinkish patch, I tapped it, Tavistock, with my finger-nail. "Right here," I said.

We made a night of it – that is, it was midnight when I folded my map and locked it away with the guide-book and the table of English money I had made myself. There was one in the book, it is true, but for ready reference, for convenience in emergencies, it did not compare with mine – mine worked three ways.

A fortnight later I had the tickets in my hand – ss. Atlantis, date of sailing, the tenth of June. I myself was to steal a day or two and wave farewell to them from the pier. Robin already had packed his grip; indeed, he repacked it daily, to get the hang of it, he said. It was a new one which I had kept all winter at the office in the bottom of a cupboard, and it bore the initials, R. W., stamped on the end. And he had a housewife – a kind of cousin to a needle-book – stuffed full of handy mending-things, presented by the Parker girl. The boy was radiant, but as June drew nigh I saw he had something heavy on his mind. A dozen times he had begun to speak to me, privately, but had changed the subject or had walked away. I could not imagine what ailed the fellow. He seemed restless; even, as I fancied, a little sad at times, which troubled me. I made opportunities for him to speak, but he failed to do so, either through neglect or fear. I saw him often at the office, where he was always bursting in upon me with some new plan or handy matter for his precious bag. He had bought a razor and a brush and strop.

"But what are they for?" I asked, amazed. A blush mantled his beardless cheeks.

"Those? Oh – just to be sure," he said.

Now what could be troubling the lad, I wondered? It was something not always on his mind, for he seemed to forget it in preparations, but it lurked near by to spring out upon his blithest moments. His face would be shining; an instant later it would fall, and he would walk to the window and gaze out thoughtfully into the street, in a way that touched me to the heart, for, remember, this was to be my first parting with the boy. The more I thought of it, the more perplexed I was; and the more I wondered, the more I felt it might be my duty to speak myself.

"Robin," I said one day, and as casually as I could make my tone, "did you want to tell me anything? What is it? Speak, my boy."

We were alone together in my inner office and the door was shut. He walked resolutely to the desk where I was sitting.

"Father," he said, "I have."

My heart was beating, he looked so grave.

"Well," I remarked, "you have nothing to fear, you know."

"Father," he said, doggedly, "it's about – it's about – "

"Yes?" I encouraged him.

"It's about this trip."

"This trip?"

"Yes. It's about – father, you'll tell her – "

"Tell her?" I repeated.

"Yes. You tell her."

"Tell whom? Tell what?"

"Why, Aunt Letty."

"Aunt Letty! Tell Aunt Letty what?"

He blurted it fiercely:

"About her hat."

"Her hat! Her hat! Good Lord, what hat?"

"Why, her Sunday hat!"

"You mean her – "

"Why, yes, father! You know that hat."

I knew that hat.

"Do you object," I asked, "to your aunt's best Sunday hat?"

His scowl vanished and his face broke into smiles.

"That's it," he said.

"Don't be alarmed," I assured him, keeping my own face steady – no easy matter, for, as I say, I knew the hat. "Don't be alarmed, my son. She shall have a new one, if that will please you."

His smiles vanished. He seemed suspicious. His tone was cautiousness itself.

"But who will buy it?" he asked.

"Why, you!" I said.

He leaped to my side.

"I?"

"You," I repeated.

He laughed hysterically – whooped is the better word.

"You wait!" he cried, and, fairly dancing, he seized his cap and rushed madly for the door. It shut behind him, but as swiftly opened again.

"Oh, dad," he said, beaming upon me from the crack, "it'll be a stunner! You'll see."

It was.