John Ward, Preacher Part 24

CHAPTER XV.

Mrs. Forsythe did not come to Ashurst until the middle of April, and then she came alone. d.i.c.k had been detained, she said, and would come in a week or two. So Lois breathed freely, though she knew it was only a respite, and made the most of her freedom to go and see his mother.

She was very fond of the invalid, who always seemed to her, in her glowing, rosy health, like an exquisite bit of porcelain, she was so fine and dainty, with soft white hair curling around her gentle and melancholy face. Mrs. Forsythe dressed in delicate grays and lavenders, and her fingers were covered with rings, and generally held some filmy fancy-work. Her invalidism had only given her an air of interesting fragility, which made Lois long to put her strong young arms about her, to s.h.i.+eld her lest any wind might blow too roughly upon her.

Mrs. Forsythe accepted her devotion with complacency. She had never had this adoring tenderness from her son, who had heard her remark that she was at the gates of death too often to live in a state of anxiety; but to Lois her gentle resignation and heavenly antic.i.p.ations were most impressive. The girl's affection almost reconciled the elder lady to having been made to come to Ashurst while the snow still lingered in sheltered spots, and before the crocuses had lighted their golden censers in her garden; for Lois went to see her every day, and though she could not always escape without a meaning look from the invalid, or a sigh for d.i.c.k's future, she thoroughly enjoyed her visits. It was charming to sit in the dusk, before the dancing flames of an apple-wood fire, the air fragrant with the hyacinths and jonquils of the window garden, and listen to tales of Mrs. Forsythe's youth.

Lois had never heard such stories. Mrs. Dale would have said it was not proper for young girls to know of love affairs, and it is presumable that the Misses Woodhouse never had any to relate; so this was Lois's first and only chance, and she would sit, clasping her knees with her hands, listening with wide, frank eyes, and cheeks flushed by the fire and the tale.

"But then, my poor health," Mrs. Forsythe ended with a sigh, one evening, just before it was time for Lois to go; "of course it interfered very much."

"Why, were you ill _then_," Lois said, "when you used to dance all night?"

"Oh, dear me, yes," answered the other shaking her head, "I have been a sufferer all my life, a great sufferer. Well, it cannot last much longer; this poor body is almost worn out."

"Oh, _don't_ say it!" Lois cried, and kissed the white soft hand with its s.h.i.+ning rings, in all the tenderness of her young heart.

All this endeared the girl very much, and more than once Mrs. Forsythe wrote of her sweetness and goodness to her son. Miss Deborah, or Miss Ruth, or even Mrs. Dale, would have been careful in using the name of any young woman in writing to a gentleman, but Mrs. Forsythe had not been born in Ashurst.

However, d.i.c.k still lingered, and Lois rejoiced, and even her antic.i.p.ation of the evil time to come, when he should arrive and end her peaceful days, could not check her present contentment. It was almost May, and that subtile, inexplainable joy of the springtime made it a gladness even to be alive. Lois rambled about, hunting for the first green spears of that great army of flowers which would soon storm the garden, and carrying any treasure she might find to Mrs. Forsythe's sick-room. The meadows were spongy with small springs, bubbling up under the faintly green gra.s.s. The daffadown-dillies showed bursting yellow buds, and the pallid, frightened-looking violets brought all their mystery of unfolding life to the girl's happy eyes.

One Sat.u.r.day morning, while she was looking for the bunch of grape hyacinths which came up each year, beside the stone bench, she was especially light-hearted. Word had come from Helen that the long-promised visit should be made the first week in June. "It can only be for a week, you know," Helen wrote, "because I cannot be away from John longer than that, and I must be back for our first anniversary, too."

More than this, Mrs. Forsythe had sighed, and told her that poor dear d.i.c.k's business seemed to detain him; it was such a shame! And perhaps he could not get to Ashurst for a fortnight. So Lois Howe was a very happy and contented girl, standing under the soft blue of the April sky, and watching her flock of white pigeons wheeling and circling about the gable of the red barn, while the little stream, which had gained a stronger voice since the spring rains, babbled vociferously at her side. The long, transparent stems of the flowers broke crisply between her fingers, as she heard her name called.

Mr. Denner, with his fis.h.i.+ng-basket slung under one arm and his rod across his shoulder, was regarding her through a gap in the hedge.

"A lovely day!" said the little gentleman, his brown eyes twinkling with a pleasant smile.

"Indeed it is, sir," Lois answered; "and look at the flowers I've found!"

She tipped the basket of scented gra.s.s on her arm that he might see them.

Mr. Denner had stopped to ask if Mrs. Forsythe would be present at the whist party that night, and was rather relieved to learn that she was not able to come; he had lost his hand the week before, because she had arrived with the Dales. Then he inquired about her son's arrival, and went away thinking what a simple matter a love affair was to some people.

Lois and that young man! Why, things were really arranged for them; they had almost no responsibility in the matter; their engagement settled itself, as it were.

He walked abstractedly towards his house, wrestling with the old puzzle.

Nothing helped him, or threw light on his uncertainty; he was tired of juggling with fate, and was growing desperate.

"I wish they would settle it between themselves," he murmured, with a wistful wrinkle on his forehead. Suddenly a thought struck him; there was certainly one way out of his difficulties: he could ask advice. He could lay the whole matter frankly before some dispa.s.sionate person, whose judgment should determine his course. Why had he not thought of it before! Mr. Denner's face brightened; he walked gayly along, and began to hum to himself:--

"Oh, wert thou, love, but near me, But near, near, near me, How fondly wouldst thou cheer me"--

Here he stopped abruptly. Whom should he ask? He went carefully through his list of friends, as he trudged along the muddy road.

Not Dr. Howe: he did not take a serious enough view of such things; Mr.

Denner recalled that scene in his office, and his little face burned.

Then, there was Mrs. Dale: she was a woman, and of course she would know the real merit of each of the sisters. Stay: Mrs. Dale did not always seem in sympathy with the Misses Woodhouse; he had even heard her say things which were not, perhaps, perfectly courteous; that the sisters had been able to defend themselves, Mr. Denner overlooked. Colonel Drayton: well, a man with the gout is not the confidant for a lover. He was beginning to look depressed again, when the light came. Henry Dale! No one could be better.

Mr. Denner awaited the evening with impatience. He would walk home with the Dales, he thought, and then he and Henry could talk it all over, down in the study.

He was glad when the cool spring night began to close, full of that indefinable fragrance of fresh earth and growing things, and before it was time to start he cheered himself by a little music. He went into the dreary, unused parlor, and pulling up the green Venetian blinds, which rattled like castanets, he pushed back the ivy-fastened shutters, and sat down by the open window; then, with his chin resting upon his fiddle, and one foot in its drab gaiter swinging across his knee, he played mournfully and shrilly in the twilight, until it was time to start.

He saw the Misses Woodhouse trotting toward the rectory, with Sarah walking in a stately way behind them, swinging her unlighted lantern, and cautioning them not to step in the mud. But he made no effort to join them; it was happiness enough to contemplate the approaching solution of his difficulties, and say to himself triumphantly, "This time to-morrow!"

and he began joyously to play, "Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,"

rendering carefully all the quavers in that quavering air.

Mr. Denner's meditations made him late at the rectory, and he felt Mrs.

Dale look sternly at him; so he made haste to deal, sitting well forward in his chair, under which he tucked his little feet, and putting down each card with nervous care. His large cuffs almost hid his small, thin hands, and now and then he paused to rub his thumb and forefinger together, that the cards might not stick.

But Mr. Denner did not play well that night; Miss Deborah looked at him with mild reproach, and was almost angry when he answered her with an absent smile.

The evening seemed very long to Mr. Denner, and even when the party had said "Good-night" Mr. Dale was slow about getting off; he put his wife into the carriage, and then stopped to ask Dr. Howe if he had the first edition of "j.a.phet in Search of a Father"?

"In search of a father!" Mr. Denner thought, as he stood waiting by the steps,--"how can he be interested in that?"

At last the front door closed, and Mr. Dale and Mr. Denner walked silently down the lane in the starlight, the lawyer's little heart beating so with excitement, that he had a suffocated feeling, and once or twice put his hand to his throat, as though to loosen his m.u.f.fler.

Mr. Dale, still absorbed in his first edition, took swinging strides, the tails of his brown cloth overcoat flapping and twisting about his long, thin legs. Mr. Denner had now and then almost to break into a trot to keep up with him.

Mr. Dale walked with his hands clasped behind him, and his stick under his arm; his soft felt hat was pulled down over his eyes, so that his keeping the path was more by chance than sight. He stopped once to pluck a sprig from the hawthorn hedge, to put between his lips. This gave Mr.

Denner breath, and a chance to speak.

"I think I will walk home with you, Henry," he said. "I want to have a talk with you."

His heart thumped as he said that; he felt he had committed himself.

"Well, now, that's very pleasant," responded Mr. Dale. "I was just thinking I should be alone half the way home."

"But you would not be alone when you got there," Mr. Denner said meditatively; "now, with me it is different."

"Oh, quite different,--quite different."

"Yes," proceeded the other, "I have very little companions.h.i.+p. I go home and sit in my library all by myself. Sometimes, I get up and wander about the house, with only my cigar for company."

"I suppose," said Mr. Dale, "that you can smoke wherever you want, in your house? I often think of your loneliness; coming and going just as you please, quite independently."

Mr. Denner gave him a sudden questioning look, and then appeared to reproach himself for having misunderstood his friend.

"Yes, just so,--just so. I knew you would appreciate it; but you can never know from experience, Henry, how a man feels left quite to himself.

You do not think of the independence; it is the loneliness. You cannot know that."

"No," murmured Mr. Dale, "perhaps not, but I can imagine it."

When they reached the iron gate of Dale house, they followed the trim path across the lawn to the north side of the house, where it ended in a little walk, three bricks wide, laid end to end, and so damp with perpetual shade, they were slippery with green mould, and had tufts of moss between them.

Mr. Dale's study was in a sort of half bas.e.m.e.nt one went down two steps to reach the doorway, and the windows, set in thick stone walls and almost hidden in a tangle of wistaria, were just above the level of the path.