The Mettle of the Pasture Part 16

"I must go. Dear friend, have you forgiven me? I cannot tell you what was in my heart. Some day you will understand. Try to forgive till you do understand."

Kate's mouth trembled: "Isabel, why are you so changed toward me?"

"Ah, I have not changed toward you! I shall never change toward you!"

"Are you too happy to care for me any longer?"

"Ah, Kate, I am not too happy for anything. Some day you will understand."

She leaned far out and waved her hand as she drove away, and then she threw herself back into the carriage. "Dear injured friend!

Brave loyal woman'" she cried, "the men we loved have ruined both our lives; and we who never had a secret from each other meet and part as hypocrites to s.h.i.+eld them. Drive home," she said to the driver. "If any one motions to stop, pay no attention. Drive fast."

Mrs. Osborn watched the carriage out of sight and then walked slowly back to her work. She folded the soft white fabric over the cus.h.i.+ons and then laid her cheek against it and gave it its first christening--the christening of tears.

IX

The court-house clock in the centre of the town clanged the hour of ten--hammered it out lavishly and cheerily as a l.u.s.ty blacksmith strikes with prodigal arm his customary anvil. Another clock in a dignified church tower also struck ten, but with far greater solemnity, as though reminding the town clock that time is not to be measured out to man as a mere matter of business, but intoned savingly and warningly as the chief commodity of salvation. Then another clock: in a more attenuated cobwebbed steeple also struck ten, reaffirming the gloomy view of its resounding brother and insisting that the town clock had treated the subject with sinful levity.

Nevertheless the town clock seemed to have the best of the argument on this particular day; for the sun was s.h.i.+ning, cool, breezes were blowing, and the streets were thronged with people intent on making bargains. Possibly the most appalling idea in most men's notions of eternity is the dread that there will be no more bargaining there.

A bird's-eye view of the little town as it lay outspread on its high fertile plateau, surrounded by green woods and waving fields, would have revealed near one edge of it a large verdurous spot which looked like an overrun oasis. This oasis was enclosed by a high fence on the inside of which ran a hedge of lilacs, privet, and osage orange. Somewhere in it was an old one-story manor house of rambling ells and verandas. Elsewhere was a little summer-house, rose-covered; still elsewhere an arbor vine-hung; at various other places secluded nooks with seats, where the bushes could hide you and not hear you--a virtue quite above anything human. Marguerite lived in this labyrinth.

As the dissenting clocks finished striking, had you been standing outside the fence near a little side gate used by grocers' and bakers' carts, you might have seen Marguerite herself. There came a soft push against the gate from within; and as it swung part of the way open, you might have observed that the push was delivered by the toe of a little foot. A second push sent it still farther.

Then there was a pause and then it flew open and stayed open. At first there appeared what looked like an inverted snowy flagstaff but turned out to be a long, closed white parasol; then Marguerite herself appeared, bending her head low under the privet leaves and holding her skirts close in, so that they might not be touched by the whitewash on each edge. Once outside, she straightened herself up with the lithe grace of a young willow, released her skirts, and balancing herself on the point of her parasol, closed the gate with her toe: she was too dainty to touch it.

The sun shone hot and Marguerite quickly raised her parasol. It made you think of some silken white myriad-fluted mushroom of the dark May woods; and Marguerite did not so much seem to have come out of the house as out of the garden--to have slept there on its green moss with the new moon on her eyelids--indeed to have been born there, in some wise compounded of violets and hyacinths; and as the finis.h.i.+ng touch to have had squeezed into her nature a few drops of wildwood spritishness.

She started toward the town with a movement somewhat like that of a tall thin lily stalk swayed by zephyrs--with a lilt, a cadence, an ever changing rhythm of joy: plain walking on the solid earth was not for her. At friendly houses along the way she peeped into open windows, calling to friends; she stooped over baby carriages on the sidewalk, noting but not measuring their mysteries; she bowed to the right and to the left at pa.s.sing carriages; and people leaned far out to bow and smile at her. Her pa.s.sage through the town was somewhat like that of a b.u.t.terfly crossing a field.

"Will he be there?" she asked. "I did not tell him I was coming, but he heard me say I should be there at half-past ten o'clock. It is his duty to notice my least remark."

When she reached her destination, the old town library, she mounted the lowest step and glanced rather guiltily up and down the street.

Three ladies were going up and two men were going down: no one was coming toward Marguerite.

"Now, why is he not here? He shall be punished for this."

She paced slowly backward and forward yet a little while. Then she started resolutely in the direction of a street where most of the law offices were situated. Turning a corner, she came full upon Judge, Morris.

"Ah, good morning, good morning," he cried, putting his gold-headed cane under his arm and holding out both hands. "Where did you sleep last night? On rose leaves?"

"I was in grandmother's bed when I left off," said Marguerite, looking up at the rim of her hat.

"And where were you when you began again?"

"Still in grandmother's bed. I think I must have been there all the time. I know all about your old Blackstone and all that kind of thing," she continued, glancing at a yellow book under his arm and speaking with a threat as though he had adjudged her ignorant.

"Ah, then you will make a good lawyer's wife."

"I supposed I'd make a good wife of any kind. Are you coming to my ball?"

"Well, you know I am too old to make engagements far ahead. But I expect to be there. If I am not, my ghost shall attend."

"How shall I recognize it? Does it dance? I don't want to mistake it for Barbee."

"Barbee shall not come if I can keep him at home."

"And why, please?"

"I am afraid he is falling in love with you."

"But why shouldn't he?"

"I don't wish my nephew to be flirted."

"But how do you know I'd flirt him?"

"Ah, I knew your mother when she was young and your grandmother when she was young: you're all alike."

"We, are so glad we are," said Marguerite, as she danced away from him under her parasol.

Farther down the street she met Professor Hardage.

"I know all about your old Odyssey--your old Horace and all those things," she said threateningly. "I am not as ignorant as you think."

"I wish Horace had known you."

"Would it have been nice?"

"He might have written an ode _Ad Margaritam_ instead of _Ad Lalagem_."

"Then I might have been able to read it," she said. "In school I couldn't read the other one. But you mustn't think that I did not read a great deal of Latin. The professor used to say that I read my Latin b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l-l-y, but that I didn't get much English out of it. I told him I got as much English out of it as the Romans did, and that they certainly ought to have known what it was meant for."

"That must have taught him a lesson!"

"Oh, he said I'd do: I was called the girl who read Latin perfectly, regardless of English. And, then, I won a prize for an essay on the three most important things that the United States has contributed to the civilizations of the Old World. I said they were tobacco, wild turkeys and idle curiosity. Of course every one knew about tobacco and turkeys; but wasn't it clever of me to think of idle curiosity? Now, wasn't it? I made a long list of things and then I selected these from my list."

"I'd like to know what the other things were!"

"Oh, I've forgotten now! But they were very important at the time.

Are you coming to my ball?"

"I hope to come."

"And is Miss Anna coming?"