Westways: A Village Chronicle Part 41

"JOSIAH."

The Squire halted in the open pine forest on a wood-road behind the cabin. He threw one leg over the pommel and sat still with the ease of a horseman in any of the postures the saddle affords. "Read me both of those letters again, and slowly."

This time John made no remarks. When he came to the end of Josiah's letter, he looked towards the silent figure seated sideways. The Squire made no comment, but searched his pockets for the flint and steel he always carried. Lighting his pipe he slid to the ground.

"Take the rein, John," he said, "or the mare will follow me."

Penhallow was deep in the story these letters told, and he thought best when walking. John sat in his saddle watching the tall soldierly figure move up the road and back again to the cabin his ancestors had held through one long night of fear. John caught sight of the face as Penhallow came and then turned away on his slow walk, smoking furiously. He sat still, having learned to be respectful of the long silences to which at times Penhallow was given. Now and then with a word he quieted the uneasy mare-a favourite taught to follow the master. At last Penhallow struck his pipe on a stone to empty it, and by habit carefully set a foot on the live coal. Then he came to the off side of his mare and took the rein. Facing John, he set an elbow on the horse's back and a hand on his own cheek. This was no unusual att.i.tude. He did not mount, but stood still. The ruddy good-humoured face, clean-shaven and large of feature, had lost its look of constant good-humour. In fact, the feature language expressed the minute's mood in a way which any one less familiar with the man than John might have read with ease. Then he said, in an absent way, "Are we men of the North all cowards like Josiah? They think so-they do really think so. It is helping to make trouble." Then he lifted himself lightly into the saddle, with swift change of mood and an odd laugh of comment on his conclusion, as he broke into a gallop. "Let us get into the sun."

John followed him as they rode swiftly over a cross-road and out on to the highway. Again the horses were walking, and Penhallow said, "I suppose you may not have understood me. I was suddenly angry. It is a relief sometimes to let off steam. Well, I fancy time will answer me-or that is what I try not to believe-but it may-it may. Let us talk of something else. I must find out from Rivers just how well you are prepared for the Point. Then I mean to give you every night an hour or so of what he cannot teach. You ride well, you know French and German, you box-it may be of service, keep it up once a week at least. I envy you the young disciplined life-the simpleness of it-the want of responsibilities."

"Thank you, sir," returned John, "I hope to like it and to do you credit, uncle."

"You will, I am sure. Let us go to the mills."

John hesitated before he asked, "Could not I have, sir, a few days with Aunt Ann at the Cape?"

"No, I shall want you here."

John was silent and disappointed. The Squire saw it. "It can't be helped-I do not feel able to be alone. Leila will be away a year more and you will be gone for several years. For your sake and mine I want you this summer. Take care! You lost a stirrup when Dixy s.h.i.+ed. Oh! here are the mills. Good morning, McGregor. All well?"

"Yes, sir. Tom has gone to the city. He is to be in the office of a friend of mine this summer. I shall be alone."

"John goes to West Point this September, Doctor."

"Indeed! You too will be alone. Next it will be Leila. How the young birds are leaving the nests! Even that slow lad of Grace's is going. He is to learn farming with old Roberts. He has a broad back and the advantage of not being a thinking-machine."

"He may have made the best choice, McGregor."

"No, sir," said the Doctor, "my son has the best of it."

John laughed. "I don't think I should like either farm or medicine."

"No," returned the Doctor, with his queer way of stating things, "there must be some one to feed the people; Tom is to be trained to cure, and you to kill."

"I don't want to kill anybody," said John, laughing.

"But that is the business you are going to learn, young man." John was silent. The idea of killing anybody!

"Heard from Mrs. Penhallow lately?" asked the doctor.

"No, but from Leila to-day; and, you will be surprised, from Josiah too."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. Give him the two letters, John. Let me have them to-morrow, Doctor.

Good-bye," and they rode on to the mills.

"It is a pity, John, Josiah gave no address," said Penhallow,-"a childlike man, intelligent, and with some underlying temper of the old African barbarian." The summer days ran on with plenty of work for John and without incidents of moment, until the rector went away as was his habit the first of August, more moody than usual. If the rectory were finished, he would go there in September, and Mrs. Ann had written to him about the needed furniture.

On August 20th that lady wrote from Cape May that she must go home, and Leila that her aunt was well but homesick. The Squire, who missed her greatly, unreluctantly yielded, and on August 25th she was met at the station by Penhallow and John. To the surprise of both, she had brought Leila, as her school was not to begin until September 10th.

"My dear James," cried Mrs. Ann, "it is worth while to have been away to learn how good it is to get home again. I thought I would surprise you with Leila." As the Squire kissed her, Leila and the maid came from the car to the platform loaded with bundles.

John stood still. Nature had been busy with her artist-work. A year had gone by-the year of maturing growth of mind and body for a girl nearing sixteen. Unprepared for her change, John felt at once that this was a woman, who quickly smiling gave him a cordial greeting and her hand. "Why, John Penhallow," she said, "what a big boy you are grown!" It was as if an older person had spoken to a younger. A head taller than the little Mrs. Ann, she was in the bloom of maiden loveliness, rosy, joyous, a certain new stateliness in her movements. The gift of grace had been added by the fairy G.o.dmother nature.

John said, with gravity, "You are most welcome home, Leila," and then quickly aware of some coldness in his words, "Oh, I am so very glad to see you!" She had gone by him in the swift changes of life. Without so putting it distinctly into the words of a mental soliloquy, John was conscious that here was another Leila.

"Come, in with you," said the happy master of Grey Pine.

"How well you look, Ann, and how young! The cart will bring your bundles."

John Penhallow on an August afternoon was of Billy's opinion that Leila had "rowed a lot" as she came out upon the porch and gaily laughing cried, "At last,-Aunt Ann has done with me."

They were both suffering from one of those dislocations of relation which even in adult life are felt when friends long apart come together again. The feeling of loss, as far as John was concerned, grew less as Leila with return of childlike joy roamed with him over the house and through the stables, and next day through Westways, with a pleasant word for every one and on busying errands for her aunt. He was himself occupied with study; but now the Squire had said it would be wise to drop his work.

With something of timidity he said to Leila, "I am free for this afternoon; come and see again our old playgrounds. It will be a long while before we can take another walk."

"Certainly, John. And isn't it a nice, good-natured day? The summer is over. Sometimes I wish we had no divisions of months, and the life of the year was one quiet flow of days-oh, with no names to remind you."

"But think, Leila, of losing all the poetry of the months. Why not have no day or night? Oh, come along. What do you want with a sunshade and a veil-we will be mostly in the woods."

"My complexion, Mr. Penhallow," cried Miss Grey gaily.

He watched her young figure as she went upstairs-the ma.s.s of darkened gold hair coiled in the cla.s.sic fas.h.i.+on of the day on the back of her head. She looked around from the stair. "I shall be ready in a minute, John. It rained yesterday-will it be wet in the woods?"

"No," cried John, "and what does it matter?" He had a dull feeling of resentment, of loss, of consciousness of new barriers and of distance from the old comrade.

Their way led across the garden, which was showing signs of feeling the chilly nights of the close of summer in this upland, where the seasons sometimes change abruptly.

"The garden has missed Aunt Ann," said Leila. "Uncle Jim looks at it from the porch, says 'How pretty!' and expects to see roses on his table every day. I do believe he considers a garden as merely a kind of flower-farm."

"Aunt Ann's garden interests her the way Westways does. There are sick flowers and weeds like human weeds, and bugs and diseases that need a flower-doctor, and flowers that are morbid or ill-humoured. That is not my wisdom, Leila, it is Mr. Rivers's."

"No, John, it isn't at all like you."

"Aunt Ann didn't like it, and yet I think he meant it to be a compliment, for he really considers Aunt Ann a model of what a woman ought to be."

"I know that pretty well," said Leila. "When I used to lose my temper over that horrid algebra, I was told to consider how Aunt Ann kept her temper no matter what happened, as if that had anything to do with algebra and equations. If he had seen her when she talked to George Grey about Josiah, he would have known Aunt Ann better. I was proud of her."

"Aunt Ann angry!" said John. "I should have liked to have seen that. Poor Josiah!"

They talked of the unlucky runaway, and were presently among the familiar pine and spruce, far beyond the garden bounds. "Do put up that veil," said John, "and you have not the least excuse for your parasol."

"Oh, if you like, John. Tell me about West Point. It was such a surprise."

"I will when I am there, if I am able to pa.s.s the examinations."

"You will-you will. Uncle Jim told me you would pa.s.s easily."

"Indeed! He never told me that. I have my doubts."