Dr. Hamilton was an excellent physician and an equally excellent man.
Louisa Irving could not have picked a flaw in his history or character. Indeed, against Dr. Hamilton himself she had no grudge, but he was the brother of a man she hated and whose relatives were consequently taboo in Louisa"s eyes. Not that the brother was a bad man either; he had simply taken the opposite side to the Irvings in a notable church feud of a dozen years ago, and Louisa had never since held any intercourse with him or his fellow sinners.
Mary Isabel did not look at the Hamilton house. She kept her head resolutely turned away as she went down the sh.o.r.e lane with its wild sweet loneliness of salt-withered gra.s.ses and piping sea-winds. Only when she turned the corner of the fir-wood, which shut her out from view of the houses, did she look timidly over the line-fence. Dr.
Hamilton was standing there, where the fence ran out to the sandy shingle, smoking his little black pipe, which he took out and put away when Mary Isabel came around the firs. Men did things like that instinctively in Mary Isabel"s company. There was something so delicately virginal about her, in spite of her forty years, that they gave her the reverence they would have paid to a very young, pure girl.
Dr. Hamilton smiled at the little troubled face under the big sunbonnet. Mary Isabel had to wear a sunbonnet. She would never have done it from choice.
"What is the matter?" asked the doctor, in his big, breezy, old-bachelor voice. He had another voice for sick-beds and rooms of bereavement, but this one suited best with the purring of the waves and winds.
"How do you know that anything is the matter?" Mary Isabel parried demurely.
"By your face. Come now, tell me what it is."
"It is really nothing. I have just been foolish, that is all. I wanted a hat with forget-me-nots and a grey silk, and Louisa says I must have black and a bonnet."
The doctor looked indignant but held his peace. He and Mary Isabel had tacitly agreed never to discuss Louisa, because such discussion would not make for harmony. Mary Isabel"s conscience would not let the doctor say anything uncomplimentary of Louisa, and the doctor"s conscience would not let him say anything complimentary. So they left her out of the question and talked about the sea and the boats and poetry and flowers and similar non-combustible subjects.
These clandestine meetings had been going on for two months, ever since the day they had just happened to meet below the firs. It never occurred to Mary Isabel that the doctor meant anything but friendship; and if it had occurred to the doctor, he did not think there would be much use in saying so. Mary Isabel was too hopelessly under Louisa"s thumb. She might keep tryst below the firs occasionally--so long as Louisa didn"t know--but to no farther lengths would she dare go.
Besides, the doctor wasn"t quite sure that he really wanted anything more. Mary Isabel was a sweet little woman, but Dr. Hamilton had been a bachelor so long that it would be very difficult for him to get out of the habit; so difficult that it was hardly worth while trying when such an obstacle as Louisa Irving"s tyranny loomed in the way. So he never tried to make love to Mary Isabel, though he probably would have if he had thought it of any use. This does not sound very romantic, of course, but when a man is fifty, romance, while it may be present in the fruit, is a.s.suredly absent in blossom.
"I suppose you won"t be going to the induction of my nephew Thursday week?" said the doctor in the course of the conversation.
"No. Louisa will not permit it. I had hoped," said Mary Isabel with a sigh, as she braided some silvery sh.o.r.e-gra.s.ses nervously together, "that when old Mr. Moody went away she would go back to the church here. And I think she would if--if--"
"If Jim hadn"t come in Mr. Moody"s place," finished the doctor with his jolly laugh.
Mary Isabel coloured prettily. "It is not because he is your nephew, doctor. It is because--because--"
"Because he is the nephew of my brother who was on the other side in that ancient church fracas? Bless you, I understand. What a good hater your sister is! Such a tenacity in holding bitterness from one generation to another commands admiration of a certain sort. As for Jim, he"s a nice little chap, and he is coming to live with me until the manse is repaired."
"I am sure you will find that pleasant," said Mary Isabel primly.
She wondered if the young minister"s advent would make any difference in regard to these sh.o.r.e-meetings; then decided quickly that it would not; then more quickly still that it wouldn"t matter if it did.
"He will be company," admitted the doctor, who liked company and found the sh.o.r.e road rather lonesome. "I had a letter from him today saying that he"d come home with me from the induction. By the way, they"re tearing down the old post office today. And that reminds me--by Jove, I"d all but forgotten. I promised to go up and see Mollie Marr this evening; Mollie"s nerves are on the rampage again. I must rush."
With a wave of his hand the doctor hurried off. Mary Isabel lingered for some time longer, leaning against the fence, looking dreamily out to sea. The doctor was a very pleasant companion. If only Louisa would allow neighbourliness! Mary Isabel felt a faint, impotent resentment.
She had never had anything other girls had: friends, dresses, beaus, and it was all Louisa"s fault--Louisa who was going to make her wear a bonnet for the rest of her life. The more Mary Isabel thought of that bonnet the more she hated it.
That evening Warren Marr rode down to the sh.o.r.e cottage on horseback and handed Mary Isabel a letter; a strange, scrumpled, soiled, yellow letter. When Mary Isabel saw the handwriting on the envelope she trembled and turned as deadly pale as if she had seen a ghost:
"Here"s a letter for you," said Warren, grinning. "It"s been a long time on the way--nigh fifteen years. Guess the news"ll be rather stale. We found it behind the old part.i.tion when we tore it down today."
"It is my brother Tom"s writing," said Mary Isabel faintly. She went into the room trembling, holding the letter tightly in her clasped hands. Louisa had gone up to the village on an errand; Mary Isabel almost wished she were home; she hardly felt equal to the task of opening Tom"s letter alone. Tom had been dead for ten years and this letter gave her an uncanny sensation; as of a message from the spirit-land.
Fifteen years, ago Thomas Irving had gone to California and five years later he had died there. Mary Isabel, who had idolized her brother, almost grieved herself to death at the time.
Finally she opened the letter with ice-cold fingers. It had been written soon after Tom reached California. The first two pages were filled with descriptions of the country and his "job."
On the third Tom began abruptly:
Look here, Mary Isabel, you are not to let Louisa boss you about as she was doing when I was at home. I was going to speak to you about it before I came away, but I forgot. Lou is a fine girl, but she is too domineering, and the more you give in to her the worse it makes her. You"re far too easy-going for your own welfare, Mary Isabel, and for your own sake I Wish you had more s.p.u.n.k. Don"t let Louisa live your life for you; just you live it yourself. Never mind if there is some friction at first; Lou will give in when she finds she has to, and you"ll both be the better for it, I want you to be real happy, Mary Isabel, but you won"t be if you don"t a.s.sert your independence. Giving in the way you do is bad for both you and Louisa. It will make her a tyrant and you a poor-spirited creature of no account in the world. Just brace up and stand firm.
When she had read the letter through Mary Isabel took it to her own room and locked it in her bureau drawer. Then she sat by her window, looking out into a sea-sunset, and thought it over. Coming in the strange way it had, the letter seemed a message from the dead, and Mary Isabel had a superst.i.tious conviction that she must obey it. She had always had a great respect for Tom"s opinion. He was right--oh, she felt that he was right. What a pity she had not received the letter long ago, before the shackles of habit had become so firmly riveted. But it was not too late yet. She would rebel at last and--how had Tom phrased it--oh, yes, a.s.sert her independence. She owed it to Tom; It had been his wish--and he was dead--and she would do her best to fulfil it.
"I shan"t get a bonnet," thought Mary Isabel determinedly. "Tom wouldn"t have liked me in a bonnet. From this out I"m just going to do exactly as Tom would have liked me to do, no matter how afraid I am of Louisa. And, oh, I am horribly afraid of her."
Mary Isabel was every whit as much afraid the next morning after breakfast but she did not look it, by reason of the flush on her cheeks and the glint in her brown eyes. She had put Tom"s letter in the bosom of her dress and she pressed her fingertips on it that the crackle might give her courage.
"Louisa," she said firmly, "I am going to town with you."
"Nonsense," said Louisa shortly.
"You may call it nonsense if you like, but I am going," said Mary Isabel unquailingly. "I have made up my mind on that point, Louisa, and nothing you can say will alter it."
Louisa looked amazed. Never before had Mary Isabel set her decrees at naught.
"Are you crazy, Mary Isabel?" she demanded.
"No, I am not crazy. But I am going to town and I am going to get a silver-grey silk for myself and a new hat. I will not wear a bonnet and you need never mention it to me again, Louisa."
"If you are going to town I shall stay home," said Louisa in a cold, ominous tone that almost made Mary Isabel quake. If it had not been for that rea.s.suring crackle of Tom"s letter I fear Mary Isabel would have given in. "This house can"t be left alone. If you go, I"ll stay."
Louisa honestly thought that would bring the rebel to terms. Mary Isabel had never gone to town alone in her life. Louisa did not believe she would dare to go. But Mary Isabel did not quail. Defiance was not so hard after all, once you had begun.
Mary Isabel went to town and she went alone. She spent the whole delightful day in the shops, unhampered by Louisa"s scorn and criticism in her examination of all the pretty things displayed. She selected a hat she felt sure Tom would like--a pretty crumpled grey straw with forget-me-nots and ribbons. Then she bought a grey silk of a lovely silvery shade.
When she got back home she unwrapped her packages and showed her purchases to Louisa. But Louisa neither looked at them nor spoke to Mary Isabel. Mary Isabel tossed her head and went to her own room. Her draught of freedom had stimulated her, and she did not mind Louisa"s att.i.tude half as much as she would have expected. She read Tom"s letter over again to fortify herself and then she dressed her hair in a fashion she had seen that day in town and pulled out all the little curls on her forehead.
The next day she took the silver-grey silk to the Latimer dressmaker and picked out a fashionable design for it. When the silk dress came home, Louisa, who had thawed out somewhat in the meantime, unbent sufficiently to remark that it fitted very well.
"I am going to wear it to the induction tomorrow," Mary Isabel said, boldly to all appearances, quakingly in reality. She knew that she was throwing down the gauntlet for good and all. If she could a.s.sert and maintain her independence in this matter Louisa"s power would be broken forever.
Twelve years before this, the previously mentioned schism had broken out in the Latimer church. The minister had sided with the faction which Louisa Irving opposed. She had promptly ceased going to his church and withdrew all financial support. She paid to the Marwood church, fifteen miles away, and occasionally she hired a team and drove over there to service. But she never entered the Latimer church again nor allowed Mary Isabel to do so. For that matter, Mary Isabel did not wish to go. She had resented the minister"s att.i.tude almost as bitterly as Louisa. But when Mr. Moody accepted a call elsewhere Mary Isabel hoped that she and Louisa might return to their old church home. Possibly they might have done so had not the congregation called the young, newly fledged James Anderson. Mary Isabel would not have cared for this, but Louisa sternly said that neither she nor any of hers should ever darken the doors of a church where the nephew of Martin Hamilton preached. Mary Isabel had regretfully acquiesced at the time, but now she had made up her mind to go to church and she meant to begin with the induction service.
Louisa stared at her sister incredulously.
"Have you taken complete leave of your senses, Mary Isabel?"
"No. I"ve just come to them," retorted Mary Isabel recklessly, gripping a chair-back desperately so that Louisa should not see how she was trembling. "It is all foolishness to keep away from church just because of an old grudge. I"m tired of staying home Sundays or driving fifteen miles to Marwood to hear poor old Mr. Grattan.
Everybody says Mr. Anderson is a splendid young man and an excellent preacher, and I"m going to attend his services regularly."
Louisa had taken Mary Isabel"s first defiance in icy disdain. Now she lost her temper and raged. The storm of angry words beat on Mary Isabel like hail, but she fronted it staunchly. She seemed to hear Tom"s voice saying, "Live your own life, Mary Isabel; don"t let Louisa live it for you," and she meant to obey him.