"I have known him since I was able to talk. And is that where you go every day--is it he who takes you on these long walks and climbs that have brought back your health and strength? G.o.d bless the old doctor."
Just then the old doctor himself drove slowly down the road in his rickety old buggy. I waved my hand at him and shouted that I would be on hand the next day at the usual time. He stopped his horse and called to Amaryllis to come out to him. They talked for five minutes while I waited. Then the old doctor drove on.
When we got to the house Amaryllis lugged out an encyclopaedia and sought a word in it. "The doctor said," she told me, "that you needn"t call any more as a patient, but he"d be glad to see you any time as a friend. And then he told me to look up my name in the encyclopaedia and tell you what it means. It seems to be the name of a genus of flowering plants, and also the name of a country girl in Theocritus and Virgil. What do you suppose the doctor meant by that?"
"I know what he meant," said I. "I know now."
A word to a brother who may have come under the spell of the unquiet Lady Neurasthenia.
The formula was true. Even though gropingly at times, the physicians of the walled cities had put their fingers upon the specific medicament.
And so for the exercise one is referred to good Doctor Tatum on Black Oak Mountain--take the road to your right at the Methodist meeting house in the pine-grove.
Absolute rest and exercise!
What rest more remedial than to sit with Amaryllis in the shade, and, with a sixth sense, read the wordless Theocritan idyl of the gold-bannered blue mountains marching orderly into the dormitories of the night?
XV
OCTOBER AND JUNE
The Captain gazed gloomily at his sword that hung upon the wall. In the closet near by was stored his faded uniform, stained and worn by weather and service. What a long, long time it seemed since those old days of war"s alarms!
And now, veteran that he was of his country"s strenuous times, he had been reduced to abject surrender by a woman"s soft eyes and smiling lips. As he sat in his quiet room he held in his hand the letter he had just received from her--the letter that had caused him to wear that look of gloom. He re-read the fatal paragraph that had destroyed his hope.
In declining the honour you have done me in asking me to be your wife, I feel that I ought to speak frankly. The reason I have for so doing is the great difference between our ages.
I like you very, very much, but I am sure that our marriage would not be a happy one. I am sorry to have to refer to this, but I believe that you will appreciate my honesty in giving you the true reason.
The Captain sighed, and leaned his head upon his hand. Yes, there were many years between their ages. But he was strong and rugged, he had position and wealth. Would not his love, his tender care, and the advantages he could bestow upon her make her forget the question of age? Besides, he was almost sure that she cared for him.
The Captain was a man of prompt action. In the field he had been distinguished for his decisiveness and energy. He would see her and plead his cause again in person. Age!--what was it to come between him and the one he loved?
In two hours he stood ready, in light marching order, for his greatest battle. He took the train for the old Southern town in Tennessee where she lived.
Theodora Deming was on the steps of the handsome, porticoed old mansion, enjoying the summer twilight, when the Captain entered the gate and came up the gravelled walk. She met him with a smile that was free from embarra.s.sment. As the Captain stood on the step below her, the difference in their ages did not appear so great. He was tall and straight and clear-eyed and browned. She was in the bloom of lovely womanhood.
"I wasn"t expecting you," said Theodora; "but now that you"ve come you may sit on the step. Didn"t you get my letter?"
"I did," said the Captain; "and that"s why I came. I say, now, Theo, reconsider your answer, won"t you?"
Theodora smiled softly upon him. He carried his years well.
She was really fond of his strength, his wholesome looks, his manliness--perhaps, if--
"No, no," she said, shaking her head, positively; "it"s out of the question. I like you a whole lot, but marrying won"t do. My age and yours are--but don"t make me say it again--I told you in my letter."
The Captain flushed a little through the bronze on his face. He was silent for a while, gazing sadly into the twilight. Beyond a line of woods that he could see was a field where the boys in blue had once bivouacked on their march toward the sea. How long ago it seemed now!
Truly, Fate and Father Time had tricked him sorely. Just a few years interposed between himself and happiness!
Theodora"s hand crept down and rested in the clasp of his firm, brown one. She felt, at least, that sentiment that is akin to love.
"Don"t take it so hard, please," she said, gently. "It"s all for the best. I"ve reasoned it out very wisely all by myself. Some day you"ll be glad I didn"t marry you. It would be very nice and lovely for a while--but, just think! In only a few short years what different tastes we would have! One of us would want to sit by the fireside and read, and maybe nurse neuralgia or rheumatism of evenings, while the other would be crazy for b.a.l.l.s and theatres and late suppers. No, my dear friend. While it isn"t exactly January and May, it"s a clear case of October and pretty early in June."
"I"d always do what you wanted me to do, Theo. If you wanted to--"
"No, you wouldn"t. You think now that you would, but you wouldn"t.
Please don"t ask me any more."
The Captain had lost his battle. But he was a gallant warrior, and when he rose to make his final adieu his mouth was grimly set and his shoulders were squared.
He took the train for the North that night. On the next evening he was back in his room, where his sword was hanging against the wall. He was dressing for dinner, tying his white tie into a very careful bow. And at the same time he was indulging in a pensive soliloquy.
""Pon my honour, I believe Theo was right, after all. n.o.body can deny that she"s a peach, but she must be twenty-eight, at the very kindest calculation."
For you see, the Captain was only nineteen, and his sword had never been drawn except on the parade ground at Chattanooga, which was as near as he ever got to the Spanish-American War.
XVI
THE CHURCH WITH AN OVERSHOT-WHEEL
Lakelands is not to be found in the catalogues of fashionable summer resorts. It lies on a low spur of the c.u.mberland range of mountains on a little tributary of the Clinch River. Lakelands proper is a contented village of two dozen houses situated on a forlorn, narrow-gauge railroad line. You wonder whether the railroad lost itself in the pine woods and ran into Lakelands from fright and loneliness, or whether Lakelands got lost and huddled itself along the railroad to wait for the cars to carry it home.
You wonder again why it was named Lakelands. There are no lakes, and the lands about are too poor to be worth mentioning.
Half a mile from the village stands the Eagle House, a big, roomy old mansion run by Josiah Rankin for the accommodation of visitors who desire the mountain air at inexpensive rates. The Eagle House is delightfully mismanaged. It is full of ancient instead of modern improvements, and it is altogether as comfortably neglected and pleasingly disarranged as your own home. But you are furnished with clean rooms and good and abundant fare: yourself and the piny woods must do the rest. Nature has provided a mineral spring, grape-vine swings, and croquet--even the wickets are wooden. You have Art to thank only for the fiddle-and-guitar music twice a week at the hop in the rustic pavilion.
The patrons of the Eagle House are those who seek recreation as a necessity, as well as a pleasure. They are busy people, who may be likened to clocks that need a fortnight"s winding to insure a year"s running of their wheels. You will find students there from the lower towns, now and then an artist, or a geologist absorbed in construing the ancient strata of the hills. A few quiet families spend the summers there; and often one or two tired members of that patient sisterhood known to Lakelands as "schoolmarms."
A quarter of a mile from the Eagle House was what would have been described to its guests as "an object of interest" in the catalogue, had the Eagle House issued a catalogue. This was an old, old mill that was no longer a mill. In the words of Josiah Rankin, it was "the only church in the United States, sah, with an overshot-wheel; and the only mill in the world, sah, with pews and a pipe organ." The guests of the Eagle House attended the old mill church each Sabbath, and heard the preacher liken the purified Christian to bolted flour ground to usefulness between the millstones of experience and suffering.
Every year about the beginning of autumn there came to the Eagle House one Abram Strong, who remained for a time an honoured and beloved guest. In Lakelands he was called "Father Abram," because his hair was so white, his face so strong and kind and florid, his laugh so merry, and his black clothes and broad hat so priestly in appearance. Even new guests after three or four days" acquaintance gave him this familiar t.i.tle.
Father Abram came a long way to Lakelands. He lived in a big, roaring town in the Northwest where he owned mills, not little mills with pews and an organ in them, but great, ugly, mountain-like mills that the freight trains crawled around all day like ants around an ant-heap.
And now you must be told about Father Abram and the mill that was a church, for their stories run together.
In the days when the church was a mill, Mr. Strong was the miller.
There was no jollier, dustier, busier, happier miller in all the land than he. He lived in a little cottage across the road from the mill.
His hand was heavy, but his toll was light, and the mountaineers brought their grain to him across many weary miles of rocky roads.