"I know," she admitted softly, "they said that twenty years ago, didn"t they?"
"Well, she"s been on her back almost all the time during those twenty years. It"s wonderful what she"s borne--her angelic patience. And, of course her hopes all hang on me now. She"s got n.o.body else."
"But I thought Miss Kesiah was so devoted to her."
"Oh, she is--she is, but Aunt Kesiah has never really understood her.
Just to look at them, you can tell how different they are. That"s how it is Blossom--I"m tied, you see--tied hand and foot."
"Yes, I see," she rejoined. "Your uncle was tied, too. I"ve heard that he used to say--tied with a silk string, he called it."
"You wouldn"t have me murder my mother, would you?" he demanded irritably, kicking at the twisted root of a willow.
"Good-bye, Mr. Jonathan," she responded quietly, and started toward the house.
"Wait a minute,--oh, Blossom, come back!" he entreated--but without pausing she ran quickly up the crooked path under the netting of shadows.
"So that"s the end," said Gay angrily. "By Jove, I"m well out of it,"
and went home to dinner. "I won"t see her again," he thought as he entered the house, and the next instant, when he ascended the staircase, "I never saw such a mouth in my life. It looks as if it would melt if you kissed it---"
The dinner, which was pompously served by Abednego and a younger butler, seemed to him tasteless and stale, and he complained querulously of a bit of cork he found in his wine gla.s.s. His mother, supported by cushions in her chair at the head of the table, to which he had brought her in his arms, lamented his lack of appet.i.te, and inquired tenderly if he were suffering? For the first time in his life he discovered that he was extinguishing, with difficulty, a smouldering resentment against her. Kesiah"s ugliness became a positive affront to him, and he felt as bitterly toward her as though she had purposely designed her appearance in order to annoy him. The wine she drank showed immediately in her face, and he determined to tell his mother privately that she must forbid her sister to drink anything but water. By the dim gilt framed mirror above the mantel he discovered that his own features were flushed, also, but a red face was not, he felt, a cause of compunction to one of his s.e.x.
"You haven"t eaten your mutton, dear," said Mrs. Gay anxiously. "I ordered it especially because you like it. Are you feeling unwell?"
"I"m not hungry," he replied, rather crossly. "This place gets on my nerves, and will end by driving me mad."
"I suppose you"d better go away," she returned, plaintively wounded. "I wouldn"t be so selfish as to want to keep you by me if you are unhappy."
"I don"t want to leave you, mother--but, I ought to get back to the stock market. It"s no good idling around--I don"t think I was cut out for a farmer."
"Try this sherry. Your uncle brought if from Spain, and it was buried during the war."
He filled his gla.s.s, drained it quickly, and with an effort recovered his temper.
"Yes, I"d better go," he repeated, and knew while he spoke that he could not leave as long as the thought of Blossom tormented him. Swift half visions of her loveliness--of certain delectable details of her face or figure flitted always before him. He saw her eyes, like frosted periwinkles under their warm white lids, which appeared too heavy to open wide; the little brown mole that played up and down when she laughed; and the soft, babyish creases that encircled her throat. Each of these memories set his heart to a quicker beating and caused a warm sensation, like the caress of a burning sun, to pa.s.s over his body.
"The Revercombs over at the mill are kicking up a row, mother," he said suddenly, again filling his wine gla.s.s and again putting it down empty, "have they any sort of standing in the county, do you suppose?"
"I"ve heard they call themselves connections of the Revercombs higher in the State, dear--but I don"t know and I"ve never come into contact with any of the country people about here. Kesiah may be able to tell you."
Until then neither of them had alluded to Kesiah, whom they accepted by ignoring much as if she had been one of the familiar pieces of furniture, at which they never glanced because they were so firmly convinced that it stood in its place. She had eaten her dinner with the relish of a person to whom food, taken at regular hours three times a day, has become the prime consolation in life; and when the question was put to her, she was obliged to ask them to repeat it because she had been thoughtfully regarding a dish of baked tomatoes and wondering if a single yielding to temptation would increase a tendency to the gout that had lately developed.
"What do you know of the Revercombs, Kesiah? Are they in any degree above the common people about here?"
"The miller is a rather extraordinary character, I believe," she answered, lifting the spoon out of the dish of tomatoes as it was handed to her, and then shaking her head with a sigh and letting it fall. "Mr.
Chamberlayne says he is quite well educated, but the rest of them, of course, are very primitive and plain. They have always been strait-laced and honest and I hear that the mother--she came from Piping Tree and was one of the Hawtreys--is violently opposed to her son"s marriage with Molly Merryweather. There is a daughter, also, who is said to be beautiful though rather dull."
"Yes, I"ve seen the girl," observed Mrs. Gay, "heavy and blond, isn"t she? The mother, I should say, is decidedly the character of the family.
She has rather terrible convictions, and once a great many years ago, she came over here--forced her way into my sick-room to rebuke me about the behaviour of the servants or something. Your Uncle Jonathan was obliged to lead her out and pacify her--she was quite upset, I remember.
By the way, Kesiah," she pursued, "haven"t I heard that Mr. Mullen is attentive to the daughter? It seems a pity, for he is quite a superior young man--his sermons are really remarkable, and he might easily have done better."
"Oh, that was when he first came here, Angela, before he met Molly Merryweather. It"s singular the fascination that girl possesses for the men around here."
Gay laughed shortly. "Well, it"s a primitive folk, isn"t it?" he said, "and gets on my nerves after a while."
Through the afternoon he was restless and out of humour, tormented less by the memory of Blossom"s face than by the little brown mole on her cheek. He resolved a dozen times a day that he would not see her, and in the very act of resolving, he would begin to devise means of waylaying her as she went down to the store or pa.s.sed to and from the pasture. A certain s.e.x hatred, which is closely allied to the mere physical fact of love, a.s.serted itself at times, and he raged hotly against her coldness, her indifference, against the very remoteness that attracted him. Then he would soften to her, and with the softening there came always the longing not only to see, but to touch her--to breathe her breath, to lay his hand on her throat.
The next day he went to the willow copse, but she did not come. On the one following, he took down his gun and started out to shoot partridges, but when the hour of the meeting came, he found himself wandering over the fields near the Revercombs" pasture with his eye on the little path down which she had come that rimy October morning. The third afternoon, when he had watched for her in a fury of disappointment, he ordered his horse and went for a gallop down the sunken road to the mill. At the first turn, where the woods opened into a burned out clearing, he came suddenly upon her, and the hunger at his heart gave place to a delicious sense of fulfilment.
"Blossom, how can you torture me so?" he exclaimed when he had dismounted at her side and flung his arm about her.
She drew slowly away, submissive even in her avoidance.
"I did not mean to torture you--I"m sorry," she answered humbly.
"It"s come to this!" he burst out, "that I can"t stand it another week without losing my senses. I"ve thought till I"m distracted. Blossom, will you marry me?"
"O Mr. Jonathan!" she gasped while her breast fluttered like a bird"s.
"Not openly, of course--there"s my mother to think of--but I"ll take you to Washington--we"ll find a way somehow. Can"t you arrange to go to Applegate for a day or two, or let your people think you have?"
"I can--yes--" she responded in the same troubled tone. "I"ve a school friend living there, and I sometimes spend several days with her."
"Then go on Sat.u.r.day--no, let"s see--this is Tuesday. Can you go on Friday, darling?"
"Perhaps. I can"t tell--I think so--I must see."
As he drew her forward, she bent toward him, still softly, still humbly, and an instant later, his arms were about her and his lips pressed hers.
CHAPTER XII
THE DREAM AND THE REAL
The following Friday Abel drove Blossom in his gig to the house of her school friend in Applegate, where she was to remain for a week. On his way home he stopped at the store for a bottle of harness oil, and catching the red glow of the fire beyond the threshold of the public room, he went in for a moment to ask old Adam Doolittle about a supply of hominy meal he had ready for him at the mill. As the ancient man crouched over the fire, with his bent hands outstretched and his few silvery hairs rising in the warmth, his profile showed with the exaggeration of a twelfth century grotesque, the features so distorted by the quivering shadows that his beaked nose appeared to rest in the crescent-shaped silhouette of his chin. His mouth was open, and from time to time he shook his head and muttered to himself in an undertone--a habit he had fallen into during the monotonous stretches of Mr. Mullen"s sermons. Across from him sat Jim Halloween, and in the middle of the hearth, Solomon Hatch stood wiping the frost from his face with a red cotton handkerchief.
"It"s time you were thinkin" about goin" home, I reckon, old Adam,"
remarked Mrs. Bottom. "You"ve had yo" two gla.s.ses of cider an" it ain"t proper for a man of yo" years to be knockin" around arter dark. This or"nary is goin" to be kept decent as long as I keep it."
"To be sure, to be sure," replied old Adam, nodding cheerfully at the fire, "I ain"t all I once was except in the matter or corn-shuckin"--an"
a cold-snap like this goes clean to the bones when they ain"t covered."
"Did you carry any of yo" winesaps into Applegate, Abel?" inquired Jim Halloween. "I"m savin" mine till Christmas, when the prices will take a jump."
"No, I only drove Blossom over. She"s to spend a few days in town."
"Mr. Jonathan"s gone off, too, I see," observed Solomon. "He went by at the top of his speed while I was haulin" timber this mornin". Thar"s bad blood still betwixt you an" him, aint" thar, Abel?"