"No--you old dear!" She caressed his hand. "I think it would be good for you to feel you were doing something in the world, instead of running about with that absurd child." She wanted to say much more about Delia Conry, but bided a more fitting time.
"I haven"t run much so far," was all that Vickers replied. "You shouldn"t have bothered to come down," he added when the coffee was finished. "I just wanted to poke around the old place as I used to."
"I know--and I wanted to be with you, of course, this first time. Don"t you remember how we got our own breakfasts when we went shooting in the autumn?"
Her brother nodded.
"Those were good times, Vick! ... They were the best for both of us," she added less buoyantly. She pushed away her cup, put her arm about his shoulders, and kissed him.
"You shouldn"t say that, Belle!"
"Vickie, it"s so nice to hug you and have you all to myself before the others are up. I"ve missed some one to go batting with me, to hug and bully and chatter with. Now you"ve come I shall be a girl all over again."
And Isabelle was her old self for the first time since Vickers had joined her in Paris a month before,--no longer preoccupied, striving after some satisfaction that never perfectly arrived. Here the past was upon them both,--in spite of Osgood"s transformations,--a past when they had been close, in the precious intimacy of brother and sister. Outside in the new, very new Dutch garden, Isabelle resumed her anxieties of the day.
"The gardener ought not to have put those bulbs there,--he knows nothing really! I shall have to find another man.... I hope the chauffeur John engaged will get along with the houseman. The last one fought.... Oh, did I tell you that Potts is coming out Sat.u.r.day,--the great Dr. Potts? He wants to look me over,--get me ready for the winter campaign.... There"s Tom, writing at the desk by his window. h.e.l.lo, Tommy!" Isabelle waved a hand gayly at the balcony above them. Vickers smiled at the disconnected remarks, so like Isabelle. Her conversation was a loose bundle of impressions, reflections, wishes, and feelings, especially her feelings about other people. And Isabelle had a taste for lame cats, as her mother said,--at least those cats that obviously felt their lameness.
"You don"t like Tom," she rambled on. "Why not? Poor Tommy! he"s so sweet and clever. Why don"t you like Tom, Vickers? You must like him--because he"ll be here a lot, and I am awfully fond of him."
"Why "poor Tom"?" Vickers asked laconically.
"He"s had such a hard time, a struggle to get on,--his people were poor, very nice though,--the best Virginia, you know.... He"s ambitious, and he isn"t strong. If this play shouldn"t go--he"s counting on it so much!"
Vickers smilingly drew her hand beneath his arm and led her out through the garden into the meadow. "The same old Belle after all," he murmured. "I don"t see that Brother Cairy is badly off,--he has a good deal of petting, I fancy. I have heard all about that Virginia childhood and the rest of it.... Do you remember, Belle, when we used to go over to the Ed Prices"
and were scared when we saw a tramp in the bushes on the hill? And how we ran through the willows as if the devil was after us?--Who have the Ed Prices" farm now?"
"Don"t you know that father gave it to Alice Johnston? Wasn"t it nice of him! Her husband is in the road, in St. Louis, doing very well, John says.
Alice is over there now,--she brings the children on for the summer.... I don"t see much of her--she is so enveloped in children!"
"What"s become of the brother,--the one I licked and threw into Beaty"s pond?"
"The world seems to have licked him, too," Isabelle replied, laughing at the old memory. "The last time Alice spoke of him she said he was on some newspaper in Spokane, had been in the Klondike, I believe.... There"s Mr.
Gossom and Tom! We must go back for breakfast."
"Thanks! I have had mine. I think I"ll walk over to the Price place and see Alice. Don"t look for me before noon."
"But there are people coming for luncheon," Isabelle protested.
Vickers waved his hand to her and called back, "I think you"ll get on very well without me!"
Isabelle was already answering Cairy"s shout from the terrace. As Vickers took his way through the meadow, he thought how sweet she was, the real Isabelle, when one got to her as he had this morning. But she had never once mentioned John; her husband seemed to be very little in her mind.
CHAPTER XLV
Vickers strode off through the meadow that morning in the hope of finding familiar things, and indulging in old memories. The country roads had been widened and improved, and many of the farm-houses had given way to more or less pretentious "places." Motors whirled past him. The hill that he remembered as a veritable mountain was a mere rise in the straightened road over which a fast car plunged at full speed, covering him with dust and leaving behind a sickening odor. He struck off into a wood-lot; here and in the pastures and meadows he found himself again. It was nearly noon before he came up the lane that led to the Ed Price farm.
This was off the beat of the motors, away from the new "estates," at the end of a gra.s.sy road bordered by gray birches. The ample old house he remembered very well with its square central chimney and stretch of outbuildings that joined the yellow barn. At his knock a broad-shouldered, smiling woman came to the door, and after a moment"s hesitation exclaimed:--
"Why, Vick,--can it be you?"
"Yes, Cousin Alice."
She led him to the orchard in the rear, where with the aid of two little boys she was preparing vegetables for dinner. Tying on a large ap.r.o.n, she said:--
"You see we all have to take a hand. Won"t you have a bib and dip in, too?
... Children, this is your uncle--cousin. Which is it, Vickers?"
It was pleasant in the long gra.s.s under the apple tree, looking across the orchard of gnarled and stubby trees to the lane. Mrs. Johnston worked and talked, while the little boys with furtive glances pecked at the peas like two birds.
"I heard you were coming--I did not know just when. It is good to see you back, Vick!"
There was a comfortable largeness in the atmosphere of this woman, which suited the homely background of the square farm-house and the peaceful orchard. And there was a pleasant warmth in her tone.
"How do you find it?" she asked; "or perhaps you haven"t had time yet to know."
"It hardly seems like being home," Vickers admitted, "everything is so changed--everything but this!" he added gratefully, thinking of Alice as well as the farm.
"Yes,--the country has changed, so many rich people have bought places. And your old home--" She hesitated to complete her sentence.
"I can"t find my way around there." Vickers laughed. "What would the Colonel say!"
Alice looked as if she preferred not to think what the Colonel might say of his daughter"s alterations.
"I suppose Isabelle had to have more room,--she has so many people with her. And you will find that life has changed over here in ten years."
"Nothing but change!"
"Except among the poor! ... No, Tot, you can"t eat the pods. There, boys, take sister and run out to the barn to help Charlie wash the buggy.... How does Isabelle seem to you?"
"I scarcely know--I haven"t made up my mind. How does she seem to _you_?"
"She does too much,--she"s not strong enough," Alice replied evasively.
"No, she doesn"t seem strong; but she can"t keep still!"
"She gets so little comfort out of anything,--that is the worst of it.
Sometimes I wish John weren"t so strong,--that he would have an illness, so that Isabelle would have something definite to do."
"She would have a trained nurse!" Vickers suggested with a laugh.
"She is such a dear,--I wish she were happier!"
"Perhaps that isn"t in the blood."