It seemed to Isabelle that she had been journeying on like this for uncounted time, and would plod on like this always,--chilled, numbed to the heart, moving through a frozen, lonely world far from the voices of men, remote from the mult.i.tudinous feet bent on the joyous errands of life....
She had sunk into a lethargy of body and mind, in which the cheerless physical atmosphere reflected the condition of being within,--something empty or dead, with a dull ache instead of consciousness....
The sleigh surmounted the long hill, swept at a trot around the edge of the mountain through dark woods, then out into an unexpected plateau of open fields. There was a cl.u.s.ter of lights in a small village, and they came to a sudden stop before a little brick house that was swathed in spruce boughs, like a blanket drawn close about the feet, to keep out the storm.
The door opened and against the lighted room a small black figure stood out. Isabelle, stumbling numbly up the steps, fell into the arms of Margaret Pole.
"You must be nearly dead, poor dear! I have lighted a fire in your room upstairs.... I am so glad you have come. I have hoped for it so long!"
When they were before the blazing wood fire, Margaret unfastened Isabelle"s long cloak and they stood, both in black, pale in the firelight, and looked at each other, then embraced without a word.
"I wanted to come," Isabelle said at last when she was settled into the old arm-chair beside the fire, "when you first wrote. But I was too ill. I seemed to have lost not only strength but will to move.... It"s good to be here."
"They are the nicest people, these Shorts! He"s a wheelwright and blacksmith, and she used to teach school. It"s all very plain, like one of our mountain places in Virginia; but it"s heavenly peaceful--removed.
You"ll feel in a day or two that you have left everything behind you, down there below!"
"And the children?"
"They are splendidly. And Ned is really getting better--the doctor has worked a miracle for the poor little man. We think it won"t be long now before he can walk and do what the others do. And he is happy. He used to have sullen fits,--resented his misfortune just like a grown person. He"s different now!"
There was a buoyant note in Margaret"s deep tones. Pale as she was in her black dress and slight,--"the mere spirit of a woman," as Falkner had called her,--there was a gentler curve to the lips, less chafing in the sunken eyes.
"I suppose it is a great relief," thought Isabelle,--"Larry"s death, even with all its horror,--she can breathe once more, poor Margaret!"
"Tell me!" she said idly, as Margaret wheeled the lounge to the fire for Isabelle to rest on; "however did you happen to come up here to the land"s end in Vermont--or is it Canada?"
"Grosvenor is just inside the line.... Why, it was the doctor--Dr. Renault, you know, the one who operated on Ned. I wanted to be near him. It was in July after Larry"s death that we came, and I haven"t been away since. And I shall stay, always perhaps, at least as long as the doctor can do anything for the little man. And for me.... I like it. At first it seemed a bit lonesome and far away, this tiny village shut in among the hills, with n.o.body to talk to. But after a time you come to see a lot just here in this mite of a village. One"s gla.s.ses become adjusted, as the doctor says, and you can see what you have never taken the time to see before. There"s a stirring world up here on Grosvenor Flat! And the country is so lovely,--bigger and sterner than my old Virginia hills, but not unlike them."
"And why does your wonderful doctor live out of the world like this?"
"Dr. Renault used to be in New York, you know,--had his own private hospital there for his operations. He had to leave the city and his work because he was threatened with consumption. For a year he went the usual round of cures,--to the Adirondacks, out West; and he told me that one night while he was camping on the plains in Arizona, lying awake watching the stars, it came to him suddenly that the one thing for him to do was to stop this health-hunt, go back where he came from, and go to work--and forget he was ill until he died. The next morning he broke camp, rode out to the railroad, came straight here from Arizona, and has been here ever since."
"But why _here_?"
"Because he came from Grosvenor as a boy. It must be a French family--Renault--and it is only a few miles north to the line.... So he came here, and the climate or the life or something suits him wonderfully.
He works like a horse!"
"Is he interesting, your doctor?" Isabelle asked idly.
"That"s as you take him," Margaret replied with a little smile. "Not from Conny Woodyard"s point of view, I should say. He has too many blind sides.
But I have come to think him a really great man! And that, my dear, is more than what we used to call "interesting.""
"But how can he do his work up here?"
"That"s the wonderful part of it all! He"s _made_ the world come to him,--what he needs of it. He says there is nothing marvellous in it; that all through the middle ages the sick and the needy flocked to remote spots, to deserts and mountain villages, wherever they thought help was to be found. Most great cures are not made even now in the cities."
"But hospitals?"
"He has his own, right here in Grosvenor Flat, and a perfect one. The great surgeons and doctors come up here and send patients here. He has all he can do, with two a.s.sistants."
"He must be a strong man."
"You will see! The place is Renault. It all bears the print of his hand. He says himself that given a man with a real idea, a persistent idea, and he will make the desert blossom like a garden or move mountains,--in some way he will make that idea part of the organism of life! ... There! I am quoting the doctor again, the third time. It"s a habit one gets into up here!"
At the tinkle of a bell below, Margaret exclaimed:--
"It"s six and supper, and you have had no real rest. You see the hours are primitive here,--breakfast at seven, dinner noon, and supper six. You will get used to it in a few days."
The dining room was a corner of the old kitchen that had been part.i.tioned off. It was warm and bright, with an open fire, and the supper that Mrs.
Short put on the table excellent. Mr. Short came in presently and took his seat at the head of the table. He was a large man, with a bony face softened by a thick grizzled beard. He said grace in a low voice, and then served the food. Isabelle noticed that his large hands were finely formed.
His manner was kindly, in a subtle way that of the host at his own table; but he said little or nothing at first. The children made the conversation, piping up like little birds about the table and keeping the older people laughing. Isabelle had always felt that children at the table were a bore, either forward and a nuisance, or like little lynxes uncomfortably absorbing conversation, that was not suited to them. Perhaps that was because she knew few families where children were socially educated to take their place at the table, being relegated for the most part to the nurse or the governess.
Isabelle was much interested in Mr. Short. His wife, a thin, gray-haired woman, who wore spectacles and had a timid manner of speaking, was less of a person than the blacksmith. Sol Short, she found out later, had never been fifty miles from Grosvenor Flat in his life, but he had the poise, the self-contained air of a man who had acquired all needed worldly experience.
"Was it chilly coming up the Pa.s.s?" he asked Isabelle. "I thought "twould be when it came on to blow some from the mountains. And Pete Jackson"s horses _are_ slow."
"They seemed frozen!"
The large man laughed.
"Well, you would take your time if you made that journey twice a day most every day in the year. You can"t expect them to get exactly excited over it, can you?"
"Mr. Short," Margaret remarked, "I saw a light this evening in the house on Wing Hill. What can it be?"
"Some folks from down state have moved in,--renters, I take it."
"How do you know that?"
"From the look of the stuff Bailey"s boy was hauling up there this morning.
It"s travelled often."
"Mr. Short," Margaret explained merrily, "is the Grosvenor _Times_. His shop is the centre of our universe. From it he sees all that happens in our world--or his cronies tell him what he can"t see. He knows what is going on in the remotest corner of the township,--what Hiram Bailey got for his potatoes, where Bill King sold his apples, whether Mrs. Beans"s second son has gone to the Academy at White River. He knows the color and the power of every horse, the number of cows on every farm, the make of every wagon,--everything!"
"Not so bad as all that!" the blacksmith protested. It was evidently a family joke. "We don"t gossip, do we, Jenny?"
"We don"t gossip! But we keep our eyes open and tell what we see."
It was a pleasant, human sort of atmosphere. After the meal the two friends went back to Isabelle"s couch and fire, Mrs. Short offering to put the youngest child to bed for Margaret.
"She likes to," Margaret explained. "Her daughter has gone away to college.... It is marvellous what that frail-looking woman can do; she does most of the cooking and housework, and never seems really busy. She prepared this daughter for college! She makes me ashamed of the little I accomplish,--and she reads, too, half a dozen magazines and all the stray books that come her way."
"But how can you stand it?" Isabelle asked bluntly; "I mean for months."
"Stand it? You mean the hours, the Strongs, Grosvenor? ... Why, I feel positively afraid when I think that some day I may be shaken out of this nest! You will see. It is all so simple and easy, so human and natural, just like Mr. Short"s day"s work,--the same thing for thirty years, ever since he married the school teacher and took this house. You"ll hear him building the fires to-morrow before daylight. He is at his shop at six-thirty, home at twelve, back again at one, milks the cow at five, and supper at six, bed at nine. Why, it"s an Odyssey, that day,--as Mr. Short lives it!"
Margaret opened the window and drew in the shutters. Outside it was very still, and the snow was falling in fine flakes.
"The children will be so glad to-morrow," she remarked, "with all this snow. They are building a large bob-sled under Mr. Short"s direction....
No!" she resumed her former thread of thought. "It doesn"t count so much as we used to think--the variety of the thing you do, the change,--the novelty. It"s the mind you do it with that makes it worth while."
Isabelle stared at the ceiling which was revealed fitfully by the dying fire. She still felt dead, numb, but this was a peaceful sort of grave, so remote, so silent. That endless torturing thought--the chain of weary reproach and useless speculation, which beset every waking moment--had ceased for the moment. It was like quiet after a perpetual whirring sound.