“You ‘re forgetting,” she said.
“Yes, I was,” replied Ford, recollecting himself. “I was thinking that it must have seemed as if some savage beast had torn you.”
He looked at the hand on which she wore her ring, and she hid the hand in the folds of her dress, and turned her head away. Then she glanced at him, as if about to answer, but she only said, “When you get home, you must wet the cloth again.”
“Thanks,” said Ford; “it will have to look after itself when it stops stinging.”
She looked troubled. “Does it hurt you very badly?”
“I suppose it’s going through the usual formalities.”
“You had better show it to father — Oh!” she cried, blushing, “I have forgotten the leaves for him.” She almost ran in retracing her steps.
Ford pursued her. “Miss Boynton, let me go and get them.”
“No, no, I can get them. You mustn’t come. I don’t wish you to come.” She looked over her shoulder, and saw him standing irresolute. “Don’t wait for me; I can take them home.”
He lingered a moment, looking after her, and then turned and walked away. He did not go back to the infirmary, but kept on towards his own house, and arrived with a vague smile on his lips, which had shaped them ever since he left her. He scarcely realized then that she had been quick to avail herself of a chance to be alone with him, and that when once with him she had been willing to delay their parting. A jarring sensation of alternate abandon and reserve was what finally remained of the interview in his nerves.
XX.
IN the morning, when he walked up into the village, he found her coming out of the office gate. She faltered at sight of him, and glanced anxiously toward him. He had meant to stop at the office, but now he had a senseless impulse to keep on his way. He hesitated, and then crossed to where she stood. She had a small basket in her hand, and she said that Elder Joseph had given her leave to look over his vines, and see if there were any grapes ripe enough yet for her father to eat. There was an indefinable intention in her manner to detain him, which he felt as inarticulately, and there was something more intangible still, — something between fearful question and utter trust of him; something that chiefly intimated itself in the appeal with which her eyes rested on his when she first looked up. He dropped his own eyes before he gaze which he knew to be unconscious on her )art, and she said suddenly, as if recollecting herself, “Oh! Will you show your hand to father? How is it?”
“That’s all right,” answered Ford, putting it into his pocket. She began to walk towards the garden, and he walked with her. “It isn’t my work hand.”
“Work?” she asked.
“I keep up my scribbling. I write for the papers,” he explained further, at a glance of inquiry from her.
“Some of the brothers and sisters write, too,” she said. “The Shakers have a paper.”
“Yes, I have seen it,” said Ford. “They write for pleasure and from duty. I am sorry to say that my work is mostly for the pay it brings. I’m hoping to do something in another way by and by. In the mean time I write and sell my work. It’s what they call pot-boiling.”
“I didn’t know they paid for writing!”
“They do, — a little. You can starve very decently on it.”
“Father used to write for the paper at home, but they never paid him anything. He is slow getting well,” she added, with a sad inconsequence, “and I suppose he will never be quite so strong again. But it must be a good sign when he has these cravings. It seems as if he couldn’t wait till the grapes are ripe; the doctor says he can have all the fruit he wants. Have you ever been in this garden before?” she asked, as they entered the bounds of Brother Joseph’s peculiar province.
“No,” replied Ford, looking round him with a pleasure for which he could not account. “But I feel as if I might have been here always.”
“Yes. I suppose it looks like everybody’s garden. It’s like our garden at home.” He glanced about it with her, as they stood in the planked path together. At one side of the beds of pot-herbs, and apart from the ranks of sweet-corn, the melons, the beans, the faded peas, and the long rows of beets and carrots, was a space allotted to flowers, the simple annuals that have long been driven from our prim parterres. “Our garden ran back of the house down to the river; but it was all neglected and run wild. There was a summer-house on the edge of the terrace, and the floor was rotten; the trellises for the grapes were slanting every which way.”
She seemed to be recalling these aspects in a fond reverie, rather than addressing him; but they gave him a vivid sense of her past. He saw her in this old garden by the river-side, before any blight had fallen upon her life. He imagined her a very happy young girl, there; not romantic, but simple and good, and even gay. “I know that sort of a garden,” he said.
“Yes,” she continued, looking dreamily at Brother Joseph’s flower-beds, “here is prince’s feather, and coxcomb, that I hated to touch when I was little, because it seemed like flesh and blood. And here is bachelor’s button, and mourning bride, and marigolds, and touch-me-not.” —
“I had forgotten them,” said Ford. “I suppose I used to see them when I was a boy. But it’s a long time since I was in the country.”
“You must be glad to get back.”
“No,” replied Ford. “I can’t honestly say that I am. I wanted to get away from it too badly for that. The country is for the pleasure of people born in town.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Nothing very definite. When I began to grow up, I found the country in my way. I dare say I should have been uncomfortable anywhere. I was very uncomfortable in the country.”
“I have never been much in the city,” she said. “But I didn’t like it.”
He remembered that he had helped to make the city hateful to her, though she seemed to have forgotten it, and he said, in evasion of this recollection, “It’s different with a man. I had my way to make, and the city was my chance.”
“And didn’t you ever feel homesick?” she asked.
“I used to dream about the place after I came away. I used to dream that I had gone back there to live. That was my nightmare. It always woke me up.”
“And did you never go back?”
“No. I have never looked on those hills since I left them, and I never will if I can help it. I suppose it’s a matter of association,” he continued. “My associations of not getting on are with the country; my associations of getting on in some sort are with the city. That is enough to account for my hating the one and liking the other.”
“Yes,” said Egeria, “that is true.” She added after a moment, “Have they ever told you what Joseph’s associations with this region are?”
“No. I should like to know.”
“He saw it in a dream, years before he came here. When he first visited the Vardley Shakers he recognized it, and took it for a sign that he was to stay.”
“That was remarkable,” said Ford. Egeria was silent. “Do you believe in such things, Miss Boynton?” he asked.
She turned away as if she had not heard him, and began to search the vines for ripe grapes. She went down one side of the long trellis, and he followed down the other. Between the leaves and twisting stems he caught glimpses of her yellow hair and her blue eyes.
“Do you find any?” she asked.
“Any what?”
“Grapes.”
“I hadn’t looked.”
She sighed. “It’s about as well. There don’t seem to be any.” After a while she stopped, and he saw her glance at him through the leaves. “I don’t know whether I believe in those things or not. Do you?”
“No.”
“The Shakers do. They all think they have had some sign. But I shouldn’t like to know things beforehand. It wouldn’t help you to bear the bad. Besides, it doesn’t seem to leave you free, somehow. I think the great thing is to be free.”
“It’s the first thing.”
She waited again, and now Ford said, “Yes, your father said it was that.”
“It made everybody suspect us. I didn’t care so much for myself after I got away from home, where they didn’t know us; but I cared for father. He suffered so from the things he had to bear. You can’t think what they were.”
“I’m ashamed to think what some of them were,” said Ford.
She paused a moment. “You mean what you said to him in Boston?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, that hurt him,” she said, simply. “He had been very proud of the interest you took the first time you came. He said you were the only man of science that had taken any notice of him. Afterwards — he couldn’t make it out.”
“I don’t wonder!” cried Ford. “It was incredible. But I never came to threaten him.”
“He was more puzzled when you wouldn’t meet him in that public séance. Why wouldn’t you?”
“Why?” demanded Ford, in dismay.
“Yes, why?”
“I don’t know that I can say.”
“But you had some reason. Was it because you thought you would fail?”
Ford did not answer directly. “Can you believe that I wanted to consider him in the matter?” he asked, in turn.
“Yes, that is what I did believe.” She drew a long breath, and hid herself wholly behind a thick mass of the vine. “Did you — did you get a letter from me?”
“Yes,” said Ford.
“I thought that I ought to write it; I didn’t know whether to do it. But I couldn’t help it. I was glad you refused.”
“I was glad you wrote the letter. It wasn’t always a comfort to me, though. I had no right to any thanks from you. I felt as if I had extorted it.”
“Extorted it!” she repeated, with the same eager persistence with which she had pressed him for his reason in refusing to meet her father. “Do you mean — do you mean that you tried to make me write the letter?”
“How could I try to make you write me a letter?” demanded the young man, stupefied.
“I don’t know. I was not sure that I understood. I can’t tell you — now. Did you destroy it?”
“Destroy what?”
“The letter.”
“No: I kept it.”
“Oh — will you give it back to me?”
“Certainly.” Ford unfolded a pocket-book, and took out a worn-looking scrap of paper, which he passed through an open space in the trellis. Her hand appeared at the aperture and received it. A hesitation made itself felt through the vines. “Will you give it back to me, Miss Boynton?”
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of in it,” she said, and her hand reappeared at the open space with the letter.
“Thanks,” said Ford.
“They will think I am a long time looking for a few grapes,” said Egeria.
“They’ve no idea how few there are, and how long it takes to find them,” answered Ford.
She laughed. “Are they scarce on your side, too?”
“There are no ripe bunches at all. Shall I pick single ones?” —
“Oh, yes; any that you can get. It’s rather early for them yet.”
“Is it? I thought it was about the right time.”
“That shows you haven’t lived in the country for a good while. You’ve forgotten.”
“Yes,” assented Ford. “I haven’t seen grapes on the vines for ten years.”
“Haven’t you been out of the city in that time?”
“Not if I could help it.”
“And why can’t you help it now?”
“They told me I wasn’t well, and I’d better go to the mountains.” He sketched in a few words his course in coming to Vardley.
“I thought you looked pale, when you first came,” she said. After a little while she added, “You can bear it if you ‘re getting better, I suppose.” —
He laughed. “Oh, it isn’t so disagreeable here. I’m interested in your Shaker friends.”
“They think they are living the true life,” said the girl.
“Do you?” asked Ford.
“They are very good; but I have seen good people in the world outside,” she answered. “I think they are the kind that would be good anywhere. I shouldn’t like having things in common with others. I should like a house of my own. And I should like a world of my own.”
“Yes,” said Ford, laughing. “I should like the private house, too. But I don’t think I could manage a whole world.”
“I mean a world that is for the people that live in it. When they die, they have their own world, and they oughtn’t to try to come back into ours.”
“Oh, decidedly, I agree with you there!” cried the young man.
She seemed not to like his light tone. “I know that I don’t express it well.”
“It couldn’t be expressed better.”
“I meant that I hoped any friend of mine would be too well off to be willing to come back.”
“Yes.”
They found themselves at the end of the trellis, and face to face. He dropped his grapes into the basket, where some loose berries rolled about. She looked ruefully at the result of their joint labors.
“Well!” she said, and they walked out of the garden together.
At the gate Ford took out his watch, and stopped with a guilty abruptness. “Miss Boynton, I am going away, — I am going to Boston, this afternoon.!” —
“Going away?”
“Yes, I have business in Boston. Can I do any thing for your father or — for you — there?”
“No,” she said, looking at him in bewilderment. “Will you come and say good-by to him? Or perhaps you had better not,” she faltered.
“I’m coming back this evening!” he cried in astonishment. “Will you lend me this basket?” he asked.
“Why, yes. It belongs to Rebecca.”
“Don’t tell her I borrowed it. I must go now. Good-by!”
“Good-by.” She stood looking after him till a turn of the road to Vardley Village hid him.
When he reached Boston he found that the year had turned from summer to autumn with a distinctness which he had not noted in the country. The streets, where his nerves expected the fierce heat in which he had left them, were swept by cool inland airs. The crowds upon the pavement had perceptibly increased; a tide of women, fresh from their sojourn at the sea-side and in the country, was pouring down Winter Street, reanimated for shopping, and with their thoughts set upon ribbons with a vividness that shone in their faces. The third week of the fall season was placarded at the Museum; and in the Public Garden, which he crossed upon an errand to his lodging, there was a blaze of autumnal flowers in place of the summer bloom which he had left. He met here and there groups of public-school children loitering homeward with their books. The great, toiling majority who never go out of town were there, of course; the many whose vacations and purses are short had all returned; it would be some weeks yet before the few who can indulge the luxury of the colored leaves and the peculiar charm of still September days out of town would come home. It was the moment in which Ford had ordinarily the most content in his city. He liked to renew his tacit companionship with all these returning exiles; the promise of winter snugness brought him almost a domestic joy; the keen sparkle of the early-lighted gas in the street lamps and the shop-windows was a pleasure as distinct as it was inarticulate. But now he felt estranged amid the cheerful spectacle of the September afternoon. The country quiet, which he used to hate, tenderly appealed to him; the quaint life o
f the Shaker village, of which he had, without knowing it, become a part, reclaimed him; the cry of a jay that strutted down an over-hanging branch to defy him as he walked along the road, after parting with Egeria, was still in his ears; his vision was full of the sunny glisten of meadows where the Shakers’ hired men were cutting the rowan, and of roadsides fringed with golden-rod and asters. He was impatient till he could be off again, and he made haste back to the fruiterer’s where he had left his basket with an order to fill it with grapes. He was vexed to find it standing empty in a corner.
“You didn’t say what kind you wanted,” explained the fruiterer.
“Put in what you like, — the best kind,” said Ford. “You can judge; they’re for a sick person.”
“All right.” The man filled the basket, and Ford went to another counter and took up a bouquet, which he added to his purchase.
He bought two or three newspapers, in the cars, and read them on the way back, throwing those he was not reading over the flowers on the seat beside him, so as to hide them.
He got out of the train at Vardley Station with the sense of having committed a public action. He was rescued from this embarrassment, and curiously restored to his self-possession at sight of Egeria, who came driving the old Shaker horse over from the post-office, as the train halted. He was not alarmed to see her, but he asked formally, “Nothing the matter, I hope, Miss Boynton?”
“Oh, no. I came to get the letters; and I thought I would wait for you, if you were on this train.”
“Thanks,” said Ford, putting the basket into the open buggy, and mounting to a place beside her. She looked down at it, but said nothing. He took the reins from her, and drove out of the village before he spoke again. “I have got some grapes for your father.”
She laughed, and lifted the basket at once into her lap. “I thought you were going for something,” she said, “after you were gone; and I guessed with Sister Frances. I guessed it was grapes, and she guessed it was peaches. You thought he would be disappointed at Elder Joseph’s vines.” She raised the lid of the basket and after a glance pushed it to again with a quick gesture, and looked gravely at him. “That is too much,” she said.
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 104
