CHAPTER XII

SHADOWS

At home, back of the village, and extending so far away that I had never yet explored the uttermost reaches of it, lies a long, low hill. It is wooded in places with patriarchal oaks, so stately and far-reaching that they call to mind the tales of fairy forests, where knights in glittering armor rode through; or giants lived in hidden houses in the midst of them.

With the varying seasons this hill always seems to tell the silent story of the feelings in nature called forth by the changes. It speaks of joy in the spring; a gentle sadness in the summer; a glorious renunciation when the living green must give way to the gorgeous, though dying, red; and in winter there seems to be a spirit of patience.

Back of the actual summit of the hill, and partly shut in by its crest, which runs along half of its rounding curve, and skirted on the other side by the woods, where the oaks and chestnuts grow, is an expansive depression, wide, rolling, beautiful. The ground, which is barren red clay, is thickly coated over with a scrubby growth, green for only a short while every spring, when there are millions of minute blue blossoms deep-set in its mazes. Later, it takes on a dull brown which lasts until fall, when it changes to a withered yellow.

A few small cedar trees, growing sometimes singly, sometimes in sparse clumps, are dotted around over the ground, but the only actual beauty of the place is its look of great space. It is the only spot I know of where I can see sky enough.

The sky! Yes, that is its charm. It seems to close down upon this cup with such a _nearness_ that on summer days you can almost reach up and touch the clouds. And they are unbelievably lovely at such times. Then on other days, when the heavens are hidden by long, sweeping bars of heavy gray cloud, and the wind comes tearing over the crest, like a monster knowingly cruel and relentless--then the expanse of earth and sky indeed seem to run together; but the look of nearness is lost. The feeling of immensity is crushing; and you have the sense of being brought face to face with an unseen Presence.

Cathedrals hold this Presence, but tamed, trained and refined sometimes out of all semblance to its mighty prototype of the wilds.

Years ago, when I was a child, Cousin Eunice used to take me up here, for she was the first one of our family ever to discover the place. To be sure, it had always been there, and we had driven around it whenever it had been necessary, but nobody ever dreamed of wanting to take walks there, for it is a wild, lonesome-looking spot, besides being cut up in places by great gulches. In the exact center of the depression there is the bed of a prehistoric lake. The stone basin is there, with all signs of water, at a tremendous distance in the past.

"Isn't it _great_!" Cousin Eunice exclaimed, as we came upon the spot for the first time in our rambles. "Why, it is like being in another world, where everything is fresh, and free, and primitive. Let us pretend that this is our sacred garden, where we can carry only happy thoughts; where we can look at this immensity and learn the true value of things!" So we would often walk here, sometimes with Rufe; and then they would discuss the mysteries of Life and Death and Abiding Love.

On the Monday morning after the events of Sunday which I have just recorded, I awoke with an overpowering desire to get away to this "garden." I wanted to get out to where there was sky enough! To a place so immense that I could think it all out and get a true value of things! I wanted to dwell on the great happiness that has come to me; to take in, if I could, the unbelievable fact that I have been whirled away through the infinite spaces of human longing until I have come upon and possessed the star of my heart's desire. Star of my heart's desire! King or sultan, he is the "god of my idolatry,"--Richard Chalmers, my lover!

And while I craved this sight of a wild, free nature, I felt keenly that I should wish, on a morning like this, that the clouds and sky and trees should shrink into their proper place in the background of the mighty stage. They should move back and make room for me; and my triumphant ego should come and place itself in the limelight for me to review. I wanted to see myself at the age of Eve.

I explained some of this feeling to Cousin Eunice, in idiomatic English, after breakfast on Monday morning, but here was a hue and cry. It was the wrong thing for me to do, she declared. I should stay here and get better acquainted with my fiancé. Besides, the first few weeks of a courtship were too dear and precious to be spent apart! I should die of homesickness for a sight of this beautiful city where I had gained my new-found joy!

I mentioned the matter to Richard when he came that evening--that I wanted to go home for a day or so anyway, then I might come back--and I found that he approved the plan most decidedly.

"I shall be out of town for several weeks," he said, "and of course I don't want you here in the city while I'm away." He spoke with a half-playful air, but I had already learned to read his expression so well that I knew he was in earnest. "You don't suppose for a minute I'm going to give any other fellow a chance to steal you away from me now, do you? Before I have had time to realize my good fortune?"

"I wish you would _not_ talk that way, even in jest," I told him seriously. "It implies a kind of distrust."

He had been there quite half an hour when this took place, but he came over to my chair and kissed me for the first time. If Richard does treat his wife as a plaything, as Cousin Eunice suggested, I don't believe he will find it necessary to shower many violets and diamonds upon her. I believe that kisses will do the work.

"Distrust! Love, _little_ love, don't say that again!"

"Then let's for ever bar discussions about any other man."

"I shall be delighted to! And, to make assurance doubly sure, I'm going to pack you off down home, as I mentioned yesterday. I'll be gone just a few weeks, and shall, of course, run down to see you the minute I get back to this part of the state. I am going by Charlotteville to tell mother and Evelyn the news."

"And we'll have letters every day."

"And I'll call you up whenever I'm where a long-distance 'phone is. Some of those little towns don't boast one."

He drew me close to him and we went together out to the little balcony where he could smoke. The smoke blew through my hair and lingered there. It seemed almost like a kiss from him that night, as I loosened my hair and began to brush it out.

"Oh, I _wish_ it could stay there until he comes back," I whispered in agony, as I buried my face in the soft, odorous mazes; and thought of the long days that would have to pass some way before I could see him again.

"I believe I'll go and get Neva to walk with me this morning," I decided, when mother told me that Mrs. Sullivan has been obliged, by maternal affection, to send for her daughter to come home and spend the week-end. "She will not disturb my musings."

I have been home several days now and have had an equal number of letters from Richard, dear letters, all; and after the receipt of each one I feel that same inclination to get out under the open skies with my joy.

This was Sunday morning, and there is a glorious Indian summer sun shining over the earth with that soft haze which only this season of the year gives. Of course I could not stay in the house.

When I rang the door-bell at the Sullivan cottage about ten o'clock I was admitted upon a scene of confusion which vainly tried to smooth itself out into a Sabbathical family-quiet upon my entrance. But the tension made itself felt in spite of the Sunday clothes in evidence, and the Bibles lying in readiness on the center-table in the parlor.

I mentioned the object of my visit, but Neva shook her head reluctantly. She would love to go walking with me, she explained, but she was going to church.

Her tone and statement were both so inoffensive that I was naturally startled at the storm which burst forth at her words.

"You _ain't_," Mrs. Sullivan contradicted flatly, displaying an unwonted degree of animation.

"I am," Neva answered, with a _Vere de Vere_ repose.

"Your hats is all locked up," her mother suggested.

"Then I'll go bareheaded. They'll think it's a new style that I've learned in the city."

Mrs. Sullivan subsided into a chair and showed signs of tears.

"I see that it's poorly worth while to educate you," she began, but Neva interrupted her nervously.

"Oh, mamma, don't say _educate jew_."

"Now, did you ever hear anything that sassy? I don't see how _no_ man could want you!"

Mrs. Sullivan's tone was tearful, but Neva's sensitive ears had already drunk in their money's worth of culture at the college for young ladies.

"There you go again! '_Want chew._' Mamma, haven't I begged you not to go through life saying chew and Jew, unless you refer to mastication--or an Israelite?"

The tears actually started at this piece of filial cruelty, and Mrs. Sullivan turned to me for consolation.

"Now, I'll put it to you, Miss Ann, ain't that enough to make a woman wish she hadn't never saw a child? And do you know what this trouble is all about?--That common, ig'nant clodhopper, Hiram Ellis, that Nevar's almost broke her neck to see since she's been home."

"Why, I thought Hiram was in high favor--with you _all_," I said in surprise, remembering the occasion of the fainting-spell.

"He was, so long as Nevar was just a ordinary country girl," Mrs. Sullivan explained, wiping her eyes and glancing with a look of shame and reproach at Neva; "but do you reckon me and Tim's spending all that money on her education, and then let her turn in and marry anybody as _plain_ as Hiram Ellis?"

"_Plain!_ Well, I don't see as we're so _fancy_!" Neva said indignantly.

"Is she going to marry him this morning?" I asked, and I noted then the extreme fussiness of Neva's hair arrangement. It bore a truly leonine aspect. She had on her school uniform, and so, except for the number of class-pins, she had not sinned excessively in the way of dress. But the hair gave me some misgivings as to her intentions.

"Ain't no telling what she'll do," her mother said hopelessly. "She's bent on going to church where she can see him! We've done all we could to keep her at home, even to locking up her hats and Tim carrying off the curling-irons in his pocket so she couldn't curl her hair. But do you know what that young'un done? I'll be blessed if she didn't hunt up her pappy's old tool box and git out his old _augur_--and curled her hair on that. Did you ever hear of a girl so deep in love that she'd _curl her hair on a het augur_?"

"Oh, mamma," she begged piteously, "don't say 'pappy!' And _don't say 'het!'_"

So it happened that I walked alone through the "garden." Alone, yet I felt that I was in a beloved presence, for Richard's last letter was with me. I sat down at the edge of the lake which had dried up in the Stone Age, and drew the letter out from its resting-place to read it over again.

Richard's handwriting is heavy, black, and almost as free from flowing curves as the chirography of a literary man. "Sweetheart," the letter began, and the firm lines which formed the letters looked very much as if he meant it. It was signed "Richard, R. I.," in humorous acceptance of the title I had given him. But perhaps the dearest thing in connection with the letter was the faint aroma of "Habana" which hung over it. I held the sheets up close to my face and shielded them from any vandal winds that might slip up and covet that sweet odor; and I recalled the smile in his eyes when he made me the promise that he would always be smoking when he wrote to me--that the letters might be more realistic.

"Don't tell me any more that you are a full-grown woman," he said, as he made the promise. "You are a child--but adorable."

He knew that I would be lonely, the letter stated, but he had left orders with a book-dealer that a batch of new books be sent out to me each week, to help while away the time. Orders had also been left with the florist and confectioner--and I must at once report to him any negligence on the part of these worthies.

"Of course you have already acted upon my suggestion that you return the Byron book," the letter continued, as if the mention of books had brought this affair to his mind, but I fancied that he had mentioned them rather as a means of leading up to this. "I know you would not keep it after I have shown you the impropriety of your doing so."

"Impropriety!" That is a word that I hate and avoid. No one had ever, to my knowledge, used it in connection with anything I have ever done up until this time. I bridled a little as I read it over. Somehow, out here in the wilds, I seemed to recall suddenly that if Richard is a gallant lover, so also is Alfred an old, and very dear friend--while the Byron book is a delightful possession.

"I shall not send it back," I decided, after a little reflection. "I shall stand my ground. He is not unreasonable, and he will sooner or later understand that I am old enough to judge for myself between things proper and improper! Ugh, how the words remind me of my prospective mother-in-law!"

I hastily mapped out a letter in reply to this, telling him that I should keep the book, because I saw no reason, on the grounds he mentioned, for sending it back.

So intent was I upon this idea that I hastily jumped up from my sunny nook by the old lake and shook out my skirts. I would go home right now and write that letter!

I made my way across the breadth of the valley and leisurely climbed the hill, for the midday sun was quite hot. I paused and looked back once in a while, for the garden was so beautiful this morning.

There was absolutely no thought of defiance in my idea of showing Richard my viewpoint, for I did not dream that he considered the affair in any other light than the cut-and-dried distaste to "a young woman receiving presents from a young man to whom she is not engaged." He had not _asked_ me to return the book. He had simply shown me the error of my way--and I had failed to recognize it.

I stopped again to look around at the wild beauty of the place before leaving it, then, with a little running start, I quickly gained the crest. When I had reached it I stopped once more, this time with a startled surprise, for I found myself face to face with Neva. I noted, with amusement, that she had possessed herself of a hat.

"Well, so you decided to come for a walk?" I said in greeting. "How did you manage to get your hat out of the wardrobe?"

She stopped still in the path and her eyes suddenly met mine in a look of dumb misery. I first thought that the question might have been embarrassing to her, and was trying to think of something to cover it, when she spoke.

"Piled a box on a chair on a table," she explained with an effort, "until I could reach up high enough to prize the top off. 'Twas old and loose--and I still had the augur!"

"Neva! Think of the perseverance! And after all that, you didn't get to see him?"

At my words her mouth tightened at the corners, and her eyes looked very bright and dry.

"Oh, I saw him," she answered bitterly, after a moment's struggle. "He drove right past me while I was trudging down that dusty road to church. But he didn't see _me_. He had Stella Hampton in the buggy with him."

"Stella Hampton? Who is she?"

"She's the girl that sicked the fit doctor on to me!"

I tried to comfort her, but she was desolate.

"It ain't that I care so much about _him_," she assured me, forgetting, in her misery, her boarding-school English, "but oh, I can't bear to face them at home. It's so terrible to be made ashamed before folks."

I agreed with her and insisted that she go home with me, not braving the ordeal of facing her own family until late in the afternoon, when they should have forgotten it a little. Tears of gratitude came to her pretty, troubled eyes as she joyously accepted my invitation.

Mother was on the front porch as we came up the walk and she welcomed Neva cordially.

"Ann," she said, turning to me and speaking in an undertone, "there is a long-distance call for you. The operator has rung up several times, then said that the 'party' would call again at twelve-thirty."

"Oh, mother!" I cried, with a great throb of pleasure. In a few minutes I should be listening to the sound of his voice, and that was a deal more satisfying than the aroma of cigar smoke in a letter!

"Little runaway, where have you been all morning?" I heard in his dear, drawling tones after the connections had been made and listening ears supposed to be removed from the line. "I've been trying for three hours to get you."

"I've been out for my Sunday morning tramp," I answered, a sudden overwhelming longing to _see_ him sweeping over me. His voice sounded so near that I could scarcely believe that half the length of the state lay between us.

"Alone?"

There was no drawl to this query.

"No, not alone. I had your letter with me."

"When are you going to answer it, sweetheart?"

"To-day. I have already thought up some of the things I'm going to say to you."

It might have been thought transmission, or it might have been chance, but at all events, it is the honest truth, that the next question was the one in my mind.

"And what have you to say for yourself about Doctor Morgan's book, my lady?"

"A good deal more than is profitable to say over a long-distance telephone," I replied, hoping to change the drift of the talk. I felt that I could say my little speech better on paper than I could over the wires.

"Well, that has been troubling me a little, Ann," he said in his unsmiling voice, and I felt that his eyes were looking coldly into the space just beyond his telephone. "I see that you are disposed to argue the matter. I had an idea that you had not sent it back, so I decided to ask you when I got you to the 'phone. Now, the question is, are you going to be guided by what I tell you in this matter, or not?"

No woman who has not experienced the agony can half appreciate the feeling of sudden terror that came over me at the cold sound of his voice. It seemed to have a threatening tone of _finality_ in it that chilled me to the bone. I had such a feeling of helplessness somehow. You can argue with a man and cajole him and smooth his hair when he is where you can get your hands on him, knowing all the time that you are not going to let him leave the house until he has smiled the smile that won your heart; but, oh, the futility of trying to argue with a masterful lover over a long-distance telephone.

"Are you talking? I can't hear a word."

"I'm not talking, Richard," I answered. "I'm--I'm _thinking_."

"Well, I called you because I wanted to hear you talk. You haven't answered my question yet." Again that tone of cold meaning. A hundred thoughts a minute were flying through my brain. Should I say no and have a quarrel with him? Should I say yes, and prove myself a coward--or should I lie to him?

If this were a tale of heroism, I should have a few ringing words of challenge to insert right here and then a quick curtain. But this is not a heroic story, it is only simple truth, told with regret and aspirations after a higher courage, yet still a true account of what happened in our back hall this beautiful Sunday morning. _I hedged._

"I'll send it back, Richard," I told him, and he at once changed his tone and the subject of his discourse, beginning a recital of how he missed me and how he was going to cut short his trip up there and come on back. I scarcely heard the words, for I was trying to frame for my own conscience my sophisticated excuse. "I shall send it back if he _convinces_ me that there is any just occasion for doing so," I pleaded to myself. But after he had said good-by and I started from the telephone I found mother's eyes fixed upon me in a kind of pitying wonder.

I flushed and looked away. Then I recalled Cousin Eunice's words: "Don't let him make you do anything that will lower your self-respect. Many wives don't know the meaning of that word." Wives? Dear me! I have been his fiancée only a week!