Mrs. Follette had been born in Maryland with a tradition of aristocratic blood. It was this tradition which had upheld her through years of poverty after the Civil War. A close scanning of the family tree might have disclosed ancestors who had worked with their hands. But these, Mrs. Follette’s family had chosen to ignore in favor of one grandfather who had held Colonial office, and who had since been magnified into a personage. On such slight foundation, Mrs. Follette had erected high towers of social importance. As a wife of a government clerk, her income was limited, but she lived on a farm, back of Sherwood Park, which she had inherited from her father. The farm was called Castle Manor, which dignified it in the eyes of the county. Mrs. Follette’s friends were among the old families who had occupied the land for many generations. She would have nothing to do with the people of Sherwood Park. She held that all suburbs are negligible socially. People came to them from anywhere and went from them to be swallowed up in obscurity. There was[71] no stability. She made an exception, only, of the Baldwin Barneses. There was good Maryland blood back of them, and more than that, a Virginia Governor. To be sure they did not care for these things; old Baldwin’s democracy had been almost appalling. But they were, none the less, worth while.
Mr. Follette, during his lifetime, had walked a mile each morning to take the train at Sherwood Park, and had walked back a mile each night, until at last he had tired of two peripatetic miles a day, and of eight hours at his desk, and of eternally putting on his dinner coat when there was no one to see, and like old Baldwin Barnes, he had laid him down with a will.
At his death all income stopped, and Mrs. Follette had found herself on a somewhat lonely peak of exclusiveness. She could not afford to go with her richer neighbors, and she refused to consider Sherwood seriously. Now and then, however, she accepted invitations from old friends, and in return offered such simple hospitality as she could afford without self-consciousness. She might be a snob, but she was, to those whom she permitted to cross her threshold, an incomparable hostess. She gave what she had without apology.
She had, too, a sort of admirable courage. Her ambitions had been wrapped up in her son. What her father might have been, Evans was to be. They had scrimped and saved that he might go to[72] college and study law. Then, at that first dreadful cry from across the seas, he had gone. There had been long months of fighting. He had left her in the flower of his youth, a wonder-lad, with none to match him among his friends. He had come back crushed and broken. He, whose career lay so close to his heart—could do now no sustained work. Mentally and physically he must rest. He might be years in getting back. He would never get back to gay and gallant boyhood. That was gone forever.
Yet if Mrs. Follette’s heart had failed her at times, she had never shown it. She was making the farm pay for itself. She supplied the people of Sherwood Park and surrounding estates with milk. But she never was in any sense—a milkwoman. It was, rather, as if in selling her milk she distributed favors. It was on this income that she subsisted, she and her son.
It was because of Mrs. Follette’s social complexes that Jane had been forced to limit her invitations for the Thanksgiving dinner. She would have preferred more people to liven things up for Evans and Baldy, but Mrs. Follette’s prejudices had to be considered.
Evans, democratic, like his father, laughed at his mother’s assumptions. But he rarely in these days set himself against her. It involved always a contest, and he was tired of fighting.
That was why he had asked Jane to help him[73] in the stand he had taken against the New York trip. He felt that he could never hold out against his mother’s arguments.
“She’d keep eternally at it, and I’d have to give in,” he told himself with the irritability which was so new to him and so surprising. As a boy he had been good-tempered even in moments of disagreement with his mother.
Going down to luncheon, he hoped the subject would not come up. The afternoon was before him, and Jane. He wanted no cloud to mar it.
On the steps he passed Mary, his mother’s maid, making the house immaculate for the guests of to-morrow. She was singing an old song, linking herself musically with the black men of generations back. Mary was over sixty, and her voice was thin and piping. Yet there was, after all, a sort of fierce power in that thin and piping voice.
“Stay in the fiel’,
Stay in the fiel’, oh, wah-yah—
Stay in the fiel’
Till the wah is ended.”
Again Evans felt that sense of unaccountable irritation. He wished that Mary wouldn’t sing....
Later as he and Jane swung along together in the clear cold Jane said:
“I’ve such a lot to tell you——”
She told it in her whimsical way—Baldy’s adventure,[74] Frederick Towne’s visit, the basket of fruit.
“Baldy is simply mad about Edith Towne. He hasn’t been able to talk of anything else. Of course, he’ll have to get over it but he isn’t looking ahead.”
“Why should he get over it?”
Her chin went up. “He’s a clerk in the departments, and she a—plutocrat——”
“Perhaps she won’t look at it like that.”
“Oh, but she has men at her feet. And Baldy’s a boy. Evans, if I had lovely dresses ’n’ everything, I’d have men at my feet.”
“Why should you want them at your feet?”
“Every woman does. We want to grind ’em under our heels,” she stamped in the snow to show him; “but Baldy and I are a pair of Cinderellas, minus—godmothers——”
She was in a gay mood. She was wrapped in her old orange cape, and the sun, breaking the bank of sullen clouds in the west, seemed to turn her lithe young body into flame.
“Don’t you love a day like this, Evans?” She pressed forward up the hill with all her strength. Evans followed, panting. At the top they sat down for a moment on an old log—which faced the long aisles of snow between thin black trees. The vista was clear-cut and almost artificial in its restraint of color and its wide bare spaces.
Evans’ little dog, Rusty, ran back and forth—following this trail and that. Finally in pursuit of[75] a rabbit, he was led far afield. They heard him barking madly in the distance. It was the only sound in the stillness.
“Jane,” Evans said, “do you remember the last time we were here?”
“Yes.” The light went out of her eyes.
“As I look back it was heaven, Jane. I’d give anything on God’s earth if I was where I was then.”
All the blood was drained from her face. “Evans, you wouldn’t,” passionately, “you wouldn’t give up those three years in France——”
He sat very still. Then he said tensely, “No, I wouldn’t, even though it has made me lose you—Jane——”
“You mustn’t say such things——”
“I must. Don’t I know? You were such an unawakened little thing, my dear. But I could have—waked you. And I can’t wake you now. That’s my tragedy. You’ll never wake up—for me——”
“Don’t——”
“Well, it’s true. Why not say it? I’ve come back a—scarecrow, the shadow of a man. And you’re just where I left you—only lovelier—more of a woman—more to be worshipped—Jane——”
As he caught her hand up in his, she had a sudden flashing vision of him as he had been when he last sat with her in the grove—the swing of his strong figure, his bare head borrowing gold from[76] the sun—the touch of assurance which had been so compelling.
“I never knew that you cared——”
“I knew it, but not as I did after your wonderful letters to me over there. I felt, if I ever came back, I’d move heaven and earth.” He stopped. “But I came back—different. And I haven’t any right to say these things to you. I’m not going to say them—Jane. It might spoil our—friendship.”
“Nothing can spoil our friendship, Evans——”
He laid his hand on hers. “Then you are mine—until somebody comes along and claims you?”
“There isn’t anybody else,” she turned her fingers up to meet his, “so don’t worry, old dear,” she smiled at him but her lashes were wet. Her hand was warm in his and she let it stay there, and after a while she said, “I have sometimes thought that if it would make you happy, I might——”
“Might—love me?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t say it for that. I just had to have the truth between us. And I don’t want—pity. If—if I ever get back—I’ll make you love me, Jane.” There was a hint of his old masterfulness—and she was thrilled by it.
She withdrew her hand and stood up. “Then I’ll—pray—that you—get back——”
“Do you mean it, Janey?”
“I mean it, Evans.”
[77]“Then pray good and hard, my dear, for I’m going to do it.”
They smiled at each other, but it was a sacred moment.
The things they did after that were rendered unimportant by the haze of enchantment which hung over Evans’ revelation. No man can tell a woman that he loves her, no woman can listen, without a throbbing sense of the magnitude of the thing which has happened. From such beginnings is written the history of humanity.
Deep in a hollow where the wind had swept up the snow, and left the ground bare they found crowfoot in an emerald carpet—there were holly branches dripping red berries like blood on the white drifts. They filled their arms, and at last they were ready to go.
Evans whistled for Rusty but the little dog did not come. “He’ll find us; he knows every inch of the way.”
But Rusty did not find them, and they were on the ridge when that first awful cry came to them.
Jane clutched Evans. “What is it—oh, what is it?”
He swallowed twice before he could speak. “It’s—Rusty—one of those steel traps”—he was panting now—his forehead wet—“the negroes put them around for rabbits——” Again that frenzied cry broke the stillness. “They’re hellish things——”
[78]Jane began to run in the direction of the sound. “Come on, Evans—oh, come quick——”
He stumbled after her. At last he caught at her dress and held her. “If he’s hurt I can’t stand it.”
It was dreadful to see him. Jane felt as if clutched by a nightmare. “Stay here, and don’t worry. I’ll get him out——”
It was a cruel thing to face. There was blood and that little trembling body. The cry reduced now to an agonized whimpering. How she opened the trap she never knew, but she did open it, and made a bandage from her blouse which she tore from her shoulders regardless of the cold. And after what seemed to be ages, she staggered back to Evans with her dreadful burden wrapped in her cape. “We’ve got to get him to a veterinary. Run down to the road and see if there’s a car in sight.”
There was a car, and when Evans stopped it, two men came charging up the bank. Jane gave the dog into the arms of one of them. “You’ll have to go with them, Evans,” she said and wrapped herself more closely in her cape. “There are several doctors at Rockville. You’d better ask the station-master about the veterinary.”
After they had gone, she stood there on the ridge and watched the car out of sight. She felt stunned and hysterical. It had been awful to see Rusty, but the most awful thing was that vision of Evans[79] stumbling through the snow. A broken body is for tears—a broken spirit is beyond tears.
She shuddered and pressed her hands against her eyes. Then she went down the hill and across the road in the darkening twilight. She crept into the house. Baldy must not see her; there was blood on her cape and her clothes were torn, and Baldy would ask questions, and he would call Evans a—coward....
It was late when Evans came to Castle Manor with his dog in his arms. Rusty was comfortable and he had wagged a grateful tail. The pain had gone out of his eyes and the veterinary had said that in a few days the wound would heal. There were no vital parts affected—and he would give some medicine which would prevent further suffering.
Mrs. Follette was out, and old Mary was in the kitchen, singing. She stopped her song as Evans came through. He asked her to help him and she brought a square, deep basket and made Rusty a bed.
“You-all jes’ put him heah by the fiah, and I’ll look atter him.”
Evans shook his head. “I want him in my room. I’ll take care of him in the night.”
He carried the dog up-stairs with him, knelt beside him, drew hard deep breaths as the little fellow licked his hand.
[80]“What kind of a man am I?” Evans said sharply in the silence. “God, what kind of a man?”
Through the still house came old Mary’s thin and piping song:
“Stay in the fiel’,
Stay in the fiel’, oh, wah-yah—
Stay in the fiel’
Till the wah is ended.”
Evans got up and shut the door....