Chapter ONE: I

Mr. Petersen rode along in the choking dust, considering the problem with perplexity but with good-humour. After all, it was absurd.... He wanted to be kind, but he didn’t want to be ridiculous.

In spite of himself, a grin came over his face. He was remembering his last visit to the old lady. He had ridden out to the miserable old farm and very politely introduced himself as her new landlord. He had bought the place for next to nothing, and, considering this, and the dilapidated state it was in, his sensitive conscience required that he should reduce the rent. But he never got so far as to propose this.

The old lady received him with lofty affability and invited him to sit down in her parlour, then left him there for a long time while she prepared refreshments. He had waited awkwardly enough, touched by the shabbiness of the place and its evident decline. Old mahogany furniture, ugly in style, but _good_--once very good--and now so battered, arms gone, legs gone, splinters torn off, cushions disgorging hair, springs sagging. His skilful fingers longed to be at it.

She came in again, with a plate of cookies and a jug of lemonade, and sat down at a little table to dispense them, with a regal air.

“Well!” she said, with a grim smile, “I suppose you’ve come about the rent, Mr. Petersen. I might as well be frank. I haven’t got it. I’ve had orders for some preserves, so perhaps I’ll have it next month. I hope so, I’m sure. But you can’t draw blood from a stone, Mr. Petersen.”

He had gone away that time utterly defeated, and he was returning now without much hope. What was one to do in such a case? Impossible to turn out the poor little old woman of seventy, alone on earth. He didn’t need the money from the house, he was quite able to permit her to live there free for the rest of her life, but that would be, he saw, a ridiculous thing to do. Unbusinesslike. Fantastic. _She_ would laugh at him, and so would everyone else. People would be sure to find out, and his reputation as a shrewd and sensible man would suffer. And although he was a Socialist, and opposed to the paying of rents, his common-sense forbade exceptions. Either no one must pay rent, or everyone must.

He pulled up his horse and wiped his face, for the house was in sight and he was anxious to look well in the eyes of the queenly and provoking old lady. She was a Defoe, and married to a cousin Defoe, and this was, to her, a fact of immense significance. From it she derived her superiority to everyone else. She regarded Mr. Petersen as nobody at all, and a foreigner at that. He was aware of her attitude, and not at all pleased, for he had his own modest pride.

He even went so far as to take out a small pocket mirror and smooth his moustache--a long yellow moustache, standing out fiercely like a cat’s. His appearance was at no time satisfactory to him; it was rather too Socialistic. He was an enormous fellow of five and thirty, with huge hands and a blunt red face, handsome in a way, but certainly lacking in distinction, certainly not an exterior to commend itself to a Defoe.

He was quite correctly dressed in riding breeches and a linen jacket, all fitting very well, but all the more offensive to a Defoe because of their excellence. In Brownsville Landing people of Mr. Petersen’s class didn’t ride horseback under any circumstances; above all, not in clothes designed for such a purpose. It was presumptuous and it was foreign.

The old lady saw him from the window, cantering along the almost obliterated driveway, and by the time he had dismounted and tied his horse to an old apple tree, she was standing in the doorway, in the attitude of a tenant insolvent but unbowed.

“Good day!” she said. “Step in, Mr. Petersen!”

So once again he went into that parlour, dim and cool, aged and forlorn like herself, and once more sat down to wait for the cookies and the lemonade which he detested.

But this time it was not the old lady who brought them in. It was Minnie. Minnie, until that instant unknown to him, unimagined, but predestined to his ruin....

II

He was, innocently enough, pleased with her appearance, and saw nothing sinister, nothing extraordinary about her. A rather short, full-bosomed young woman of perhaps twenty, with a dark, freckled face and an expression very pleasant and friendly. She smiled at him as soon as she entered.

“Mrs. Defoe will be back in a minute,” she said, as she set down her tray. She was wearing a ruffled little apron tied about her neat waist, and her air was altogether housewifely and homely, as if she had been brought up from infancy in that very house. He couldn’t imagine who she was. He knew that the old lady lived alone, had lived alone since the death of her husband twelve years ago. This agreeable young person was certainly not a servant, and he was sure she didn’t belong in the neighbourhood. If he had seen her, he knew he would have remembered her.

She gave him a glass of lemonade and sat down opposite him, amiably prepared to entertain him.

“It’s growing warm, isn’t it?” she said, and he recognised in her voice and accent something far superior to the native language of Brownsville Landing.

“It’s what we want, for the fruit,” he answered, in his sing-song drawl. “It was a cold Spring here.”

“So I’ve heard.... What a _nice_ horse! Is it yours, Mr. Petersen?”

He was very much pleased; he said it was, and went on to tell of the virtues and eccentricities of his beloved mare.

Minnie said she didn’t ride, but was very fond of driving.

Riding suited Mr. Petersen better; it made one feel more independent.

“Oh, well, you’re a _man_!” said she. “A girl can’t go riding about alone, very well.”

In some way this made him suddenly conscious of her smallness and feminineness and of all the handicaps imposed upon her by God and by man. Mr. Petersen’s views about women were definite. She was neither above nor below, neither hallowed nor accursed, but a quite ordinary human being, like himself, equally responsible, equally privileged. A woman--the right sort--was a friend, simply. And he saw in Minnie a friend, candid and good-tempered.... (Minnie a _friend_!)

“I was so _pleased_,” she went on, “to find a horse here. Of course, I don’t really know much about them. I’ve never lived in the country, really. But I _love_ animals. All animals. And I think I have a sort of knack with them----”

He was acquainted with Mrs. Defoe’s horse, a ridiculously coy old skeleton that came into the village once a week harnessed to a buggy and driven by a Negro truck farmer who cultivated the old lady’s arid fields on shares. He could not imagine anyone’s having much affection for that caricature. It touched him. He could think of nothing to say, and the young woman had once more to start up a conversation.

“I hope I haven’t made your lemonade too sweet!” she began, anxiously, but was interrupted by Mrs. Defoe calling from upstairs.

“Minnie! Minnie!”

“Excuse me,” she murmured, and vanished. He heard her running up the stairs, then not another sound for a long time. He sat still, with his glass in his hand, and waited.

She didn’t run down; she came slowly, with obvious reluctance.

“I’m very sorry,” she said, “but--Mrs. Defoe wants to know--if you’d be good enough to--wait just a _little_ longer----”

She was very much distressed; said something about preserves and next week and the expensiveness of jelly glasses. Mr. Petersen’s face turned still redder.

“Pshaw!” he said, awkwardly, “It doesn’t matter to _me_. I can wait any length of time. Don’t worry. Tell Mrs. Defoe not to worry. I--perhaps she will send a message when she’s ready----”

“_Positively_ next Tuesday,” said Minnie, firmly. “And I’m _dreadfully_ sorry, Mr. Petersen. I appreciate your kindness.”

She held out a small plump hand which he grasped earnestly.

“But just the same, who is she?” he asked himself as he rode away.

III

He went home to his house on a shady street of the village, and strolled into the kitchen where his housekeeper was cooking a rabbit.

“Mrs. Hansen,” he said, “who’s that up at Mrs. Defoe’s?”

Of course she knew.

“Her granddaughter, Mr. Petersen. Two of them,” she answered, eagerly, delighted at being questioned. “They came from New York a week ago. Two young orphans. Just lost their father. He was thought to be rich, but it seems he wasn’t. He didn’t leave them a penny. And they’ve been brought up to expect the best of everything, so I’ve heard. It’s sad, isn’t it, Mr. Petersen?”

He thought it was; the phrase “two young orphans” stuck in his mind, and while he walked about his garden, inspecting his trees and vegetables, he reflected on it. “Young orphans.” He remembered that she had been wearing a black dress, and that the ribbons in her little apron had been black. And there had been a sobriety in her bearing....

Mrs. Hansen wished to pursue the subject. She began when she had put his excellent dinner on the table.

“Excuse me, Mr. Petersen,” she said--he wouldn’t allow “sir”--“But which of the young ladies did you see? I hear that one of them is very handsome.”

He reflected. No, Minnie was not very handsome; _nice_ looking, and with fine dark eyes, but not handsome.

He smiled a little.

“It’s hard to say. I’m not a judge, Mrs. Hansen. The one I saw was dark----”

“They’re both dark. But one’s----”

“This rabbit stew is very good, Mrs. Hansen,” he interposed, and she took the hint and left him to read the local paper in peace, as was his custom during dinner.

Afterwards he went out to sit on his little porch and smoke. And thought very kindly of the “young orphan,” who hadn’t a penny.

The least he could do, he decided, was not to trouble them about the rent--a decision which suited them, apparently, for he neither saw nor heard anything of the Defoe family for a long time. In fact, until he was needed by one of them.