Chapter VIII: Max at the Cedars

The train was late that morning and lunch was nearly ready before they saw the open carriage turn into the grounds, with Max standing up in it and waving his hat to them.

“Oh, Maude,” Grace said, “I would give all I am worth to go and meet him. Isn’t he handsome and grand, my Max!” she continued, as if she would assert her right to him and hold it against the world.

But Maude did not hear her, for as Max alighted from the carriage and came eagerly forward, she stole away, feeling that it was not for her to witness the meeting of the lovers.

“Dear Max, you are not changed, are you?” Grace cried, extending her arms to him, with the effort to rise which she involuntarily made so often, and which was pitiful to see.

“Changed, darling? How could I change in less than a year?” Max answered, as he drew her face down to his bosom and stroked her hair.

Grace was not thinking of a physical change. Indeed she did not know what she did mean, for she was not herself conscious how strong an idea had taken possession of her that she was losing Max. But with him there beside her, her morbid fears vanished, and letting her head rest upon his arm, she said:

“I don’t know, Max, only things come back to me to-day and I am thinking of fourteen years ago and that I am fourteen years older than I was then, and crippled and helpless and faded, while you are young as ever. Oh, Max, stay by me till the last. It will not be for long. I am growing so tired and sad.”

Grace hardly knew what she was saying, or why, as she said it, Maude Graham’s face, young and fair and fresh, seemed to come between herself and Max, any more than he could have told why he was so vaguely wondering what had become of the girl in black, whom he had seen in the distance quite as soon as he had seen the woman in the chair. During his journey Grace and Maude had been pretty equally in his mind, and he was conscious of the feeling that the Cedars held an added attraction for him because the latter was there; and now, when he began to have a faint perception of Grace’s meaning, though he did not associate it with Maude, he felt half guilty because he had for a moment thought any place where Grace was could be made pleasanter than she could make it. Taking her face between his hands he looked at it more closely, noticing with a pang that it had grown thinner and paler and that there were lines about the eyes and the mouth, while the blue veins stood out full and distinct upon the forehead. Was she slowly fading? he asked himself, resolving that nothing should be lacking on his part to prove that she was just as dear to him as in the days when they were young and the future bright before them. He did not even speak of Maude until he saw her in the distance, trying to train a refractory honeysuckle over a tall frame. Then he said:

“Is that Miss Graham, and do you like her as well as ever?”

“Yes, better and better every day,” was Grace’s reply. “It was a little awkward at first to have a stranger with me continually, but I am accustomed to her now, and couldn’t part with her. She is very dear to me,” she continued, while Max listened and watched the girl, moving about so gracefully, and once showing her arms to the elbows as her wide sleeves fell back in her efforts to reach the top of the frame.

“She oughtn’t to do that,” Grace said. “She is not tall enough. Go and help her, Max,” and nothing loth, Max went along the terrace to where Maude was standing, her face flushed with exercise as she gave him her hand and said, “Good-morning, Mr. Gordon. I am Maude Graham. Perhaps you remember me.”

“How could I forget you,” sprang to Max’s lips, but he said instead, “Good-morning, Miss Graham. I have come to help you. Miss Raynor thinks it is bad for your heart to reach so high.”

Maude could have told him that her heart had not beaten one half as fast while reaching up as it was beating now, with him there beside her holding the vine while she tied it to its place, his hand touching hers and his arm once thrown out to keep her from falling as she stumbled backward. It took a long time to fix that honeysuckle, and Max had leisure to tell Maude of a call made upon her mother only a week before.

“Spring Farm is looking its loveliest, with the roses and lilies in bloom,” he said, “and Angie, my sister, is enjoying it immensely. She has filled the house with her city friends and has made some changes, of which I think you would approve. Your mother does, but when she wanted to cut down that apple-tree in the corner I would not let her do it. You remember it, don’t you?”

“Oh, Mr. Gordon,” Maude exclaimed, “don’t let her touch that tree. My play-house was under it, and there the people used to come to see me.”

He did not know who the people were, for he had never heard of Maude’s brain children,—the Kimbricks and the Websters,—and could hardly have understood if he had; but Maude’s voice was very pathetic and the eyes which looked at him were full of tears, moving him strangely and making him very earnest in his manner as he assured her that every tree and shrub should be kept intact for her.

“You know you are going to buy it back,” he continued laughingly, as they walked slowly toward the house where Grace was waiting to be taken in to lunch.

“Yes, and I shall do it, too. You will see; it may be many years, but I trust you to keep it for me,” Maude said, and he replied, “You may trust me with anything, and I shall not disappoint you.”

The talk by the honeysuckle was one of many which took place while Max was at the Cedars, for Grace was too unselfish to keep him chained to her side, and insisted that he should enjoy what there was to enjoy in the way of rides and drives in the neighborhood, and as she could not often go with him she sent Maude in her stead, even though she knew the danger there was in it, for she was not insensible to Max’s admiration for the girl, or Maude’s interest in him.

“If Max is true to me to the last, and he will be, it is all I ask,” she thought, and gave no sign of the ache in her heart, when she saw him going from her with Maude and felt that it was in more senses than one. “If he is happy, I am happy, too, she would say to herself, as she sat alone hour after hour, while Max and Maude explored the country in every direction.

Sometimes they drove together, but oftener rode, for Maude was a fine horsewoman and never looked better than when on horseback, in the becoming habit which Grace had given her and which fitted her admirably. Together they went through the pleasant Richland woods, where the grass was like a mossy carpet beneath their horses’ hoofs, and the singing of the birds and the brook was the only sound which broke the summer stillness, then again they galloped over the hills and round the lake, and once through the Bush district, up to the little log house which Max expressed a wish to see. It was past the hour for school. Teacher and scholars had gone home, and tying their horses to the fence they went into the dingy room and sat down side by side upon one of the wooden benches, and just where a ray of sunlight fell upon Maude’s face and hair, for she had removed her hat and was fanning herself with it. She was very beautiful, with that halo around her head, Max thought, as he sat watching and listening to her, as in answer to his question, “How could you endure it here?” she told him of her terrible homesickness during the first weeks of her life as a school-teacher.

“I longed so for mother and Johnnie,” she said, “and was always thinking of them, and the dear old home, and—and sometimes—of you, too, before I received your letter.”

“Of me!” Max said, moving a little nearer to her, while she went on:

“Yes, I’ve wanted to tell you how angry I was because you bought our home. I wrote you something about it, you remember, but I did not tell you half how bitter I felt. I know now you were not to blame, but I did not think so then, and said some harsh things of you to Archie; perhaps he told you. I said he might. Did he?”

“No,” Max answered, playing idly with the riding whip Maude held in her hand. “No, Archie has only told me pleasant things of you. I think he is very fond of you,” and he looked straight into Maude’s face, waiting for her reply.

It was surely nothing to him whether Archie were fond of Maude, or she were fond of Archie, and yet her answer was very reassuring and lifted from his heart a little shadow resting there.

“Yes,” Maude said, without the slightest change in voice or expression. “Archie and I are good friends. I have known him and played with him, and quarreled with him ever since I was a child, so that he seems more like a brother than anything else.”

“Oh, ye-es,” Max resumed, with a feeling of relief, as he let his arm rest on the high desk behind her, so that if she moved ever so little it would touch her.

There was in Max’s mind no thought of love-making. Indeed, he did not know that he was thinking of anything except the lovely picture the young girl made with the sunlight playing on her hair and the shy look in her eyes as, in a pretty, apologetic way she told him how she had disliked him and credited him with all the trouble which had come upon them since her father’s death.

“Why, I thought I hated you,” she said with energy.

“Hated me! Oh, Maude, you don’t hate me now, I hope;—I could not bear that,” Max said, letting the whip fall and taking Maude’s hand in his, as he said again, “You don’t hate me now?”

“No, no; oh, no. I—oh, Mr. Gordon,” Maude began, but stopped abruptly, startled by something in the eyes of the man, who had never called her Maude before, and whose voice had never sounded as it did now, making every nerve thrill with a sudden joy, all the sweeter, perhaps, because she knew it must not be.

Wrenching her hand from his and springing to her feet she said, “It is growing late, and Miss Raynor is waiting for us. Have you forgotten _her_?”

He had forgotten her for one delirious moment, but she came back to him with a throb of pain and self-reproach that he had allowed himself to swerve in the slightest degree from his loyalty to her.

“I am not a man, but a traitor,” he said to himself, as he helped Maude into her saddle and then vaulted into his own.

The ride home was a comparatively silent one, for both knew that they had not been quite true to the woman who welcomed them back so sweetly and asked so many questions about their ride and what they had seen. Poor Grace; she did not in the least understand why Maude lavished so much attention upon her that evening, or why Max lingered longer than usual at her side, or why his voice was so tender and loving, when he at last said good-night and went to his own room, and the self-castigation which he knew awaited him there.

“I was a villain,” he said, as he recalled that little episode in the school-house, when to have put his arm around Maude Graham and held her for a moment, would have been like heaven to him. “I was false to Grace, although I did not mean it, and, God helping me, I will never be so again.” Then, as he remembered the expression of the eyes which had looked up so shyly at him, he said aloud, “Could I win her, were I free? But that is impossible. May God forgive me for the thought. Oh, why has Grace thrown her so much in my way? She surely is to blame for that, while I——well, I am a fool, and a knave, and a sneak.”

He called himself a great many hard names that night, and registered a vow that so long as Grace lived, and he said he hoped she would live forever, he would be true to her no matter how strong the temptation placed in his way. It was a fierce battle Max fought, but he came off conqueror, and the meeting between himself and Maude next morning was as natural as if to neither of them had ever come a moment when they had a glimpse of the happiness which, under other circumstances, might perhaps have been theirs. Maude, too, had had her hours of remorse and contrition and close questioning as to the cause of the strange joy which had thrilled every nerve when Max Gordon called her Maude and asked her if she hated him.

“Hate him! Never!” she thought; “but I have been false to the truest, best woman that ever lived. She trusted her lover to me, and——”

She did not quite know what she had done, but whatever it was it should not be repeated. There were to be no more rides, or drives, or talks alone with Max. And when next day Grace suggested that she go with him to an adjoining town where a fair was to be held, she took refuge in a headache and insisted that Grace should go herself, while Max, too, encouraged it, and tried to believe that he was just as happy with her beside him as he would have been with the young girl who brought a cushion for her mistress’ back and adjusted her shawl about her shoulders and arranged her bonnet strings, and then, kissing her fondly, said, “I am so glad that you are going instead of myself.”

This was for the benefit of Max, at whom she nodded a little defiantly, and who understood her meaning as well as if she had put it into words. Everything was over between them, and he accepted the situation, and during the remainder of his stay at the Cedars, devoted himself to Grace with an assiduity worthy of the most ardent lover. He even remained longer than he had intended doing, for Grace was loth to let him go, and the soft haze of early September was beginning to show on the Richland hills when he at last said good-bye, promising to come again at Christmas, if it were possible to do so.