Chapter II: Part 2

When February comes the romance of winter is over in the hill country, and this long short month brings only the reality. It is a betwixt and between month, fully as trying as its opposite, August, that time of general stuffiness, flies, and limp linen.

January had been a month of even snow and good sleighing, but a sleet storm had made the many downhill roads that converged at Hattertown well-nigh impassable with glittering ice; while in February, coughing and snuffling, as much a part of the month as St. Valentine’s Day, sadly interfered with discipline at the Crossroads Schoolhouse. Miranda, under pressure, allowed herself to confess for the first time, that seven years was quite long enough for a woman to sit upon the selfsame wooden chair, or wrestle with the constitutional peculiarities of a sheet-iron stove. This stove, having been second-hand upon its arrival, was now wearing three patches through the ill-fitted rivets of which smoke and gas filtered, obscuring the wall map of North America that was at least three states behind the times.

The season and bad weather of course had some effect upon her point of view, for given June, open doors and windows, and a glimpse of the Moosatuck to draw the eye from the faded map, the most pressing of grievances would have vanished.

Somehow Miranda had never realized until now what an exasperating month February was; formerly she had used the evenings for her spring sewing and was really glad of the forced cessation of the small events that made Hattertown’s social life, but now the ice crust upon the hill slope above calf pastures made walking impossible between the house and the station siding, so that two or three and in one week five evenings went by and only the greeting of lantern signals passed between Jim Bradley and Miranda.

The next afternoon on her return from school, Miranda found a letter in the box, directed in a round, bold, and unfamiliar hand; moreover, it was for her. Therefore, as it was a man’s writing it must be from Jim. Instead of opening it as she walked along, half a dozen children struggling on before or at her side, she dropped it in her pocket and then smiled to find, a few minutes later, when she reached her gate and needed a hand to open it with (the other carrying books) that it had remained inside the pocket caressing the square of paper.

Widow Banks was then “accommodating” at the house of the new ticket agent and telegraph operator, who had pneumonia, as his wife was obliged to fill his place. The Banks’ house was empty save for the cat who purred before the stove, there was no necessity for seeking privacy; yet Miranda went through the kitchen and shut herself into the little storm porch before she opened the envelope, and held the sheet close to the single diamond pane in the outer door that she might read.

“Respected Friend—” the words ran, “This has been the deuce of a month with ice and tie-ups. I need to see you _Special_ to-morrow night. If the run is close so I can’t get up, I’ll fix to have Sweezy’s boy go fetch you to the depot with a team, so come _down_ sure.

“Yours with Compliments,
“JIM BRADLEY.”

What did the _Special_ mean? Was her hero going to leave the Milk Freight for a better job? That meant a passenger or possibly a through train, and neither of these would pause on the side track at Hattertown. Or—well, there was no use in guessing; “to-morrow night” was exactly twenty-eight hours away and that was all there was to it. So Randy put wood on the fire, skimmed a saucer of cream which she gave to the cat as if in some way propitiating a powerful domestic idol, lit the lamp, though it was broad daylight, and began the preparation of curling the feathers in her best hat by holding them in the steam of the tea-kettle, and then realized that as the morrow was Saturday, she would have plenty of time for both housework and preparation.

* * * * *

The last Saturday morning of February did not really dawn, for the discouraged light merely struggled with a snowstorm so dense that the rays only penetrated by refraction. A little before noon the fall ceased, but the sky would not relax, and scowled dark and sullen as if with the pain of its recent effort, the snow lay heavy on hill and lowland, covering land and water alike; and, lodging on the ice, completely obliterated the boundary of the usually assertive Moosatuck.

A few crows, cawing dismally, straggled toward what had been down stream from their cedar roosts, but all other sounds were muffled. It was almost noon before the village, headed by the first selectman with two yokes of oxen and as many ploughs, dug itself out; and a great snow-plough bound north cleared the rails for the morning mail train, now hours late. Meanwhile Mr. Sweezy, the host of the “Depot Hotel,” the wit of the reconstructed Hattertown, did a thriving trade with many usually abstemious citizens exhausted by the wielding of snow shovels, in beverages that did not bear the label “soft drinks,” and the ticket agent’s wife in the little booth struggled with and made more incoherent the reports that came over the snow-laden wires.

In spite of the storm and the desirability of daylight, there were four souls under the magnetic influence, as it were, of those bands of steel rails, that wished it were night. Two that they might meet once more, and two in order that a distance might reach between them that it seemed likely would end in a more complete separation.

Neither couple had ever seen or heard of the other, and yet the strands were fast weaving to draw them together and make it impossible to blot either from the other’s memory.

The first couple were man and maid, the second, man and wife.

Jim Bradley,—working his way slowly on the morning trip from New York in dire apprehension that the return trip would be hopelessly delayed as far as the interval at Hattertown within visiting hours was concerned,—and Miranda Banks, who looked from her watch-tower of the kitchen window over the snow waves that had enveloped all below, through which the various hay-ricks and chimney stacks emerged and seemed to drift like bits of wreckage in an Arctic sea. As she gazed she brought New England thrift to bear, and decided that hat and feathers would be an unseemly head covering on such a night, even if the meeting should be possible, and straightway put it by and began the freshening of an old hood with scraps of ribbon.

The second couple, John Hasleton and Helen, his wife, stood looking at each other across a table in the richly furnished library of one of the best modern houses of the city that was the Sky Line Railroad’s eastern terminal.

Everything about the room indicated a soothing combination of good taste augmented by money; the soft but not too profuse draperies and rugs, black oak shelves holding books of enticing title and suitably clothed, unique specimens of bronze and porcelain on table and shelf, prints upon the walls that through skill of dry point and gravers’ tools reflected the faces of the past,—poet, king, warrior, gallant, and court beauty, all given an added touch of reality and animation by the glowing colours the hearth fire flashed upon them. But on the two faces that gazed across the table lay an expression of animal hatred,—no, not animal, for that is direct and primitive, while human hatred is so compounded that one unimportant ingredient is often the yeast that ferments the whole inert bulk.

The man was openly furious, both in speech and mien; the woman held herself verbally within that purely technical and outward quality of self-control that is so exasperating to the opposite side, who feels that something is at stake besides success or defeat in argument.

This couple, of the relative ages of twenty-seven and thirty odd, had been married five years, spent largely in travel and social pleasures, satisfying their various tastes by acquisitions, and passing brief winters in the city house given by an indulgent father to his only daughter on her marriage.

Until this time, no great responsibility had fallen on either to say you must or must not do this or that. But now circumstances called the husband to give his time to various interests in New York, necessitating a permanent removal.

“You forget that I have not refused to leave my home and assured social position here, and if I am willing to begin again elsewhere, you have no right to forbid this visit that will not only make everything plain, but amuse me greatly as well.” The words were reasonable, but the voice was hard, and the pointed white fingers, heavy with rings that seemed to touch the table top lightly, but in reality supported the swaying figure, were tense and cold.

“Social position be damned! I’ve had enough of it these three years and over, but if not a soul should ever again speak to you in the street, I’ll not have it said that you have spent a single night in Tom Barney’s house, much less passed two weeks there and been thrown into the arms of the crowd they travel with!”

“Don’t be coarse. Mr. and _Mrs._ Barney’s house,” corrected the woman’s voice; “and when I know that you spent innumerable week-ends before our marriage at one or more of their country places and that he proposed your name for the difficult Cosmopolitan Club and engineered your election. I wish to make this visit, I have accepted the invitation, and I am going.”

“I repeat, I will not allow my wife to sleep under the Barneys’ roof. If, with your sharp insight, you cannot grasp the reason, then you must yield obedience to what I consider seemly.”

“If that is all, the matter is possible of arrangement,” replied the woman’s voice, growing colder than the February sleet outside.

“Then you will yield this point?”

“Yes, I will yield the point of being your wife,” and the woman, suddenly feeling the need of greater support than the touch of finger tips upon the table gave her, moved slowly toward a deep chair before the fire and dropped from view behind its screening back.

For a full minute the man stood staring at the place where she was not, then turned and crashed from the room, overturning a porcelain jar in his blind haste.

Ten minutes later the front door shut.

An hour later, Mrs. Hasleton’s maid was packing a suit case while her mistress, dressed in a street gown and seated at her desk, wrote half a dozen notes. Presently looking up, she said: “Elise, you will follow me on Tuesday, as I had arranged, with the trunks packed for a two weeks’ visit. I have written the directions for you.” Then, glancing through some time-tables, “Tell Peter to be here at two to drive me to the station.”

“A bad day for travel? Not at all; the snow packs in the streets, that in the open country blows off and amounts to nothing.”

Why she did it, she could not have told, but Mrs. Hasleton chose the least direct way of reaching her destination; and, instead of going as usual to the parlour car, entered a day coach, where she sat tapping her foot nervously, waiting for the train to pull out, without so much as lifting her heavy brown veil.

It was in itself a novel sensation, this leaving with no one to say good-by, to go to a city where no one expected her; for she had determined to spend the next two days at a woman’s club to which she belonged, going to the Barneys’ on the following Tuesday, that being the time of the invitation. She had not yet told her change of destination to Elise.

The man strode about the half-cleared streets until he was physically almost exhausted, and then entered his club, where he hid himself in a corner, curling up like a half-sick and surly dog who both craves and resents sympathy. A group of younger men entered, joking each other and harmlessly boisterous. Spying Hasleton, they proceeded to unearth him from his lair. Shouted one, “We have a scheme afoot for Sunday, and we want a steady head like yours to come along and collect us and see that we start for home straight on Monday morning.”

“Grumpy and got a cold? Nonsense, you want some lunch.”

* * * * *

The Milk Freight crawled in on the slippery rails at the Hattertown siding only an hour late, which was doing very well, as sleet had followed the snow and everything was a glare of ice. But now the threatening snow clouds had vanished and the stars were piercingly clear.

The Sweezy boy had gone up for Miranda Banks in a sleigh before eight o’clock, and she waited patiently in the little room outside the ticket booth, with only the two benches and the air-tight stove for company. The natives who usually gathered at the station on winter evenings were mostly in bed, tired out by snow shovelling, the few remaining having collected at Sweezy’s Hotel to listen to his accounts of other February storms he had known.

Inside the booth the sick operator’s wife, who was waiting until the freight and express had passed safely through before closing up, alternately dozed and started to listen to the tick-tickety-tick, that sounded to the girl outside as mysterious as the death-watch beetle in a wall.

Then the milk train came in. Jim Bradley crossed the little room and inquired the whereabouts of the through express before he saw Miranda.

“I haven’t heard since Oldfield,” replied the tired woman, “but I reckon you’re good for an hour’s holdup anyway.”

The milk supply was low that night and quickly loaded, then Jim Bradley, throwing off his outer coat and pitching his cap at it, wholly relaxed and stretched luxuriously on the bench behind the stove, regardless of chilblains. For a few moments the unusually bad weather of the month, the present storm, and various bits of local news held their attention; then Bradley sat up erect, folded his arms, and said: “Now for my news. No, I won’t let you guess, for if you hit it, you’d knock half the wind out of the story. I’m promoted,—first of March I’m boss of the through morning local No. 11 and can pick my own crew!”

Randy’s heart sank, though she knew that this meant progress. “It’s very nice,” she stammered, looking down; “they must think a lot of you.”

“Is that all you’ve got to say about it?” and Bradley fixed his eyes upon her face so that she could not avoid them.

“I guess so. What do you want me to say?”

“Which end of the line you’d rather live at; that’s what’s concerning me now.”

When Jim Bradley’s arm was free once more, the breathing from the ticket office was audible and regular, and the instrument also seemed asleep for a time and ceased its ticking. In fifteen minutes life plans were on their way to being settled, when in the midst of optimistic happiness arose a ghost called Theoretical New England Conscience.

Ten long, slender fingers were linked between ten short, heavy ones, when a few harmless words severed the conjunction. “Tell me, Jim, are you Methodist or Congregational? Ma heard up Telford way that your uncle on your father’s side was a Congregational preacher, and it would seem real suitable, ’cause my father was a deacon.”

Jim Bradley started as if a broken rail had suddenly confronted his engine on a curve, then he answered quietly: “Yes, uncle was. I’m not either, Randy, I’m a Roman Catholic. You see mother was out of Irish stock and she kept to her religion, and I, well, I held to it as long as she lived, and after because _it_ held to me. It’s a good religion for us knock-about men,” he added half-appealingly. “It never forgets you and it’s always there.” But Miranda sat silent and drooping, white to the lips.

Jim Bradley looked at her and tried to give her time; he well knew from his early life just what his statement meant to this girl with the rigid ideas of the hill country; but because he understood, he would not say a word to force his creed upon her if she would do the same, and he told her so. Still she crouched on the bench and the only words that he could get from her were, “What would they all say?” and “Ma would never look at me again,” repeated over and over.

Suddenly the instrument began a vigorous ticking. The woman started and, grasping the key, answered the sounds.

“Anything for me?” asked Bradley, glad to move and break the spell that had fallen over both.

“No—yes—wait a minute,” said the operator, with a puzzled expression on her face, looking at Bradley with eyes that seemed only half awake. “You are to go right on to Bridgeton and take further orders there.”

Putting on coat and hat and turning up the wick of his lantern, Jim once more faced Randy, who stood with her hands clenched in the fringe of her long cape.

“Well, it’s good-night for now,” he said cheerfully; then as her eyes met his he added, “Don’t say it’s good-by, girl; for God’s sake, think it over.”

“It’s—it ought—it must be good-by,” she whispered; “but oh, Jim, I do care, care _so_ much; if only something stronger than either of us could decide and say it would be right.”

“Good-night, Randy,” said Jim, and the swing of his lantern was answered by the train’s whistle. When it left the siding, Randy stood on the edge of the platform watching it go out over the trestles and gain speed on the level bit before the bridge, the red and green signal lights blinking at her like harlequin stars.

Sweezy’s boy, who had gone into the hotel for shelter, emerged slowly and then disappeared in the barn to get the horse and sleigh. Still Randy lingered out on the platform end.

The lights were disappearing around the curve and the village lay as silent and dead as if no railway pierced it, few houses showing any light. Suddenly three shrill whistles pierced the air, the signal for down brakes, followed swiftly by a splitting noise, a vibrating crash, and a roar that was muffled almost immediately.

For a brief second Miranda waited for another whistle. None came. Glancing toward the station she saw a couple of lighted lanterns, one red and one plain, that were partly hidden by a baggage truck. Seizing one in either hand, she started down the track, springing lightly between the ice-coated ties. When she reached the beginning of the trestles across the low calf-pastures, she stopped long enough to shake off her heavy cape, that risked her balance, and then flew on.

The bright starlight showed the outline of the bridge ahead, but where was the train with its winking lights? Only one dark hump broke the outline of the trestles. On again over the perilous ice-coated footing that a man in daylight would have hesitated to traverse. What was that? A cry? Yes, a halloo, repeated as continuously as breath would allow.

As the girl drew near, she saw that the obstacle in front was the freight caboose, lying on its side on the bank at the very beginning of the bridge, and from beside or under it, Jim Bradley’s voice was calling.

Feeling her way more carefully now, she answered, “I’m coming, Jim; where are you?” and finding solid earth beneath her feet once more she crept around the end of the car.

An endless minute told it all; _something_ had caused the engine to leave the track when halfway across the bridge, the brakes had not answered, and the six cars had followed their leader into the river, the caboose alone breaking free—wedging and overturning on the bridge. Bradley had sprung from the rear steps only to be pinned fast below the knees, body prone on the frozen earth.

“Oh, Jim! Jim! tell me what to do first! How can I get you out before it kills you?” she cried, for though Conductor Bradley did not groan, in spite of himself his arms would twist in his agony.

“Turn the light under here and see what holds me,” he gasped; “there’s an axe in the caboose if it should be anything you could chop.” Then as she started for the sidewise door he half raised himself on his elbow to clutch her dress, and then dropped, ear to ground.

“No, don’t mind me; take that red lantern and run back as far as you can go above the depot and signal the express—it’s coming—I can hear the growl of it along the ground!”

“But, Jim, it can’t come this half hour yet; it was to pass you at Bridgeton.”

“That woman operator’s made a mistake. It’s coming, I tell you, go!”

“I don’t want to leave you, Jim, I can’t,” wailed the girl.

“’Tain’t what we want, Randy, it’s what’s got to be. Go, or if you won’t, don’t come near me, I couldn’t bear you to touch me!” and the man threw one twisting arm across his face, for turn away he could not.

Back over trestles and track flew the girl; past the station, from which suddenly awakened men were stumbling up the track calling; past the overtasked wife of the station master, who was wringing her hands, but all seemed unconscious of any danger save the wrecked freight.

Then a broad pathway of light streamed down the track, almost blinding Randy, who, gaining a firm footing on the side bank and clinging to a telegraph pole, waved the lantern to and fro—to and fro, until a whistle answered the signal and the train came to an abrupt stop, with Randy, her red lantern, and the great, panting engine almost side by side.

* * * * *

In an instant the track was swarming with people; the conductor of the express, by chance an operator, went to the telegraph key to summon help of various kinds, the poor woman who had made the error having utterly collapsed. The crew, armed with pails and axes, hurried to the wrecked freight, for now the smell of burning wood came on the air, while the passengers of the express, satisfied that they had nothing further than a night’s discomfort to fear, were scattered about, filling the little waiting room at the station and Sweezy’s Hotel to overflowing, while looking up the possibilities of food and lodging; fortunately, owing to the storm, the train was but scantily filled.

A woman from one of the day coaches, evidently a lady from quiet mien and tone, dressed in a plain cloth travelling suit, went to the bare and formal hotel parlour, and asked if she could have a room, as she was travelling alone and did not care to pass the night upon the train.

“I’ll fix yer out if possible,” said Sweezy, “but you’ll have to wait a bit in here; I’ve got a lot ter tend to first, and most like there’ll have to be some doubling up.” So saying, he threw open the door between the long “parlour” and a little office in an alcove where there was a stove, leaving Helen Hasleton sitting in the dim light of a single candle, for lamps were at a premium in Hattertown just then.

Choosing the least uncomfortable of the chairs, the woman threw herself back in it, taking off her veil and hat to ease the strain upon her aching head.

People passed to and fro in groups, occasionally glancing in, but she seemed neither to see nor to hear them. At last a familiar voice speaking her name startled her, and she looked up, facing the door; it said:

“Hello, Burt, you didn’t tell us your wife was with you,—thought you were off with the boys alone. Don’t apologize. Everybody gets rattled when they’re held up like this and know that four or five good fellows have come to an end a few feet ahead of them.

“Pretty well tired out, aren’t you, Helen?” and there came into the room her father’s oldest friend and business associate, holding her husband by the arm, and pushing his wife and daughter before him in his eagerness.

After a few minutes’ aimless prattle the party of three left, having decided to spend the night on the train, the elderly man making jocular remarks about leaving the couple to have a _tête-à-tête_ in peace.

Complete silence for a moment, and then, that being the last thing the woman’s nerves could endure, she said: “Why did you follow me? What right have you to put me in a position like this after this morning?”

“I did not follow you, for I did not know that you had left Boston.”

“Then it is as Mr. Dale hinted, you were going alone with some men without even telling me.”

“After this morning, what right had you to know?” The blow that she had set in motion, but of which she had not before gauged the full power, struck her squarely between the eyes.

“At least we must assume a part, not make ourselves ridiculous and start a scandal here to-night among people that are almost relations, before,—before things are arranged,” she said, on the verge of tears.

“As you please; creating public comment has never been my plan,” he answered, and drawing a chair to the feeble light, he took a copy of a comic paper from his pocket and at least feigned to read, while the woman closed her eyes, and from holding them closed to keep the angry tears back, finally fell into a sleep of exhaustion where she sat.

An hour passed. Hasleton went out, but as usual, could gather little absolute knowledge of the wreck. He saw his companions playing poker in the parlour car; they, having heard of his wife’s presence and deeming that she had followed him, winked knowingly, and he, having nothing to explain and much to cover, drifted back to the hotel. Seeing that the woman slept, he, in his turn, settled himself as well as might be on the hard sofa, and, cramped and uncomfortable as he was, dozed, being too much bewildered by the condition of things to plan or even think.

Twelve o’clock was called slowly and almost spitefully, it seemed, by the clock in Sweezy’s bar and lunch room; usually this was the signal for closing, but to-night no excise regulations were enforced. Sweezy, having sold all the eatables that could be procured and most of the drinkables, was busying himself disposing of people for the night, as it was not possible to remove the débris and get the track in shape under four or five hours. He had spent a profitable evening and was, consequently, in fine joking humour. Peering into the parlour, he saw the sleeping couple, and not remembering that the woman had entered alone and asked for a room, he awakened them, giving the man a cheerful slap on the back to boot. “Be you folks married?” and upon Hasleton’s giving a sleepy assent, he continued, “All right, then, I kin double you up and that’ll take the last room, and then I’ll make shake-downs in here for half a dozen schoolmarms goin’ to a convention. First to the right at the head of the stairs, sir.” Then, setting a spluttering candle on the table at the woman’s elbow, as if he naturally expected her to take the lead, he disappeared.

Helen Hasleton started to her feet, her face lowering and furious. “You might have prevented this, it’s taking a mean advantage of me,” she fairly hurled the words at him. “You can go upstairs, I shall stay down here with the other women.”

Burt rose with difficulty, stiff and aching in every limb, and taking up the candle, said, “Very well, it seems rude to leave you here among strangers and without a bed, but under the circumstances, I can only obey your wish.”

“Obey!” snapped the woman; “there is no such word, or if there is, I do not understand its meaning. This morning I was to obey you. To-night you offer at once to make a spectacle of me and obey me. Rubbish! Go back to the car with your friends and say there was no room for you here.”

Something moved in the alcove, a long shadow fell upon the floor, followed by the presence of a tall, clean-shaven man in the garments of a priest, who stood for a moment looking from one to the other.

“There is a word obey, and it will always have a meaning until the world falls apart. The question is, whom shall we obey and what,” said a deep but quiet voice in the perfect accents of well-born speech. “If one woman had not obeyed to-night, you two perhaps, as well as all on board the train, would have been lying crushed or burned in the river-bed beyond, dead, distorted, horrible! Jim Bradley, the conductor, pinned in the wreck, was found by the woman he was to marry, frantic of course to rescue him. He told her to leave him, to go back and save this train, and she obeyed. They have carried him to her home and the surgeons are at work; the end I do not know. I have left them but now, and with them the two rites of the Church that best could help, belonging to the two ends of life, marriage that gives her the right to care for him, and to him the last sacrament.

“And yet you stand there, man and woman, and bicker and create falsity from empty words, forgetting that nothing can transpose right and wrong. Shame on you both!”

For several moments no one moved; then Hasleton replaced the candle on the table, as he saw the outlines of the man’s face, young in spite of gauntness and close-cropped gray hair, and in his astonishment almost whispered, “John Anthony!”

“Father John,” corrected the voice calmly, but in a tone that forbade further questioning, though recognition gleamed in his own eyes; for John Anthony had been a college mate of Hasleton’s, who, though always serious, had, ten years before, suddenly, and to the world in general unaccountably, given up the brilliant promise of public life for the priesthood. Two men alone knew that the first motive for his course lay in that it was the only immovable barrier he could place between his nature and temptation,—the mad infatuation of a beautiful married woman, whose husband was his friend.

As all this flashed through Hasleton’s brain, he lowered his gaze and stood with bowed head. A few more seconds passed. The woman’s clenched hands relaxed, and raising her eyes, she met those of Father John that had never moved from her face, and in their depth her woman’s instinct saw both comprehension and the scars of conquered temptation. Then she took the candlestick from the table and crossing the room slowly, went up the narrow, uncarpeted stairs, step by step.

As Hasleton raised his eyes again to Father John’s face, their hands met in a tense clasp that told its tale to each. No words were spoken, and Hasleton, in turn, went up the creaking stairs.

* * * * *

Five years passed, and Hattertown looked much the same as of old. The factory ruins were now but a heap of wood dust where vagrant hens scratched for slugs. The Milk Freight still ran on the siding every evening, but Jim Bradley was not the conductor, neither did Miranda Banks teach the school at the corners.

In one of the offices of an important station of the Sky Line Railroad works a short, thick-set man, to whom many others defer as their manager; his face is strong and cheerful, but after noting his chin lines, very few bigger men would try to browbeat him in spite of the fact that he moves with a crutch, one leg being shortened almost to the thigh.

The working day ends, and going downstairs, the man sees a horse and low buggy driven by a trim woman with glorious ruddy-gold hair turn toward the platform. She, smiling a welcome, moves the tiny girl beside her to make place; and the horse, taking his own head, trots to a quiet by-way apart from the main road that leads past stately country places.

“Where is Jimmy this afternoon? I hope he hasn’t been cutting up, Randy,” said the father, questioningly.

“Oh, no, but we’ve company at home that I left him to entertain. Guess who?”

“Your mother?”

“No, Father John, and only think of it, he’s going to stay two days before he goes up to the Hasletons’ for his usual August visit. On hearing of it, Mrs. Hasleton brought me some flowers and fruit this afternoon, and when she had seen the house, asked me if I would let her John and little Helen come to me of mornings this winter and learn to read and spell with Jimmy. She said that she knew I had taught school in the old-fashioned way, and that she preferred it to kindergarten methods for the boy. Think of my being able to teach the Hasletons’ children anything. Isn’t it splendid, Jim? How pleased Ma will be.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Jim Bradley, closing one hand over those that held the reins, “but I know something, or rather somebody, else that is splendid, even if she couldn’t just at first make up her mind which end of the line she’d live at.”

Miranda Bradley, not one whit abashed, laughed softly. “It wasn’t really a matter for me to decide which end, was it, Jim, since Hasleton Manor Station happens to be almost in the middle?”

Thus it came about that neither the remote hamlet of Hattertown nor a bleak February day was without influence on vital things.

III
THE VANDOO

=MARCH=—THE MOON OF SNOW BLINDNESS

“How can you ask me to invite her?” I said, looking up from a letter Evan had a moment before handed me to read, and blinking at him reproachfully; for I had been driving about with father all the afternoon with the brightening March sun reflected by ice-coated March snow in my eyes, until the lids seemed to be controlled by rusty wires and everything was enveloped in rainbow-hued mist through which black spots danced.

“Is it possible that you have read the letter? Hear what she writes: ‘Terry says that you live in the country and that you wouldn’t leave your home for anything in the world. I want to live in the country because I was born in the West and lived on a ranch until I was well grown, and I haven’t yet found a city big enough to give me elbow-room, much less a comb in a twelve-story beehive, which in New York it seems is the only available shelter for people like Terry and myself. Besides, I want room for a riding horse and pasture to turn him out.

“‘We’ve been looking at country places ever since we were married last March, for Uncle Sandy has promised to buy me a home when I want to settle, but he doesn’t believe in paying rent; we’ve seen many that would do, but that isn’t what I want. If we buy a house it must be one that can—not only make me buy it as a matter of course, but that will hypnotize me so that I shall never wish, or be able to get away from it again. Uncle Sandy told me long ago that this was the only way to be sure about choosing one’s husband, and I know he’s right, because though there were plenty of men about, I could do very well without them, one and all, until Terry’s horse stepped into a (prairie) dog’s hole, throwing him so that his ankle buckled, and they brought him up to the ranch because Uncle Sandy is a sort of natural bonesetter. That was in March, too. March has always been a good month to me: that’s why, this year, I’m building on striking a home in the month. If we don’t, I foresee a wandering life and bad days for Terry ahead! [“She is certainly frank,” I interjected.]

“‘I want to see your place and, if possible, find out what it is that makes you hug it so close, and I want to see it soon; so if you will please engage a room for us at the nearest hotel, Terry and I will go down for Sunday, and I can wait behind a bit and look around the neighbourhood.

“‘I’ve been at him about this for a month, but he always forgets to ask when he sees you. Then, too, the poor boy is a bit discouraged; we’ve been to so many places that we know the railway time-tables of all the villages within an hour of the city as well as we know our twice twos. He thinks the only possible way to be satisfied is to inherit a place, and “feel the blood of your people in the soil” as he puts it. But how can we? I’ve no people but Uncle Sandy at the ranch, which is several thousand miles inconvenient to Terry’s work, and his people are in the old country, where, at best, the family nest, though decidedly a last year’s one, was overfull, and dropped him out (he says you’ll appreciate that). So you see, we’ve both got to start and make believe until it seems natural.

“‘I hope I’m not putting you to trouble, but in the West we’re always glad to step out for a prospective homesteader.

“‘Sincerely, your possible neighbour,
“‘VESTA DONELLY.’”

* * * * *

“I didn’t suppose it would put you out very much to have a jolly sort of girl here for a few days at this dull time of the year,” said Evan, regretfully, rather than apologetically, and dodging the real issue.

“It isn’t the trouble. I would welcome any one with open arms who cared to come here in the first three weeks of March (as to the fourth week, barring a blizzard, my mind goes back to the earth and revels in the task of keeping the temperature of the hot-beds equable, an occupation not naturally appreciated by company). But knowing the country as we do, can you possibly consider March a good month for exploiting real estate? Especially a March like the present, that starts by being snowbound in the fields, and so sloppy in the roads that the wheels of anything but father’s stanhope are mired and won’t go round, while down in the valley the light sleigh almost turned into a boat and floated this morning.

“There is nothing attractive of any kind that I know of for sale, and if there were, it would repel people at this season. Even the Cortrights’ trim, lovely house, standing between the great oaks, looked, this afternoon, like a belated and bedraggled straggler, propped up between two policemen waiting for the patrol wagon to come for it. Besides, at best, this Mrs. Terence Donelly is looking for the impossible with true Western fervour.

“One must grow up with a place and feel rooted in its earth to love it in March; she won’t have the ghost of an idea what the garden means to us by looking at it now, for it isn’t there, only its spirit, and that, like everything dead, is invisible except to the eyes of those that love.

“What is Vesta like? How old is she, and who were her people?” I asked, for optimistic Evan was beginning to look depressed, which is something wholly against the rule.

Terence Donelly was a college chum of Evan’s at Oxford, and is as fascinating and warm-hearted as only a well-bred Irishman knows how to be. He had visited us many times before the Western trip that had buckled into double harness a spirited roadster who had travelled straight and true in single harness without either check-rein or blinders for nearly forty years. Consequently, Mrs. Terence was an object of an interest that became intense upon the thought of meeting her.

“She is small, her hair is light brown and her eyes flash and dance so that I don’t remember anything else about them,” said Evan, slowly, shutting his eyes, as if searching his memory for an accurate picture. “I happen to know that she is twenty-six, though she does not look it by five or six years. I haven’t made up my mind about her disposition; one moment she has an almost pathetic expression as though she needed sympathy and protection, and then her eyes blaze, and she runs her hand through her front hair until it stands on end, and she reminds one of something as unapproachable as a coil of slender live wire.

“Her people? Her father was a Californian, but her mother was an Eastern woman by descent, the daughter of a Judge Morland who came from Massachusetts, and, like many another boy, tired of farm life, taught school to get his education, and then by the same process worked his way out West. Terry has tried to look up the family to please his wife, who seems very lonely in spite of all her independence, but there is no one left. That is why I thought you might cheer her up from the woman’s side of things if they settled here. She is unconventional enough to satisfy you, I’ll warrant, and would be delighted to go up in the attic on a wet day and dream pussy willows, and the fact that hers may be the western species of the tree would be a sort of tonic for the dreams.”

“You must have said something to Terry about his wife’s coming here,” I announced, when he had ended.

“I may have,” Evan answered. “The poor fellow is worried because she is getting restless, and hasn’t a woman friend in New York, and I thought if she could meet the Cortrights and Bradfords, Sukey Latham and the rest, the air might clear in a twinkling.”

“I’ll write to her to-night; imagine you and me, married only a year and living in Chicago or San Francisco, father dead, and not even Aunt Lot or Martha Saunders to turn either against or to, and no home to which to return! _What_ a wretched time you would be having with me! Nevertheless, upon your head be the failure to find in this neighbourhood the ideal house built around a magnet.”

“Oh, if you once get her here something will be sure to turn up,” said Evan. “She may find a few bits of old furniture, or a bargain in a jug or spoon up at Tucker’s curiosity shop; he’s had a dull season, and the Donellys are keen about getting old Colony things so that when they find _the_ house they may have the fittings, as they seem to take it for granted the house will match.”

Father, who had come in while we were talking, stood with his back to the study fire rubbing his hands together as if it were midwinter, while the sleepy dogs only roused enough to wag their tails drowsily, take a comfortable yawn that arched their backs, easing the muscles, then settled down again.

“Is it thawing or freezing?” I asked, crossing the hall to him.

“Both,” he answered, laughing, “one overhead, the other underfoot; a fine climate this, to test the vigour of the New England people. I’ve just come down from the Dearborn farm from visiting old man Becker, who is racked by grippy pains. He says there is more snow in the south meadow than any spring since the old deacon died, and that is forty years and he reckons March is ‘no good to anybody but for plotting and planning.’ He gave me this handbill yesterday, which owing to the weather, it’s several days in advance of its being posted. I was reminded of it by hearing the words ‘bargains in jugs and old spoons’;” and father pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper from his side pocket, which, being spread upon the table, took the form of a tree poster that read as follows:—

“VANDOO! PART I

“The entire goods and chattels belonging to the estate of Sarah
Dearborn deceased, will be disposed of on the premises by public
vandoo on the 12th of March, or if stormy, the first fair day
thereafter. Goods will go to the highest bidder and must be paid
for at time of purchase and removed within two days.

“A list of the property may be seen on the premises.

“A grand chance for the friends of the late estimable lady to
obtain souvenirs.”

“VANDOO! PART II

“On Friday, March 15, the real estate belonging to the estate of
the late Sarah Dearborn, as follows: Parcel I consisting of one
two-story oak-framed dwelling with attic, wood-shed, and
buttery, two barns and smaller out-buildings, and seventeen
acres of land, the same comprising the homestead and to be sold
together. Parcel II, ten acres of woodland situated on the Ridge
Road, Parcel III, ten acres of salt meadow, Parcel IV, forty
acres of plowed and grass land being known as the South Meadows.
These pieces will be sold together or separate to suit the
bidder.

“Grand chance to secure high land for building lots, with a land
boom and a trolley only a few miles away and coming nearer! Come
one! come all!

“These two important vandoos are under the management of Joshua
Hanks, licensed auctioneer and attorney for the Executors.

“Oaklands, March, 19—.”

“Here is something, I’m sure, that will interest Mrs. Terry,” said Evan, who had followed me; “naturally she will not care for the house, for it is low and rambling, but it will be a chance to go to an auction sale conducted with strict hill-country etiquette, unless I’m mistaken, for even the leading word, ‘Vendue,’ is spelled according to the local pronunciation. It is always as good as a play to hear Hanks conduct a sale, he is all commercial bathos. Don’t you remember going with me, Barbara, to an auction on the Ridge where some one complained that a certain cow was damaged, and not sound as represented because she had a broken horn, and Hanks gave a thrilling account of how the horn was broken and tried to prove added value from the happening?”

“But, father,” I asked, “why is the Dearborn farm to be sold? I thought Miss Sallie had pinched and denied herself even ordinary comforts the last half of her life to leave the place, with a little sum for keeping it up, to some grandnephews.”

“It is one of the many cases that come to us all, and especially into the life of a country doctor, that prove how foolish it is for people to make plans for those who come after them, or pinch or save beyond the ordinary bounds of prudence,” answered father. “I knew Sallie Dearborn for upwards of fifty years. The Lord intended her for a woman to love and be loved, yet a streak of obstinate martyrdom from first to last made her lose her chances of happiness one after another, because to accept them would interfere with some elaborate and prudent plan she had made either for indefinite posterity, or more often merely on general principles of thrift.

“After the old people died, they say that Sallie had a chance to marry a promising young fellow and go out into the world, but to have withdrawn her interest in the land at that time would have hindered her two brothers, and after a controversy that no one understood, the lover went away.

“Presently one brother died, and the other, having married a delicate wife, broke away from the farm to go to the southwest. For years Sallie toiled and scrimped to pay him his portion and keep the place of five generations ‘in the family.’ She has even paid her farmer Becker and his wife with _post obits_, that she might leave a money equivalent of the farm in the bank so that the two nephews might have equal portions without selling the homestead and furnishings. The first choice going to the elder, with many directions as to the handing of it down being left to the one who takes it and its quaint furnishings.

“Now, as it turns out, neither man wishes the farm or fixings, nor has sufficient interest in their fate even to bring them here to oversee affairs, and everything available is to be sold without reserve and turned into money!

“Deborah Becker, who lived with Miss Sallie as companion more than helper these forty years, is almost heart-broken, and told me this afternoon that such a happening had never entered Miss Sallie’s head, for that not long before her last illness, she even sent for samples of wall-paper, labelled and put them away in the old mahogany desk of the Squire’s that always stood in the best room; this paper for the guest room, that for the parlour, as a guide for the doing over of the house when ‘one of the boys’ should take it.”

“Timothy Saunders’ saying is true, ‘The future’s a kittle mare that travels best her ain gate and lacking both bit and bridle,’” I said, “but yet it is pathetic when one has sacrificed everything to a sort of old country land-pride, to have it come to naught. Didn’t she leave you a letter of some sort, father, that was to remain sealed a year until everything was settled?”

“Yes, Barbara, a sealed letter enclosing a key; the key of the old desk, which the will says is to be disposed of according to directions given me. I hope it may give rise to no complications. Who that saw Sallie Dearborn during the last half of her life would dream that she was once full of woman’s romance crossed with chivalry? These have seen her grim, calculating, measuring every egg or berry that she sold; sending her weekly paper to the Bridgeton Hospital, but first cutting the white margins therefrom, and rolling them into lamplighters to save matches at two cents a box!”

* * * * *

With the prospective “Vandoo” as a motive, I invited Terry Donelly for over a Sunday and his wife for a week’s visit. When she came, of a Saturday after dusk, I found, as Evan had said, that one moment she was tender and almost piteously feminine, so that I was impelled to take her in my arms as I would a child, while in a moment of animation, a flush would mantle her cheeks, too thin for her years, the gray eyes would flash, little bright glints play about her hair, until she was, indeed, like a bundle of lithe, live wires.

At such moments, Terry’s laughing eyes would grow grave, and the banter, which was one of his charms, die on his lips; that she was restless and he apprehensive even through the spell of strong affection, there was no doubt, and on Monday, when Terry left her with me, there was something appealing in his glance and the grip he gave my hand.

The day was fairly pleasant out-of-doors in that a frozen crust made good walking, and, arm in arm, Mrs. Terry and I explored my haunts; I pointed to the stakes and trellises where the garden had been and would be again, and for a moment we sat upon the seat where the “Mother Tree” had been and looked down the walk that had bordered that first garden of the long ago. Would she understand from these bare outlines the why of it, the voiceless potency of that which bound me?

If she did she said nothing until afternoon, when I took her to my attic corner, and building a log fire in the Franklin stove, drew the dumpy old lounge before it and called the dogs to soothe us with their sleepy influence.

At first Mrs. Terry sat upright, hands clasped about her knees, gazing at the fire, and breathing quickly.

“How I love that,” she said; “we have not had these fires since I left the ranch, and I’ve often slept out by one as high as the wall when we’ve been on camping trips.”

Then gradually her breath came slower and more evenly, and she dropped back half against the sweet clover pillows and half against my shoulder.