CHAPTER XLVI
At four o'clock Leighton sent for Silas.
"Take the team home, Silas," he said. "We're going to walk. Come along,Lew."
"It's awfully early, Dad," said Lew, with a protesting glance at thehigh sun.
"The next to the last thing a man learns in social finesse," saidLeighton, "and the very last rule that reaches the brain of woman, is tosay good-by while it's still a shock to one's hosts."
"And it's still a shock to-day," said Mrs. Leighton, smiling. "But youmustn't quarrel with what your father's said, Lew," she added. "He'sgiven you the key to the heart of 'Come again!'"
"As if Lew would ever need that!" cried Natalie.
Soon after leaving the house, Leighton struck off to the right and up.His step was not springy. His head hung low on his breast, and hisfingers gripped nervously at the light stick he carried. He did notspeak, and Lewis knew enough not to break that silence. They crossed afield, Leighton walking slightly ahead. He did not have to look up tolead the way.
Presently they came into a lane. It dipped off to the left, into thevalley. It was bordered by low, gray stone walls. On its right hung athick wood of second-growth trees--a New England wood, various beyondthe variety of any other forest on earth. It breathed a mingled essenceof faint odors. The fronds of the trees reached over and embowered thelane.
On the left the view was open to the valley by reason of a pasture. Thelow stone wall was topped by a snaky fence of split rails. They were soold, so gray, that they, too, seemed of stone. Beyond them sloped themeager pasture-land; brown, almost barren even in the youth of the year.It was strewn with flat, outcropping rocks. Here and there rose a mightyoak. A splotch of green marked a spring. Below the spring one saw thepale blush of laurel in early June.
Leighton stopped and prodded the road with his stick. Lewis looked down.He saw that his father's hand was trembling. His eyes wandered to a bigstone that peeped from the loam in the very track of any passing wheel.The stone was covered with moss--old moss. It was a long time sincewheels had passed that way.
Leighton walked on a few steps, and then paused again, his eyes fixed ona spot at the right of the lane where the old wall had tumbled andbrought with it a tangled mass of fox-grape vine. He left the roadwayand sat on the lower wall, his back against a rail. He motioned to Lewisto sit down too.
"I have brought you here," said Leighton and stopped. His voice had beenso low that Lewis had understood not a word. "I have brought you here,"said Leighton again, and this time clearly, "to tell you about yourmother."
Lewis restrained himself from looking at his father's face.
"Your mother's name," went on Leighton, "was Jeanette O'Reilly. She wasa milk-maid. That is, she didn't have to milk the cows, but she tookcharge of the milk when it came into the creamery and did to and with itall the things that women do with milk. I only knew your mother when shewas seventeen. No one seemed to know where Jeanette came from. PerhapsAunt Jed knew. I think she did, but she never told. I never asked. To meJeanette came straight from the hand of God.
"I have known many beautiful women, but since Jeanette, the beauty ofwomen has not spoken to the soul of me. There is a beauty--and it washers--that cries out, just as a still and glorious morning cries out, tothe open windows of the soul. To me Jeanette was all sighing, sobbingbeauty. Beauty did not rest upon her; it glowed through her. She alonewas the prism through which my eyes could look upon the Promised Land. Iknew it, and so--I told my father.
"I was only a boy, not yet of age. My father never hesitated. All thepower that law and tradition allowed he brought to bear. He forbade meto visit Aunt Jed's or to see Jeanette again. He gave me to understandthat the years held no hope for me--that on the day I broke his commandI would cut myself off from him and home. To clinch things, he sent meaway to college a month early, and put me under a tutor.
"There is a love that forgets all else--that forgets honor. I forged aletter to the authorities and signed my father's name to it. It toldthem to send me back at once--that my mother was ill. I came back tothese hills, but not home. Far back in the woods here William Tuck had ahut. He was a wood-cutter. He lived alone. He owed nothing to any man.Many a time we had shot and fished together. I came back to William.
"This lane doesn't lead to Aunt Jed's. This land never belonged to her.Here we used to meet, Jeanette and I. You see the mass of fox-grape overyonder? In that day the wall hadn't tumbled. It stood straight and firm.The fox-grape sprang from it and climbed in a great veil over the youngtrees. Behind that wall, in the cool dusk of the grapevine, we used tosit and laugh inside when a rare buggy or a wagon went by."
Leighton drew a long breath.
"I used to lie with my head in Jeanette's lap because it was the onlyway I could see her eyes. Her lashes were so long that when she raisedthem it was like the slow flutter of the wings of a butterfly at rest.She did not raise them often. She kept them down--almost against thesoft round of her cheek--because--because, she said, she could dreambetter that way.
"How shall I tell you about her hair? I used to reach up and pull at ituntil it tumbled. And then, because Jeanette's hair never laughed exceptwhen it was the playmate of light, I used to drag her to her feet,across the wall, across the lane, down there to the flat rock just abovethe spring.
"There we would sit, side by side, and every once in a while lookfearfully around, so public seemed that open space. But all we ever sawfor our pains was a squirrel or perhaps a woodchuck looking aroundfearfully, too. Jeanette would sit with her hands braced behind her, hertumbled hair splashing down over her shoulders and down her back. Thesetting sun would come skipping over the hills and play in her hair, andJeanette's hair would laugh--laugh out loud. And I--I would bury my facein it, as you bury your face in flowers, and wonder at the unshed tearsthat smarted in my eyes."
Leighton stopped to sigh. It was a quivering sigh that made Lewis wantto put out his hand and touch his father, but he was afraid to move.Leighton went on.
"Look well about you, boy. No wheel has jarred this silence for many ayear--not since I bought the land you see and closed the road. Manseldom comes here now,--only children in the fall of the year when thechestnuts are ripe. Jeanette liked children. She was never anything buta child herself. Look well about you, I say, for these still woods andfields, with God's free air blowing over them,--they were your cradle,the cradle of your being.
"It was Jeanette that made me go back to college when college opened,but months later it was William that sent for me when Jeanette was tooweak to stop him. The term was almost over. Through all the winter I hadnever mentioned Jeanette to the folks at home, hoping that my fatherwould let me come home for the summer and wander these hills unwatched.Now William wrote. I couldn't make out each individual word, but the sumof what he tried to tell flew to my heart.
"Jeanette had disappeared from Aunt Jed's three months before. They hadnot found her, for they had watched for her only where I was. She hadgone to William's little house. She had been hidden away there. Whileshe was well enough, she had not let him send for me. There was panic inWilliam's letter, for he wrote that he would meet the first train bywhich I could come, and every other train thereafter.
"You heard William say the other day that he had never driven like thatsince--and there I stopped him. It was since the day I came back toJeanette he was going to say. We didn't mind the horses breaking thatday. Where the going was good, they ran because they felt like it; whereit was bad, they ran because I made them. I asked William if he had adoctor, and he said he had. He had done more than that: he had marriedMrs. Tuck to look after Jeanette.
"We stopped in the village for the parson. I was going to blurt out thetruth to him, but William was wiser. He told him that some one wasdying. So we got the old man between us, and I drove while William heldhim. He would have jumped out. He thought we were mad."