“Yes. But just so they won’t get worried. I’m going to tell them about this, of course.”
“Won’t they scold you?”
“Likely they will. But scolding doesn’t break any bones, as Linda says,” remarked Timothy philosophically.
“I don’t think they will scold you much ... not if you get the head start of them with a message I’m sending them by you. You got that present for your aunt’s birthday, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But there is one thing. I’ve got that ten cents yet, you know. I’d like to buy some flowers with it and go over to the park and put them at the base of the soldier’s monument. Because my father was a brave soldier, you know.”
“Was he killed in South Africa?”
“Oh, no. He came back and married mother. He was in a bank, too. Then he died.”
“Yes, he died,” said Mr. Jenkins, when they had reached The Corner. “And,” he added, “I fancy he’ll stay dead.”
Timothy was rather shocked. It seemed a queer way to speak of anyone ... what Aunt Kathleen would call flippant. Still, he couldn’t help liking Mr. Jenkins.
“Well, good-bye, son,” said Mr. Jenkins.
“Won’t I see you again?” asked Timothy wistfully. He felt that he would like to see Mr. Jenkins again.
“I’m afraid not. I’m going away ... far away. That friend of mine ... he’s going far away ... to some new land ... and I think I’ll go, too. He’s lonely, you know. I must look after him a bit.”
“Will you tell your friend I’m sorry he’s lonely ... and I hope he won’t be always lonely.”
“I’ll tell him. And will you give your aunts a message for me?”
“Can’t you give it to them yourself? You said you were coming back to see them.”
“I’m afraid I can’t manage it after all. Tell them not to worry over that letter you got this morning. They needn’t go to their lawyer again to see ... if the person who wrote it has the power to do what he threatened to do. I know him quite well and he has changed his mind. Tell them he is going away and will never bother them again. You can remember that, can’t you?”
“Oh, yes. And they won’t be worried any more?”
“Not by that person. Only there’s this ... tell them they must cut out those music lessons and put raisins in the Friday pudding and let you have a light to go to sleep by. If they don’t ... that person might bother them again.”
“I’ll tell them about the music lessons and the pudding, but,” said Timothy sturdily, “not about the light if it’s all the same to that person. You see, I mustn’t be a coward. My dad wasn’t a coward. If you see that person will you please tell him that?”
“Well, perhaps you’re right. Ask Dr. Blythe about it. I went to college with him and I fancy he knows what’s what. And this is for your own ear, son. We’ve had a fine time and it’s all right as it happens. But take my advice and never go off with a stranger again.”
Timothy squeezed Mr. Jenkins’ hard hand.
“But you aren’t a stranger,” he said wistfully.
The Second Evening
THE NEW HOUSE
Milk-white against the hills of pine
Behind your aspens’ shaking gold
You wait for me; I fondly hold
Your key and know that you are mine,
And all your lovely ghosts I see
Of days and years that are to be.
Grey twilights sweet with April rain,
The August madness of the moon,
October’s dear autumnal croon,
December’s storm against your pane,
Must all enchant and mellow you
O house, as yet too proudly new.
There must be laughter here and tears,
There must be victory and defeat,
Sweet hours and hours of bittersweet,
High raptures, loyalties and fears ...
All these must blend in you to give
A soul to you and make you live.
Music of children at your door,
And white brides glimmering down your stair,
Girls with May-blossoms in their hair,
And dancing feet upon your floor,
And lovers in the whispering night
For you, the house of friendly light.
There must be fireside councils here,
Partings and meetings, death and birth,
Vigils of sorrow as of mirth ...
All these will make you year by year
A home for all who live in you,
Dear house as yet too proudly new.
Anne Blythe
DR. BLYTHE:- “Is that the new house Tom Lacey has built on the Lowbridge road? I saw you looking at it very intently.”
SUSAN BAKER:- “They say it has cost him more than he will ever be able to pay. But a new house is interesting and that I will tie to. I have sometimes thought ...” Breaks off, thinking it may be wiser not to tell what an old maid thinks about new houses.
ROBIN VESPERS
When winds blow soft from far away
Among the orchard trees,
The robins whistle out the day
With mellow minstrelsies.
When dews are falling cool and still
In valleys dim and far,
The robins flute upon the hills
To greet the evening star.
Hark, hear them in the beechen glade
And in the sunset woods!
Hark, hear them in the haunted shade
Of fern-sweet solitudes,
Where little pixy people creep
To learn the silver notes
That in one twilight rapture leaps
From scores of answering throats.
One must be glad to hear them so,
They are so glad themselves;
Some darling secret they must know
Shared by the tree-top elves,
Some secret they would fain repeat
To us ere darkness falls,
When far and sweet and near and sweet
We list the robin calls.
Anne Blythe
SUSAN BAKER:- “I do like to hear the robins whistling at evening.”
ANNE:- “Sometimes the maple grove and Rainbow Valley seem just alive with them.”
DR. BLYTHE:- “Do you remember how they used to whistle over in the Haunted Wood and at Orchard Slope?”
ANNE, softly:-“I’ve forgotten nothing, Gilbert ... nothing.”
DR. BLYTHE:- “Nor I.”
JEM BLYTHE, shouting in at the window:- “Spoons! Spoons! Say, Susan, was there any of that pie left? I’d appreciate it more than all the robin vespers in the world.”
SUSAN:- “Ain’t that like a boy? I wish Walter was more like that.”
NIGHT
A pale, enchanted moon is sinking low
Behind the dunes that fringe the shadowy lea,
And there is haunted starlight on the flow
Of immemorial sea.
I am alone and need no more pretend
Laughter or smile to hide a hungry heart,
I walk with solitude as with a friend,
Enfolded and apart.
We tread an eerie road across the moor,
Where shadows weave upon their ghostly looms,
And winds sing an old lyric that might lure
Sad queens from ancient tombs.
I am a sister to the loveliness
Of cool, far hill and long-remembered shore,
Finding in it a sweet forgetfulness
Of all that hurt before.
The world of day, its bitterness and cark,
No longer have the power to make me weep ...
I welcome this communion of the dark
As toilers welcome sleep.
Anne Blythe
DR. BLYTHE:- “More imagination, I suppose. When have you had a hungry heart?”
ANNE, reproachfully:- “All my childhood, Gilbert. And when I thought you were in love with Christine Stuart. And
... and ... when little Joyce died. You can’t have forgotten, Gilbert.”
DR. BLYTHE, repentantly:- “No, but I always think of you beginning to live when I saw you first. The egotism of man, you will say truly. But people do forget because they have to. The world couldn’t go on if they didn’t. And there is something to hurt one every day, you know.”
SUSAN BAKER:- “That splinter I took out of Shirley’s dear little leg today hurt him and that you may tie to.”
MAN AND WOMAN
THE MAN
Sweet, I must be for you the only one you have dreamed of,
None must have come before me to wear the rose of your heart;
Only for me your whispers, only for me your laughter,
Never the ghostly kiss of another to thrust us apart.
Only for me must that saint-pale cheek have crimsoned,
Only for me those eyes have woven their sapphire snare;
Lady of mist and flame, call me your only lover,
Tell me no other has lost his face in your raven hair.
THE WOMAN
Dear, it is naught to me who may have come before me,
Ivory and silken women fair to kiss and see,
Wooed in vanished twilights, longed-for on nights forgotten ...
This, this only I ask, none must come after me.
I must drain the last glass, not even the dregs for another,
Not for any other, queen or gypsy or nun!
Tell me none shall ever again hear your muted “I love you,”
Tell me no other shall ever win what I have won.
Anne Blythe
DR. BLYTHE:- “That is the kind of poetry I most decidedly don’t care for. But I suppose we must chalk it all up to the score of imagination. Did you ever really write that stuff, Anne?”
ANNE:- “At Redmond. And of course it was pure fancy and was never published. See how yellow the paper is! And you were the first, you know.”
SUSAN baker, firmly:- “You may have thought you wrote that poem, Mrs. Dr. dear, but you did not. It got mixed up with your papers somehow and you have forgotten. So I will make bold to say that, as far as I can understand it, it is not quite decent. And I am sure the doctor agrees with me.”
DR. BLYTHE, pretending to look grave:-“Well, since I was the first ... and not Charlie Pye ...”
ANNE, flinging the yellowed sheet on the fire:- “There, that’s the last of such nonsense.”
DR. BLYTHE, rescuing it:- “By no means. I’m going to wait and see whether I am the last and how you will behave as my widow.”
SUSAN, going to the kitchen to begin her supper preparations:-“If I did not know they were joking they would give me the creeps. But one just could not imagine either of them caring for anybody else. Though they say Mr. Meredith is going to marry Rosamond West ... and he is a saint if ever a man was. It is a bewildering world and I am very glad I have not the running of it, let Mrs. Marshall Elliott say what she will about things being better run if women were at the helm.”
Retribution
Clarissa Wilcox was on her way to Lowbridge. She had heard that David Anderson was dying. Susan Baker of Ingleside had told her. Dr. Blythe of Glen St. Mary was David Anderson’s doctor in spite of the fact that Dr. Parker lived in Lowbridge. But years ago David Anderson had quarrelled with Dr. Parker and would never have him again.
Clarissa Wilcox was determined that she would see David Anderson before he died. There were some things she must say to him. She had been waiting for forty years to say them ... and her chance had come at last. Thanks to Susan Baker whom she hated ... there had been an age-old feud between the Bakers of Glen St. Mary and the Wilcoxes of Mowbray Narrows and she and Susan Baker never did more than nod coldly when they met. Besides, Susan Baker put on such ridiculous airs because she was the hired girl at Ingleside. As if that was any great thing! None of the Wilcoxes ever had to hire out to earn their living. They had been wealthy once and had looked down on the Bakers. That time had long since passed. They were poor now but they still looked down on the Bakers. Nevertheless, she was grateful to Susan Baker for telling her about David Anderson.
He must be very close to death indeed or Susan Baker would not have mentioned it. They were a close-mouthed lot at Ingleside when it came to the doctor’s patients. Susan was always being pumped but she was as bad as the rest of them ... as if she belonged to the family, thought Clarissa scornfully.
Such airs as some people gave themselves. But what else would you expect of a Baker?
The main thing was that she had found out in time that David Anderson was really dying.
She had known this chance must come. Amid all the injustices of life this one monstrous injustice could never be permitted ... that David Anderson, with whom she had danced in youth, should die without hearing what she had to tell him. Susan Baker had wondered at the strange flash that had come into Clarissa Wilcox’s old, faded face when she had happened to mention his approaching death. Susan wondered uneasily if she should have mentioned it at all. Would the doctor be offended?
But everybody knew it. There was no secret about it. Susan decided she was being overscrupulous. None the less she was careful to mention it to Mrs. Dr. Blythe.
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Blythe had said carelessly. “The doctor says he may go out at any moment.”
Which set Susan’s conscience at rest.
Clarissa Wilcox knew that David Anderson could still hear her ... so much gossip said. In fact, Dr. Parker had said so. The sudden, unheralded stroke that had laid her hated enemy low ... everybody in Lowbridge and Mowbray Narrows and Glen St. Mary had forgotten for generations that there was any enmity or cause of enmity between them but to Clarissa Wilcox it was still a thing of yesterday ... well, the stroke had robbed him of speech and movement ... even of sight, since he could not lift his eyelids ... but he could still hear and was quite conscious.
Clarissa was glad he could not see her ... could not see the changes time had wrought in her once fair face ... yes, she had been good-looking once in spite of the Bakers’ sneers ... something few Bakers had ever been ... certainly not poor Susan, who, however, belonged to a younger generation. Yes, she could say what she liked to David Anderson without any risk of seeing the old laughing scorn in his eyes.
He was helpless ... he was at her mercy ... she could tell him what had burned in her heart for years. He would have to listen to her. He could not escape from her ... could not walk away with his suave, courtly, inscrutable smile.
She would avenge Blanche at last ... beautiful, beloved Blanche, dead in her dark young loveliness. Did anybody remember Blanche but her? Susan Baker’s old aunt, perhaps. Had Susan ever heard the story? Not likely. The matter had been hushed up.
Clarissa, as usual, was shrouded in black, and was bent and smileless. She had worn black ever since Blanche died ... a Wilcox peculiarity, so the Bakers said. Her long, heart-shaped face, with its intense, unfaded blue eyes, was covered with minute wrinkles ... Susan Baker had thought that afternoon how strange that old Clarissa Wilcox had kept her eyes so young when those of all her contemporaries were sunken and faded. Susan thought herself quite young compared with Clarissa, who, she had been told, had been quite a beauty in her youth but had got sadly over it, poor thing. Well, the Wilcoxes had always had a great opinion of themselves.
“Mrs. Dr. dear,” said Susan, as they concocted a fruitcake together, “is it better to be beautiful when you are young and have it to remember always, even though it must be hard to see your good looks fade, than to be always plain and so have nothing much to regret when you grow old?”
“What strange questions you ask sometimes, Susan,” said Anne, deftly snipping candied peel into slender strips. “For my own part, I think it would be nice to be beautiful when you were young and remember it.”
“But then you were always beautiful, Mrs. Dr. dear,” said Susan with a sigh.
“Me beautiful ... with my red hair and freckles,” laughed Anne. “You don’t know h
ow I longed to be beautiful, Susan. They tell me that that old Miss Wilcox who called this afternoon was quite a beauty in her youth.”
“The Wilcoxes all thought they were handsome,” said Susan with a sniff. “I never thought Clarissa was but I have told you that her sister Blanche was really quite handsome. However, though I am far from young, Mrs. Dr. dear, I do not remember her.”
“You Bakers have never seemed to be very friendly with the Wilcoxes, Susan,” said Anne, curiously. “Some old family feud, I suppose?”
“I have been told so,” answered Susan, “but to tell the plain truth, Mrs. Dr. dear, I have never really known how it started. I only know that the Wilcoxes thought themselves much better than the Bakers ...”
“And I suppose the Bakers thought themselves much better than the Wilcoxes,” teased the doctor, who had come in.
“The Wilcoxes had more money,” retorted Susan, “but I do not think they were any better than the Bakers for all that. This Clarissa, now, was said to have been quite a belle in her youth ... but she did not get a husband any more than some of the rest of us.”
“Perhaps she was more particular,” said the doctor. He knew that would enrage Susan, and it did. Without a word she picked up her pan of raisins and marched into the house.
“Why will you tease her so, Gilbert?” said Anne reproachfully.
“It’s such fun,” said the doctor. “Well, old David Anderson of Lowbridge is dying ... I doubt if he survives the night. They say he was a gay blade in his youth. You wouldn’t think so to see him now.”
“The things time does to us!” sighed Anne.
“You’re a bit young to be thinking of that yet,” said Gilbert. “Clarissa Wilcox looks rather young for her age. Those eyes, and hardly a thread of grey hair. Do you know who his wife was?”
“No ... Rose Somebody. Of course I’ve seen it on her monument in the Lowbridge cemetery. And it seems to me that there was some scandal about David Anderson and this Clarissa’s sister Blanche.”