The invaders

Front matter

FRANCES

NEWTON

SYMMES

Contents

I. Colors in the Mists

II. Two Heroines vis-a-vis .

III. Match to Wick

Chapter I

The mists that hid Sugarloaf and made a mountain of Toby brought the children’s voices quite clearly to the two men waiting under the rock maple by the cemetery gate. The one, gray-faced and gray-haired, in army cape and veteran’s hat, sat on a flat, lichened tombstone, his very blue eyes traveling from one soldier’s grave to the other. His companion, young and ruddy and well-knit, in white sweater and golf trousers, leaned on the stone wall, his bare head crinkled with abundant tawny hair. He was looking away, frowning at the vast levels of the onion fields faintly green with the new crop, and deserted except for the bent figures of the weeders in the rows.

“ But, Grandfather,” he had just said, rolling a cigarette between his shapely hands, u living is a long sight cheaper in Paris than it is here, even as we live. So economy is no excuse.”

“ O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave ” floated soft and high, in broken intervals, from far down the road.

“ Don’t discuss it now, Dacre. Not now!” the old man said impatiently. “ It ’s the wrong time.”

“ But La Rose is holding the place for me. It ’s now or never if I ’m to work in his studio. And they sail J une twenty-eighth. What ’s the use of holding on to the old — ”

u No use, God knows, if you ’re so bent on this cursed folly. If you ’ve no spark of manhood in you, let the Polanders have it.”

The color flooded the old man’s face, and he got tremblingly to his feet, steadying himself with shriveled white hands.

“ That ’s sense, Grandfather. Let the Polanders have the place — if they ’ll take it ! You could live like a gentleman in an apartment in town. The old house is tumbling down over your head and the river is eating up the land. Besides, it ’s only fair for me to have my chance.”

“ Damn the chance ! Your father and I — we took no chance. We worked the old place where generations of our family had worked before us. We were n’t above work.”

“ So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,

As we were marching through Georgia.”

High and sweet and nearer came the young voices, and far down the wide road, under the old rock maples, fluttered the children’s banners.

“ And what — what has it all amounted to, your and Father’s work ? ” Dacre threw in bitterly, tossing his cigarette into the wet clover.

The old major put out a steadying hand to the headstone at his side. u Amount to ? ” he repeated, with a quick breath. “ Amount to ! To a dignified competence until — until Ladd did n’t pay the note your father had endorsed for him. You know it all, that story, as well as I do. Ladd was our ruin. Then your father died, and ” — his breath came short — “ and then the old place and I wore out — and the river — ”

“ That ’s just it ! ” the young man interrupted. “ The old place is worn out. In a few years no one will take it off your hands. It would take thousands of dollars even to get it started again. Think of what it would cost to reshingle all those old roofs. And what ’s the use when the river is practically eating up the land ? No one wants to live on what ’s really an island after every big storm. But the thing is, Grandfather, I ’ve got this gift and now ’s — ” “ Gift ! Tomfoolery ! Olivia Ladd has made a fool of you just because you did those posters for the college plays. It ’s all Olivia’s — ” “ Olivia be damned ! ” Dacre muttered under his breath, reddening darkly.

Major Welling had not heard him. Instead, he had moved a little way from the supporting tombstone, and with squared shoulders and lifted hat, stood looking at the advancing procession.

“As He died to make men holy,

Let us die to make men free,”

sang the children, turning from the highway into the grassy cemetery road. Two by two they came, flaxen and brown and black heads all bare, a wreath of running pine over the right shoulder, a flag in the right hand, a bunch of vivid lupin or swamp pink or sand violets in the left. Behind them, with eyes for all, came the teacher, reaching now here, now there, to keep the line in marching order, and then turning back to chat with the mothers and big sisters who brought up the rear.

The Major had advanced still farther from 6 under the maple, and stood unsupported at the side of the road. The years seemed suddenly to have slipped off him, and, a young soldier again, he stood at attention, erect, arms at the side, keen eyes in front. At sight of him, the children stopped and looked quickly at the teacher.

“ Cheer,” her lips framed softly, and she lifted her flag.

“ Hurrah ! Hurrah ! Hurrah ! ” came the shrill shout. Flags fluttered up into the gray.

The Major saluted. His blue eyes had dimmed. A faint color had come into his thin cheeks. He held his gold-corded veteran’s hat over his heart.

“ Fellow soldiers,” he began in his trembling old voice, — “ Fellow soldiers, I have seen Lee’s army and Grant’s army drawn up before Richmond — gray lines and blue lines as long as from here to — to Sugarloaf there in the mist. Often I have heard a whole battlefield of brave men singing what you have been singing, with death waiting for them just across the line. I ’ve seen — I ’ve seen ” — his voice shook and he fumbled under the old cape for his handkerchief — “ I ’ve seen old flags, bloodstained and shottorn, flutter in the Shenandoah — and — and, fellow-soldiers, I ’ve heard the cheers at Richmond — but never — never has the sight been braver than now — now — ”

Before his voice utterly failed him, there was a break in the ranks. A small, square, thickheaded boy, in a uniform of bare brown legs and over-large denim shirt and trousers, rushed from his place straight to the Major, with outstretched wreath and flag and flowers.

“ Nicholas ! Nicholas Brogodzd ! ” called the teacher ; and then, when Nicholas heeded not, “ What has seized the child ! He understands barely a word of English. The family are just over. See him now ! ”

Somehow, the Major seemed perfectly to understand. He was smiling, and he had hung the wreath over his arm, and, the child’s hand in his, stepped to the head of the procession.

“Sing,” said the teacher, smiling through sudden tears.

“ Cover them over with beautiful flowers,

Deck them with garlands, those brothers of ours,”

rang the little voices; and down among the graves filed Polish and Irish and Lithuanian, and the child or two whose forefathers had built the white meeting-house, and been the great men of the valley.

Dacre, leaning on the wall, had forgotten 8

Paris and Olivia. His gray eyes, under their thick, level brows, had lost their frown, and regained the pleasant indolence of expression that made women call them dangerous.

“ Rather nice, the coloring,” he was commenting to himself, and then introspectively rejoiced to find himself so sensitive to color. “ That lupin blue is good,” he went on rather more deliberately and consciously. “ And those olive-skinned Poles are n’t so bad in a lump, with a lot of color around them. They ’re good in this gray, even if the girls’ cotton stockings do wrinkle around their legs and the boys’ coatsleeves are all down over their knuckles. Drawing bad, coloring good, perhaps sums up the picture. And now — ” He drew a long breath.

His grandfather was beginning. He had heard this kind of thing before. It was not artistic, the war, and it had been rather overdone — since. Lincoln was hideously overdone. America always overdid things. That was why she had no sort of art. She made no shades, no nuances. She had no temperament.

“ But Jove ! There ’s temperament for you ! ” he found himself exclaiming aloud. “ Grandfather and that stocky, black-eyed little Polander actually understand each other ! And now look at them ! ”

Then he fell silent and watched grouping^and coloring as the children and the Major trimmed the graves. Around each headstone or each mound they gathered and listened as the veteran told of him who lay beneath, or whose memorial it was.

“In memory of Richard, who died at Ship Island, Miss., April 16, 1863, aged 22 years, and who is buried there,” he read.

And then little Elizabeth Chase and Michael Leary and Nora O’Connor and Leo Krakoski and Romon Krasinska and Thaddeus Yusso, and Stephanya and Elena and Apollonia spread sand violets and swamp pink and wild iris over the turf.

The gray of the mist had grown a shade darker. The hills were gone. The bent weeders in the onion-fields were blurred against the green.

“ Nice the rain held off for the exercises,” Miss Hollins was saying to the teacher. “ And if you are n’t the one for bright ideas ! It ’s been lovely. And what a genius you are to have Major Welling here !”

“ He ’s enjoyed it too,” Mrs. Clabby put in breathlessly, catching up to the others and pinning a buttercup on her black calico shirtwaist. “But don’t it seem a shame that the old families like the Wellings and the Hammonds and all the others is gittin’ pushed out by the Irish and the Polanders ! ”

“ But that child that ran to him with the wreath ! ” Miss Hollins interrupted. “ If that ’s the Polish way, it’s rather nice, I think.”

“ He ’s a bold child, that Brogodzd, or whatever his name is,” Mrs. Clabby protested. 66 Outlandish names, ain’t they ! Wonder who on earth ever made ’em up ! ”

Dacre had untied the old gray mare and stood waiting by the rickety basket phaeton. The phaeton had been bought for his mother before he came. As a small boy he had sat in it on a hassock when she drove his father back from the Boston train. He could remember the talk not intended for his ears, of the low price of tobacco, of the poor corn-crop, while he sucked lemon stick to a point and liked his father’s knee on each side of him.

The children were straggling off. The Major came slowly out of the gate, saluting Miss Hollins and Mrs. Clabby and Mrs. Leary and Mrs. Krakoski.

“ It ’s good to see you, Major,” Miss Hollins called. “ And we ’ll soon be seeing Olivia, shan’t we, Dacre ? Prunella had a letter Monday.”

“ I suppose so,” Dacre answered flatly.

The Major did not hear. He was getting heavily into the phaeton. Dacre sprang in and cut the old mare sharply.

“ At any rate, it was n’t too long,” he said.

“ It was magnificent,” the old man answered decisively, folding his hands on the top of his cane.

Chapter II

Over the coffee-urn at the foot of Mrs. Sturgis’s rose-trimmed table, Olivia could plainly see the mountains. It was this relieving glimpse that had decided her on taking Mrs. Chase’s coffee-urn at the foot of the table rather than Mrs. Archibald’s solid silver heirloom teapot at the head. Prunella Loomis, Miss Hollins’s niece, profited perhaps by the choice, for the bowwindow, with its open sashes looking out into blowing, fragrant woodbine, made an admirable background for her dark prettiness in her last summer’s yellow organdie.

“ I feel selfish, Olivia,” Prunella called down over the roses and bonbons and wafers among the dozen borrowed candlesticks under the pink shades. “ There ’s an elegant breeze here for a background. You ’ll be hot when the rush comes.”

“But your breeze is my foreground, you know,” Olivia said, a little too cleverly, thought Prunella, who had n’t been graduated from college the day before with high honors. In fact, it was more the idea that Olivia had been to college than the cleverness of what she had just answered that made Prunella think it too clever.

As yet, the crush had n’t come. Mrs. Sturgis’s committee had announced the Food Sale for from three to six, to give time, after the village dinners, for dishwashing and the beginning of another appetite, and, before the village suppers, for heating up left-overs and setting forth the purchases of the afternoon. It was only just three o’clock, striking flatly from the spire of the very white meeting-house whose leaky roof was the cause of this daring culinary enterprise. In the front parlor there were only half a dozen or so forerunners of the crush, leaning over the two narrow damask-covered counters that ran imposingly the length of the low-ceiled old room, and eying and smelling the brown of things baked and roasted and preserved, and the green and gold of things dressed.

Mrs. Archibald, holding her eyeglasses over her nose, affected great interest in Sarah Tibbetts’s raised cake at one dollar a loaf, but in reality she was looking at Olivia Ladd. She had come early, indeed, rather for the purpose of looking at Olivia Ladd than for getting first choice of the wares.

“ Made from her Aunt Caroline Eversham’s rule, and such a frostin’ ! Not a slab in the burying-ground has a more marblelike look,” Mrs. Egerton said enthusiastically, moving the cake into a better showing.

“ If ’twas just me,” Mrs. Archibald hesitated, confidentially, “ I ’d buy in a minute. But Abner ’s so squeamish. He always says raised cake don’t set. I ’ll sorter look round at the salad.”

Just in a line with the raised cake, the dining-room door framed Olivia in her scant, heavy white linen, seated tall behind the coffee-urn. More than Olivia, the doorway revealed little except cups and saucers and the shine of one candle. Olivia was disposing her cups around the tray with a view to more expeditious pouring when business grew brisk. Her arms looked brown below the severe conclusion of her elbow sleeves.

“ Pretty plain dressin’ ! ” Mrs. Archibald exclaimed abstractedly. “ The taste would have been better if — ”

“Law, no! It’s real mayonnaise. You just try it, Mrs. Archibald,” Mrs. Egerton spoke up promptly, handing over a fork. “ An’ salads do set well ! Why, Dr. Barker says folks ought to drink olive oil.”

“It was Livvy Ladd I was talkin’ about,” Mrs. Archibald corrected her. “ Considerin’ the occasion and her just home from college, and the standin’ of the family an’ all, it does seem like she might have — ”

“Standin’ of the family!” Mrs. Egerton exclaimed, dropping stoutly on the Sheraton chair behind the counter. “ Standin’ don’t pay your bills ! An’ the talk is — Mr. Egerton got it in meetin’ last night — the talk is that Mary Ladd is mortgaged up to her eyes — even the high pasture. An’ you know what store Lawyer Ladd set by that high pasture. Why, he ’ll turn in his — ”

Mrs. Archibald’s glasses just escaped the potato salad as they fell. “ You don’t say ! Even the high pasture ! ” she repeated in a lowered tone. “ Who ’s Mary mortgaged to ? And her that proud !”

“ Mortgaged to ? Why, to the Irish, of course. To that Mike Joyce that has made such fine onion and tobacco crops on the Hollins’s place. Yes, even the high pasture with the trout brook and the chestnut grove. Think of Lawyer Ladd — and now this Irishman ! ”

Mrs. Archibald leaned far over the salads and affected to pull her skimp black net veil down over her mouth. “ An’ they say,” she murmured, looking down at the salmon and lettuce, “they say that Livvy Ladd an’ Dacre W elling are as good as engaged. What they ’ll marry on I ’d like to know ! he ain’t worth shucks.”

“ She ’ll do the sup — Yes, raised cake, Miss Hollins. One dollar a loaf. Sarah Tibbetts made it. Ain’t it lovely ! But it does seem funny to see you buyin’ cake, Miss Hollins, when folks in town can’t get enough of your sponge cake.”

Olivia, too, was leaning across the table talking to her neighbor at the head. Her conversation held none of the aloofness of her preceding remark.

“ I soiled all my dresses during Commencement,” she was saying, “and so to-day I just had to wear this. You see, I got home late last night, and then I overslept this morning. Mamma woke me up at noon to tell me about coming here — that she ’d accepted for me. And this old linen was positively the only clean thing I had except a khaki and an evening gown. You ’re too sweet for words, Prunella, in that buff ! ”

“ But to wear heavy white linen, plain, like that ! ” Prunella sighed. “ I ’d give worlds to ! You remind me somehow of that Copley print of Charity in the Church Parlors.’’

Olivia laughed, and put a chocolate between her firm white teeth. “ I felt more like a Perry picture,” she said, “at Commencement — so many caps and gowns, all so uniform and so — so instructive ! Why, Mrs. Archibald ! Awfully glad to see you! What do you hear from Marion ? ” And she rose and heartily shook Mrs. Archibald’s little claw in its black cotton glove.

“ Marion ’s well. I heard yesterday. Prunella knows I got a nice fat letter, don’t you, Prunella ? That ’s the advantage of bein’ postmistress, ain’t it ? Marion ’s in Kwasi Twang now — one hundred and ninety-two patients in the mission hospital, and the school crowded. Seems just yesterday you an’ Marion was in the Academy an’ goin’ skatin’ with Dacre Welling. Seen Dacre yet ? His grandfather ’s pretty poorly, they tell me.”

Olivia’s close ears grew quickly pink. “ Not yet,” she said, with a nice enunciation. “And now, Mrs. Archibald, you ’ll take a cup of coffee with me, and we’ll drink to Marion. You see, you can have tea any time out of your grand silver teapot.” And she laughed down to Prunella, whose business was growing so lively she was not aware.

“How’d you find your mother?” Mrs. Archibald went on sociably. “ Yes, cream and two lumps. Seemed to me last week at Society she did n’t look like herself.”

“ Oh, Mamma seems well. Perhaps she was just tired that time,” Olivia answered. “ But, tell the truth, I ’ve hardly had a real look at her. Last night there was such oceans to tell her, and this morning I overslept.”

“ Like as not she was tired an’ sorter homesick for you, all alone in that great house. Lands ! I know what that feelin’ is! Now you’re home — ”

“ It will be blissful,” Olivia said joyously. u I ’in just crammed with energy and I ’ll give Mamma a real rest — take all her cares away. Come to see us soon, Mrs. Archibald.”

The crush had come. Prunella’s breeze had stopped, too. Girls in white, with roses ill at ease in their high pompadours, crowded around the teapot, holding out their trays. Olivia’s cups filed rapidly up to the urn from the ranks in which she had placed them. With her finger on the spigot, she gave her smiles and her greetings, as the crowd pressed around and lingered.

“A B.S. not a B.A.,” she laughingly corrected Miss Hollins, who, burdened with the raised cake and a pot of beans, paused to welcome and congratulate. “ Thank you so much for your good wishes! How lovely Prunella looks ! Come to see us ! ” And when Mrs. Clabby set down her jar of last year’s chipped pear and a quarter of a gold cake, she let a cup run over while she exclaimed joyously, u Oh, Mrs. Clabby ! Im so glad to see you ! How well you look ! Yes, I ’m feeling fine. Do come to see us ! ”

She wanted everybody to come to see them. It was glorious to come home so triumphantly and find so many friends. She felt as if she wanted to welcome every one in the village, not so much because she wanted to see them as because she longed to make them all feel her power and her energy and her high ambition. Even there in the crowd, watching the coffee bubbling into the cups, she was aware of her splendid self, of a greatness of some kind that was ahead of her, and that made her quite different from them all and very kind to them all — except to Dacre. She flushed as she remembered that to him she had decided quite definitely not to be kind, that she had put him quite out of the new and brilliant and world-free career that was opening before her. Sweethearting was the way of mere boys and girls. 4

“ She ’s her father all over, square jaw, gray eyes, and all,” Miss Hollins was saying in the doorway. And if ever there was a well-meaning man ! ”

In a lull towards the end, when Prunella’s breeze had again sprung up, and the garden sweetness was coming in through the small old windows, and Prunella herself had gone to buy whatever was left so as to help out supper, some one drew near Olivia’s urn without giving her greeting or congratulation. It was a very slenderly made, delicately colored young person in a very unstylish white mull gown.

“ It will be very good coffee that I am smelling,” she said in a voice that was quite astonishingly not American, depositing a large strawberry shortcake on the table. u A cup, if you please, and I am not too late.”

“ It is not so good now, perhaps,” Olivia apologized as she filled the cup, thinking the while of the blueness of the girl’s eyes, and wondering how the strange use of the future tense and the sweet Gaelic inflection chanced at a Fernfield food sale. She still wondered, after the stranger had taken her coffee and stood halfway down the table, sipping and looking out at the garden ; but then the wonder was at the drooping Leghorn hat with its superabundant tulle trimmings, and the tulle strings tied under the round chin. Presently, the delicately colored young person put down her cup and her quarter, and took up her big shortcake.

“ Here, in your American gardens, I miss much the sweet of the wallflower,” she said, lifting her blue, blue eyes with the black lashes. “ At my home, at this time of the evening, it does be coming in through the windows from the haggart. I thank you for the serving.”

Prunella came just here, bearing half of a baked ham, a jar of last season’s pears, and a loaf of brown bread.

“ There ! ” she exclaimed triumphantly. “ That ought to make a supper for six boarders ! And Aunt Lou got raised cake and beans, did n’t she ? ”

Olivia rose. “ Who is that adorable girl ? ” she cried softly. “ I could n’t even be polite, she was so sweet.”

Prunella put down the supper. “ That ’s Bride

TWO HEKOINES VIS-A-VIS

Joyce, old Mike Joyce’s niece. Is n’t she Irish for you ! And what a brogue ! ”

“ She ’s Gaelic, not Irish,” Olivia said decisively, “ and her intonation is lovely.”

u I never thought of that,” Prunella said simply. “ But don’t you stop to help clear up, Olivia.”

“ Why not ? ” Olivia answered briskly, piling cups.

Chapter III

It was the old hanging Chinese lamp in the hall that betrayed to Olivia her mother’s face. Mrs. Ladd stood on a chair, reaching up with a flaring match. Olivia, coming around the wide curve of the stairway, after a late return from the food sale, stopped short. That moment shifted her life to leeward.

“0 Mamma, let me ! You ’re tired ! ” she cried, running down.

66 1 am — a little,” Mrs. Ladd admitted almost sharply as the match flared out and left them in darkness.

Olivia fumbled on the hall table among parasols and garden hats. “ Where are the matches?” she asked breathlessly.

“ Are n’t they there? I’ll get some,” her mother said, a little vaguely.

Olivia, left alone in the dark hall full of the night fragrances from the wide-open door, felt her heart in her throat. A wild fear chilled her, as if the darkness were full of terrors, the great empty house conscious. Something had changed in her mother’s face. Mrs. Archibald had said so. The lines around the mouth — up-and-down lines — Her mother’s nose had never shown that shape before. Between the brows —

“ I ’m coming,” Mrs. Ladd called from the pantry.

Olivia drew a deep breath. Out through the wide-open front door, a young moon was riding high above the tall elms in the street. The woodbine at the parlor windows was heavily sweet.

“ Guess you thought I ’d never come,” Mrs. Ladd said, feeling for the sandpaper under the matchbox. “I entirely forgot to get matches this morning when I was down-street. You can reach up easily with your long arms.” She spoke with a recovered cheerfulness that was almost too cheerful.

Olivia took the match and reached up, and presently threw into flickering relief red and blue Chinamen and purple pagodas.

66 There ! ” her mother exclaimed gayly. “ Now we ’ll get some supper. It ’s such a relief to have you at home, child. That pot of beans you brought from the sale will be just the thing. And lady cake, you say ? Lou Hollins’s cake ? That ’s always good, like Lou. And you say

Prunella was buying supper for the boarders ? Poor little Prunella ! ”

They were going back to the kitchen, Mrs. Ladd’s thin hand red over the match she was saving to light the dining-room lamp.

“I’m not very hungry,” Olivia said; then felt the loss of gayety in her own tone and added quickly, with a laugh, “ Nibbling at receptions and teas and places always takes my appetite.”

“ But you must eat something, my dear ; I have n’t had you at the table with me since you came home. Some tea will do us both good. And then ” — she was buttoning a white apron around her thin, flat waist — “ then there ’s much to talk about.”

“ Oceans ! ” Olivia exclaimed enthusiastically. “ You have n’t had a chance to tell me anything, I ’ve chattered so of myself. I ’ll set the table and do it all, Mamma dear. I ’d love to. You rest.”

“ Why, you don’t know where half the things are. How could you keep pots and pans in your head with a class poem? There! Don’t take down the Canton plates. You ’re not company, even if you are a Bachelor of Science.” And Mrs. Ladd gave the fine, soft little laugh that she had inherited with the Canton plates from the Adamses.

“ Of course ! How stupid of me ! ” Olivia laughed back, putting the familiar white and gold on the old mahogany table with its dish of garden roses. “ But I Tl soon get pots and pans in and poems out, Mamma. You’ll see!”

“ That ’s what there is to talk about,” Mrs. Ladd said, her thin lips again a line after her smile. “ But first I Tl make the tea and get the bread and butter.”

Olivia knew the napkin rings, but she absently reversed them ; then stood holding the knives and forks indecisively.

“ And the chipped pear you love so, Olivia, is in the small Mason jar on the third shelf in the pantry,” Mrs. Ladd went on from the kitchen. “ I have n’t done any strawberries this year.”

Olivia fumbled in the pantry.

“ Foolish child ! If it had been a bear, it would have bitten you !” her mother said, reaching over her shoulder. “ You ’re not in the chemical laboratory, — just in a plain pantry. How sunburned your arms are, Olivia ! ”

“From rowing, and it’s made them so hard and strong. I ’m ready for any kind of work,

Mamma.” And she again got her voice back into its natural tone, and found the glass dish and turned out the chipped pear.

Presently, tea was on the table, and the high lamp stood by the bowl of roses in the centre. Olivia, from her place at the foot, could see through one doorway into the long, unlighted double parlors, with the glint of a stray moonbeam on the girandoles at the far end. Through the other doorway was the hall, where a June bug bumped noisily against the Chinese lamp, and the moonlight lay across the threshold. Nothing in the big old house was as loud as a young frog outside in the matted lilybed.