Young Greer of Kentucky; a novel

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

II

Several hours later there was a sound of carriage wheels in the distance. The narrow lane leading from the broad highway was but rarely traversed, and the unfrequent noise of an approaching vehicle upon the rocky road could be heard far away.

At the first echo of the horse’s hoofs, Dorinda, who, for the past three-quarters of an hour, had been straining her ears for the sound, sprung hurriedly to her feet, at the same time uttering a low, sharp cry of stifled joy and dread. “He is coming, coming, coming !” she whispered under her breath. Her eyes grew soft, radiant — beautiful in their mysterious kindling. Her fragile, childlike form

seemed to sway and bend with her ( 26 )

quick breathing. For an instant her heart leaped and fluttered beneath her thin gown like some wild, caged, little creature trying to escape, then fell in tune with the steady reverberations drawing ever nearer and nearer.

She gave startled glances about the bare walls of her sparely furnished bedroom. A huge mahogany mausoleum, on which her lithe young limbs were wont to sink into repose, stood in one corner. A white marseilles counterpane was stretched tightly across its broad surface from side to side, its four tall posts being surmounted by a most wonderful tester, whereon birds of paradise and fowls that were never yet on land or sea fluttered and pirouetted in delightful disregard of reality. There were no pictures, no soft, easy, lounging chairs, no delicate feminine touches daintily suggestive of my lady’s boudoir ; but everything was spotlessly neat and rigidly in order. There was a two-ply carpet on the floor, and some dimity curtains hung at the windows, stiffly tied with bows of cherry-colored ribbon. A hideous wardrobe thrust itself obtrusively upon the sight, after the manner of offensive objects in general. A tall bureau, above which swung a mirror inconveniently high, a washstand, and two chairs — one stiff -backed, the other a split-seated, old-time rocker — completed an effect that was not lacking in a certain element of picturesqueness and the characteristic Southern aspect.

There was a halt, a moment’s stillness — the surrey had reached the gate, a quarter of a mile distant. In a few moments he would be here. She drew back from the window, trembling, her hands cold to the finger tips.

She gave an uncertain glance in the mirror, and then turned drearily away with a hopeless, pathetic gesture of regret. For the picture there revealed, of a young girl in a white muslin gown made in simplest fashion, was by no means to her liking. She could not have told wherein she failed; but in that moment she had become possessed of an altogether new and passionate longing to be different. To feel awkward and countrified, or to experience an instant’s anxiety as to the possible opinion that might be entertained in regard to her, was galling to the proud sensitiveness of her imperious and wholly ungoverned nature. It filled her with a kind of fright and savage rebellion. In her pride and mortification she could have torn off the ill-fitting gown, upon which her unskillful fingers had spent so many hours, and have trampled it fiercely under foot. Quick, childish tears sprung to her eyes, but she forced them back with a spirit of instinctive resistance.

The carriage had finally paused under her window, and the sound of hurrying footsteps, and voices in excited greeting, floated up to her with the breath of honeysuckle and mignonette and new-mown hay.

The twilight of the sweet June day had begun to gather. From far away in the dense oak woods, a whip-poorwill’s plaintive call mingled with the drowsy twittering beneath the eaves.

“ Lord, but we air glad to see ye, Harvey ! ” interspersed with shrill, spasmodic feminine laughter, reached her from time to time, as she stood spellbound, a sickening sense of discomfiture stealing over her, listening and waiting, waiting and listening, to every word they spoke.

“But Dorinda — where is Dorinda?” The ringing tenor voice with its well-remembered timbre of sweetness, his light laughter, brought her to herself. She must go down. But how that voice thrilled and stung her in its careless levity and indifferent kindness ! All night she had heard it calling, calling in her sleep, and it had seemed to mock.

Suddenly, with a tightening of the lips and a proud uplifting of her small figure, she turned, walked quickly from the room and down the stairs.

“Women air powerful onsartain critters, Harvey,” Micajah was explaining to his son, out of the depth of a rich experience, apologetically of Dorinda’s non-appearance; “ thar aint no countin’ on ’em,” with a sly shake of the head. “Thar’s D’rindy, now — she’s skittish, D’rindy is ; jest as mild an’ gentle part o’ the time ez my old gray mare on the way to meetin’, then, all of a suddent, she hev broke the traces an’ kicked the spatterboard, an’ afore you know it you air a-layin’ in the ditch a-enquirin’ of yerself the cause o’ the trouble.”

At this unique revelation of character the young man broke into a hearty laugh.

Dorinda stood in the doorway for an instant unobserved. She was taking in the scene quite calmly. Mrs. Greer, in her best black silk gown, flushed and elated, was sitting on one side of the porch, surveying her offspring with glances of fond parental pride and undisguised admiration. Micajah, in his “Sunday clo’es,” awkward and ill at ease, sprawled near by with his usual air of calm self-effacement. The faultlessly dressed younggentleman upon the rude wooden bench opposite appeared somewhat out of harmony with his surroundings.

He had thrown one arm carelessly back of his head, and was looking out upon the familiar landscape. The cool wind played with the thick brown hair about his temples. Dorinda regarded him critically and a trifle severely. She found his air of nonchalance and amiable toleration very irritating. It produced in her a spirit of mutiny and displeasure. She made a slight movement. He heard her, turned quickly, and was on his feet in an instant.

“ Dorinda! ”

With a characteristic, flattering gesture of alertness, he came forward to meet her, holding out both his hands. “ Dorinda, I am so glad to see you ! ” he exclaimed, warmly.

He bent down and would have kissed her in simple cousinly fashion, but she drew back. Though she greeted him cordially, it was yet with a reserve that both surprised and puzzled him for a moment.

With a cool little motion she waived him back to his seat, and he, smiling still, and wholly at a loss to account for her formality, accepted it without comment, his eyes fixed upon her face with an expression of amused inquiry.

He was a tall, well-built young fellow of nine-and-twenty, with a face of singular attraction and interest — a face with even a touch of fascination and poetic fire. Scholarly, dignified, rather elegant in bearing, one would have noticed him in any crowd. There was a combined strength and sweetness about the well-modeled mouth, thought and determination impressed upon every feature of his smooth-shaven face. The glasses which he wore almost habitually above his slightly aquiline nose increased the literary suggestiveness of his general appearance. Though in his attire there was a certain marked carefulness of detail, yet he wore his clothes easily — as a gentleman — and there was not a trace of self-consciousness about him in any way.

“ I am so glad to see you, Dorinda,” he repeated, enthusiastically. “ I have been picturing to myself all through the drive home, what a delightful companion you will be in the long, lazy summer days of the next three months. And, by the way, what a little beauty you have become ! ”

The girl grew rosy and facile under his praise.

“ But, Harvey/' she suggested, dubiously, “I am afraid it will be very lonely for you here?” There was a sudden timidity in her voice that worked a transformation. The young man noted the change. He gave her another brief, sweeping glance. How very pretty she was !

“ Thet young gal over to the Gin’ral’s ’pears to be hevin’ a powerful lonesome sorter time of it,” Mica j ah put in at this juncture. “ She aint hed much chance to wear many o’ them fine clo’es she brung along with her in thet big trunk, I’m a-thinkin’. I seed her standin’ in the hall at Grassland t’other day, an’ ’peared to me like she was lookin’ mighty low-sperrited an’ down in the mouth.”

“ I don’t see why it’s any more lonesome for her than for other people,” Dorinda replied, doggedly, looking away. The mobile, changeful little face had grown hard, and an undisguised bitterness had crept into her voice.

The old man looked up quickly. A long experience had taught him a tact of management with Dorinda, not unlike that which he was accustomed to employ with an unbroken filly.

“Thet’s so, D’rindy,” he assented.

mildly, “thet’s so. Young folks is purty much all alike, I reckon. I ’low ’twas jest thet big trunk an’ all them fine clo’es thet set me a-steddyin’. Lord, now I wouldn’t hev to wear all them fine clo’es fer nothin’,” shifting uneasily under the restraint and elegance of his own proud apparel.

Dorinda had seen the young woman referred to in the old country church, and her beauty had stung her, leaving a sense of disquieting pain. It had seemed to stifle and oppress her like the rich odor of certain gorgeous, tropical blooms. At the first sight of her, her heart had stood still. During the entire service she had watched her breathlessly, unmindful of text or sermon, heedless of supplication or of song. Never in the whole course of her obscure existence had she looked upon so wonderful a being as this lovely golden-haired woman in her unconscious serenity and grace. The conflicting emotions with which she regarded her amounted to a definite experience, that contained in it all the enduring elements of a mental shock. The realization had come to her instantaneously of a wider meaning to life than had heretofore presented itself. Her horizon, formerly bounded by the simplest conditions and aspirations, seemed to stretch away into infinite space. She was conscious of an unreasoning dissatisfaction and revolt. But it was not merely a longing for material things, the bland amenities of a luxurious existence — though she, too, would have liked to wear soft raiment and live in kings’ houses — it was rather a desire, thoroughly feminine and strengthened by the sharp recognition of her own deficiency, for the possession of all that goes together to render a woman lovable and complete.

The picture of Margaret Pryor, as she saw her sitting in the dark background of the high pew, rose before her anew, vivid, distinct, in the airy picturesqueness . of her cool white draperies. And it was in the society of such women as she that Harvey Greer had spent so many years of his life! She brought her lips together with a sudden compression.

But the young man’s face betrayed only an indifferent interest.

“ Well, I’ve no doubt she’s lonesome enough,” Mrs. Greer remarked pointedly, with a shrug of her fat shoulders, “ anybody ’d be, buried out here ten miles in the country. But what she come for? That’s what I’m sayin’. Beaus is scarce in this neighborhood,” with a short laugh, “leastways I don’t see many cornin’ round Dorinda, here, unless it be that young preacher from over at Walnut Hill, that Dorinda won’t so much as turn her head an’ look at. But she’s an out an’ out beauty, an’ no mistake about it,” she added emphatically, with all the air of a connoisseur in such matters. “ When she come walkin’ in church last Sunday mornin’ in that white dress an’ all that soft lace about her, I said to myself, ‘ If only Harvey could see that !’ I tell Dorinda,” she broke off, “ ’t would be a fine chance to study the latest fashions, if it is in meetin’ — an’ a cat can look at a king — but Dorinda never was a very good hand with her needle.”

Harvey winced and looked slightly annoyed. The girl’s cheeks were burning crimson.

“ I hope Dorinda will not resort to such methods of studying the latest fashions,” he answered dryly, “particularly as she seems to have already succeeded in making herself so lovely,” he concluded, with kindly intent, notin g the poor child’s embarrassment and distress.

He had a kind heart, and, moreover, he was always conscious of a sense of personal discomfort at the sight of another’s pain.

“I am sure this gown you have on is perfect; did you make it yourself?” he asked, reassuringly.

Dorinda’s sense of humor was one of those blessings for which, no doubt, it had never occurred to her to give thanks, but it had often served to carry her scathless through many a trying situation, in spite of the little flying poisoned darts. At this absurdly palpable attempt upon the part of the young man to soothe her wounded feelings, she broke into a laugh, so sweet and spontaneous and delicious, Harvey forgot that it was against him her mirth was leveled, and joined in. It reminded him, in its delightful overflow, of an experience one day in Switzerland, a year before, when, with a party of friends, wearied and thirsting from their long tramp, he had suddenly come upon a sparkling little mountain stream, tumbling musically down a steep ravine.

“But who else, Harvey ?” she inquired, suavely, the corners of her mouth twitching still, as she looked up derisively into his face, holding her small head slightly to one side.

“ I had rather the impression that you had ordered it from New York or Paris,” the young man replied with great gravity and a lame pretense at ignoring the occasion of her ridicule. But he was beginning to experience a* certain uneasiness in the presence of Dorinda, though he laughed back at her with the utmost good nature.

He rose and stood leaning against one of the slender vine-encircled posts that supported the narrow little portico. Both his parents had gone within. The summer twilight was wrapping the lonely hills in a purple gauze. He heard a tinkling of sheep bells in the distance, and the voices of the farm-hands singing some plaintive negro melody as they trudged homeward through the fields. How idyllic and delightful it was, and what old memories it awoke in him after all those Crowded, feverish, busy years, in which ambition and a kind of boyish exuberance in almost every form of pleasure had seemed ever struggling for the mastery !

“My love of all beautiful things is destined to work my ruin some day,” he had once prophesied jestingly to a friend. In looking at Dorinda he was conscious of the same keen artistic gratification that he would have experienced in regarding an excellently well-executed water-color or pastel. She was for him simply a part of the delicious June day.

He felt an indulgent, brotherly sort of interest in her, and presently found himself wishing vaguely that her lot had been less narrow. In his imagination he saw her decked out in the dainty paraphernalia of certain women he had known, her expression controlled, all the ungoverned impulses of her temperament held within the leash of that enforced restraint which contact w r ith the world demands, and realized that few, if any, could have surpassed her had the opportunity for this enlightenment been hers.

He thought it might be possible for him to help her in many ways. But he was too much of a poet not to recognize the charm of her incompleteness.

“ What friends we are going to be,

Dorinda !” he said, finally, rousing himself from his revery. “ Do you know when I said good-by to you four years ago, I hardly thought there was such good fortune ahead of me as to find you still here when I returned? I had made quite sure that some young fellow would have come along and carried you off long ago.”

Dorinda’s eyes were lowered, the little head drooping slightly as under the weight of its heavy coils of hair.

“ But you find me still here,” she answered softly, after a time.

“Yes, I find you still here,” he repeated, “and heartily glad I am of it, too. Why, what on earth would I do without you, Dorinda?” he asked, in mock dismay. “I have no doubt whatever that the fates have reserved you for my sole and separate benefit. And you may be assured I shall make the best of my opportunity. I feel all kinds of savage and tyrannical instincts kindling in me. In the first place, then/’ he concluded despotically, “you are to offer yourself as a victim for my amusement. We shall walk together, ride together, and read books together — which will be delightful. By the way, Dorinda, did you ever read any of Robert Browning’s poetry ? ”

“ No,” she admitted, reluctantly, “ I never did.”

“ Then you must begin and cultivate his acquaintance at once ; to-morrow, if you wish. Not that he’s such a prime favorite of mine, either — but everybody reads him nowadays. And then there’s Carlyle, and Ruskin, and Tennyson, and the Arnolds, and Tolstoi, and Swinburne — oh, by the way, I think we’ll cut short on those last two,” coming to a sudden halt in his enumeration.

“ Why ? ” Dorinda asked, breathlessly, an unrestrained eagerness illumining her features, and suffusing a warm, bright glow of unspeakable delight. “ Why ? ”

“Why, Dorinda?” he meditated, looking pensively down on her pretty, flushed face lifted thirstingly to his. “Well, there are a good many reasons why. In the first place, I doubt if we shall have time — the summer does not last forever, you know.” Dorinda’s face fell.

“After all, I may not be here more than a month, or six weeks, at the longest. I should like to go and sur* vey the future scene of my labors — get my bearings, so to speak — before I say good-by for good and all. These curious twistings of destiny, as manifested in one’s own existence, furnish considerable food for reflection. Did it ever occur to you, Dorinda,” he in.

quired, in the light and bantering tone he chose to adopt with her, “what a complicated and mystifying problem this human life is continually serving up for elucidation by us ? ‘ Reasoning at every step he treads, man yet mistakes his way,’ ” he quoted, musingly.

The light slowly faded out of the girl’s eyes ; she had grown very pale. With a piteous little movement of pain she turned away her head.

“ I thought,” she faltered, “ I thought

— as you would be so near to us — Virginia’s not very far away — that sometimes we might see you, perhaps

— once in a great while?”

“ And so you will,” he responded, cheerfully, “provided you are here to see — visions of that young Lochinvar that is to come and carry you away from us are still haunting my fancy, you observe. In the meantime,” hearkening to the sound of the supper-bell in the distance, “come and give me something to eat. Come, Dorinda ; I’m as hungry as a wolf.”

III

“ He’s a credit to ye, Marier, no denyin’ thet. Puts me jest a leetle in mind now — with, them specks hitched up on his nose an’ a-topplin’ off continually — of thet young, furrin-lookin’ chap thet was down hyar last fall a-spyin’ out blue-grass Ian’s an’ talkin’ horse-flesh same ez a buzz-saw ; but he’s a credit to ye, thar’s no denyin’ thet.”

This remark of his father, accidently overheard on the evening of his arrival, appealed to Harvey with a profound and touching significance. It seemed to cling to him with a painfully persistent recurrence. After all, it was difficult for him to regard himself as a credit either to himself or to any one else ; but their blind faith in him, their admiration and devotion, only marked him, in his own estimation, as a failure and an ingrate.

It was with emotions too varied and complex to admit of analysis that he had returned to his native land and his old home after an absence of four years. Since landing in New York he had been trying hard to imagine himself both patriotic and happy, and had failed signally in his efforts. His old free student life had taken strong hold upon him. In the atmosphere of Heidelberg he had sought and found a truly ideal existence, and from his travels he had developed a breadth, an independence of thought, which rendered all idea of restraint particularly irksome. Although, during the past year, the necessity of returning to his own land and entering actively upon his vocation had frequently occurred to him, now that the time had really come for the step to be taken, he found himself looking longingly back to the life he must forever abandon. But there had seemed to be no excuse for further delaying his return. He was a clever mathematician, and having been offered a chair in his special department in a college in Virginia, he felt constrained to accept the position. Yet he did so with reluctance and much inward dissatisfaction.

Perhaps, to some extent, the key to his character may be found in the fact that he was a dreamer, not a logician. He was a tremendous worker, a man of vast hopes and aspirations ; but it seemed to him, on finding himself forced to squarely face his existence from the standpoint of the present situation, that he had done absolutely naught in view of all that he had planned and still wished to accomplish.

After all his years of incessant labor there were times when he questioned that he had not blundered in the choice of his life's work. Literature in its broadest application appealed strongly to him. He was an omnivorous reader. He had had published in the leading magazines of Europe and America numerous articles upon topics of the day, which had been commended; and he had rather the impression that some time he would write a novel — the great American novel, perhaps, so ardently desired and so tardy in appearing.

On the voyage homeward, he had spent hours thinking tenderly and reverently, and also, it must be confessed, a trifle remorsefully, of his father and mother. Above all, he felt the deepest gratitude for whatever sacrifices it had been their pleasure to make in his behalf. To others, between him and them, there must always remain an intellectual and social disparity, fostered on his part by constant study and the intimate association with men and women of the highest grade of cultivation; but his pride could never for one instant allow that he was separated, by any means whatever, from those united to him by the closest bonds of blood and affection. There is a true inborn dignity in the native Kentuckian which, with all his veneration for the claims of heredity and the old traditions, is absolutely self-sustaining. Young Greer, in his brave recognition of the obscurity of his own origin, in his unfailing courtesy, if possible more punctiliously exercised toward the members of his own household than to strangers, was in every way a gentleman, though he could boast no long line of distinguished ancestors, no heroes, statesmen, nor scholars to whom he could refer for those instincts of refinement which seemed his as a natural birthright.

But unconsciously, by a process of gradual absorption, he had fallen under influences too potent to be disregarded. Deeply engrossed in his work, he had apparently cared little for the popularity he seemed, on every hand, to evoke. The doors of the distinguished, and the powerful, and the wealthy, had opened, as by a kind of magic, for him, and he, having once entered, became of necessity a part of the life of which he partook. During his college days at Princeton, he had fallen in with a clique of young men of high social prestige, and through these the society of New York and Washington had become a irequent experience.

Later on, in his sojourn abroad, encountering one of his old classmates, the son of a diplomatic representative of his country, he had seen a phase of life in foreign lands of which opportunity is given to few.

That he finally returned, after all his wanderings and experiences, to Kentucky, without ever having met a woman that aroused in him more than a fleeting admiration, is probably due to the fact that he was something of a poet and an idealist; and the women he had thus far known, in the brief and cursory consideration he had allowed them, appeared to him as either wholly joined to their idols of vanity, or wanting in imagination and sympathetic charm. Moreover, his ideal was already fixed, and his standard was peculiarly lofty. In other words, he was still quite young. As men grow older, they become less exacting, the great law of compromise being better understood ; their lost illusions may still cling to them in a measure, and at times harrow them with remembrance, but the light of common day is over all.

When Harvey Greer opened his eyes on the first morning of his return, the sun was high in the heavens. It was streaming in, full in his face, through the narrow little casement, falling in golden splashes upon the carpet, and glistening upon the bright colors of the hexagon silk quilt, spread as an ornament solely — for the night had been warm — across the foot of his bed. For an instant, he experienced an odd feeling of uncertainty as to time and locality; then, with a short laugh, he pulled his watch from under his pillow and looked about him. It was eight o’clock, and the family must have breakfasted more than an hour ago. At this reflection he grew serious and took himself severely to task. He must on no account be guilty of such a fault again, he said to himself as he sprang out of bed. Why on earth, he insisted, should he obtrude upon them his more luxurious ideas of living ? If the time ordained among them to break their fast should be seven o’clock, or even so barbarous an hour as six, he firmly resolved that there he would be in the midst of them without fail — a resolution which, be it said to his credit, he managed to adhere to with praiseworthy persistence.

As he came down the stairs from his bed-room, he was struck with the serene quietude over everything. There was no one stirring in any direction ; the house appeared entirely deserted. But it was evident that its inmates had not been spirited away in the night ; for, whatever disorder there had been the day before was now repaired, and there prevailed an air of general supervision silently manifested on all sides. The doors were open and all the windows had been raised. Delicious odors of the sweet June day came floating in. A red-bird was singing in the branches near by, its strong, clear note now and again breaking forth into such a rapturous swell of ecstatic melody that the young man paused involuntarily to listen.

He finally made his way to the dining room, which was also forsaken. The cloth still remained on the table, but the breakfast had evidently long since been removed. It was in many respects the most agreeable room in the house, and furnished in better taste, in that there were here no futile attempts at adornment such as were displayed elsewhere in a painful striving for effect. The furniture, which was of massive, beautiful mahogany, gave a look of substantial dignity. Harvey turned a quick glance about him.

Nothing was changed in any way. There in the corner ticked in loud, ominous voice the tall clock with the revolving moon, which had been one of the mysterious delights of his childhood. He drew nearer and looked up into the face of the bland old timepiece, smiling as benignly down upon him to-day as of old, its smooth dial reminding him of the soulless countenances that one sometimes encounters. On the broad sideboard there was the same array of silver goblets that he well remembered — most of them premiums won at fairs, proofs of domestic industry and honest competition. And there, beneath the window, was the low, cushioned seat on which as a little child he had so often sat at the close of day, to watch with dreamy, wondering eyes the great red ball sink slowly out of sight behind the poplar trees. He could recall the strange thrill of anguish he had experienced in those moments, a passionate fear of he knew not what — a filling of the eyes with tears — a sense of overwhelming sadness and unutterable things. He recollected also the quick stroke with which he always dashed away the tears, lest, in his proud sensitiveness, there should be one to see and mock. After all, he reflected, how far, with all our philosophy, do we ever get beyond those earliest instincts and childish emotions? The mystery, the pride, the fear of unseen things, the darkness and the doubt — when do they cease to beset us ?