People of the Whirlpool by Mabel Osgood Wright (reading in the dark .txt) 📖

the narrow cottage porch and apparently gives herself up to the task of making pin-cushions for Sylvia or embroidering initials on napery. Suddenly she will get up, say that her feet are falling asleep and that she needs a walk to restore her circulation. Will Sylvia go with her? Sylvia, after pretending to consider, thinks not, making some excuse of its being too warm or that she expects Horace that day. Presently two prim people walking in opposite directions meet and, taking the same path, may be seen any morning along the less frequented roads and orchard paths, sometimes repairing the torch that has a constant tendency to lose its head, sometimes watching the destruction by fire of an unusually wicked worm city, and frequently with their heads stuck into some suspicious bush, where they appear to be watching invisible things with breathless interest.

[Illustration: The Bug Hunters.]

Father and I chanced upon them when thus employed the other morning. Martin turned about and in the most serious manner began to dilate upon the peculiarities of worms in general and particular, as well as of the appropriateness of their study by the book collector, as the score and a half insects that injure books and their bindings are not worms at all, having none of the characteristics of the veritable book worm _Sitodrepa panicea_, to all of which Miss Lavinia listened with devout attention.

"What makes them act so?" I said, half to myself, as we drove on, and father stopped shaking with laughter. "There isn't the slightest reason why they should not go to walk together; why do they manoeuvre with all the transparency of ostriches?"

"It's another manifestation of suppressed youth," said father, wiping his eyes, "upon the principle that the boy would rather slip out of the window to go coasting at night than ask leave and walk out publicly, and that when a young girl begins to grow romantic, she often takes infinite pains to go round the back way to meet some one who is quite welcome at the front door. When young folks have not had a chance to do these things, and the motive for them lies dormant, heaven alone knows how or when it will break loose."

Others, however, have observed, and the "Bug Hunters" has now come to be the local nickname of these two most respectable middle-aged people with ancestors.

Josephus, who has been leading a sporting life for many days, or rather nights, has at last returned minus his long tail with which he used to express his displeasure in such magnificent sweeps. Miss Lavinia is in tears, and wishes to have a reward offered for the apprehension of the doer of the deed.

Evan says that if she does, and thus acknowledges the cat as hers, she may be deluged with bills for poultry, as he has been hearing weird tales on the train, such as are often current among commuters who are not zoologists, of a great black lynx that has been invading chicken coops and killing for pleasure, as his victims are usually left on the ground. Thus has country freedom corrupted the manners of a polite cat, and at the same time a hay knife (probably) has rendered him tailless.

* * * * *

_August_ 20. Summer is at high tide. How I dread its ebbing; yet even now the hastening nights are giving warning. Evan has been taking a vacation, and we have spent many days, we four, following the northward windings of the river in a wide, comfortable boat and lunching in the woods. We are pagans these days, basking in the sun, cooling in the shade, and living a whole life between sunrise and sunset. The boys are showing unconscious kinship with wood things, and getting a wholesome touch of the earth in their thoughts.

I am sure that the mind often needs a vacation more than the body, and yet the condition of change that bears the name of rest frequently merely gives the head fresh work.

How far away the Whirlpool and its people seem as we sit perhaps on one of the many tiny river islands enjoying this time separateness, not as individuals, but as a family, for the whirl of the pool is tiresome even to watch. I have felt old these last three months, and I suppose it is a still further carrying out of the allegory and penalty of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge; only the discipline does seem a little hard when, having no desire either to pluck or taste the apple, one stands actually away with hands safely behind back, and yet has the fruit absolutely thrust between unwilling lips.

Even the feathered things about us are in this mood; their family life is over, the companionship of fall travel has not begun, and the woods are full of moulting birds choosing this separateness in preparation for the tension of new flight and its perils. Everything, in short, in wild nature has its corresponding note in our own humanity,--the sweating of the corn, the moulting of the bird, the contraction of the earth by frost, all have a kindred season or experience in the heart.

Then, too, the August nights--so heavy with the intensity of sleep that is akin to sleeplessness, broken by peremptory thunder voices and searching lightning, or again enveloped by moonlight that floods the room--shut out the world until, kneeling in its tide between the little white beds, I can feel the refrain of that hymn of mother's that father taught me long ago to say to myself in the night when she had gone away from sight and I was lonely:--

"Father, on thy heart I lean When the world comes not between."

* * * * *

_August_ 30. Sylvia and Horace were married under sunshine yesterday in the little chantry of the church that is used in winter and for week-day services. To-day the cold northeasterly storm has come, under cover of which August so often disappears and September enters the marshes upon the wings of low-flying plovers, to the discordant call of the first waterfowl of the return migration.

Mr. Latham came to the wedding. In fact, he has been here several times during the month. He is a well-built man, under sixty, dark and taciturn, and would be handsome but for the hard expression of his face.

His attitude toward the world has seemed to be one of perpetual parry and self-defence; of course he may have good reason for this distrust, or, as Evan says, he may have brought the necessity upon himself by his constant severity of attack on others. Yesterday I partly changed my mind about him. He evidently once had tender feelings, but, from what cause who can say, they have in some way been compressed and frozen until they exist only as hurts.

Sylvia was married in bridal white. She had wished to wear a travelling gown and go away from the chantry door, but Miss Lavinia argued her out of the notion, saying, "Horace has the right to a pretty bride, even if you do not care." It would have taken but very little, after the strain of the last two months, to make Sylvia morbid and old beyond her years, her one thought seeming to be to get away from the surroundings of the past year and begin to live anew.

Our group, and a dozen friends of the Bradfords, including some from Northbridge who belonged to both, filled the little chapel which Horace, Martin, and Evan had trimmed with flowers wholly from our garden. At the last moment, Mrs. Jenks-Smith, whom we thought abroad, dashed up in a depot hack, perspiring and radiant, her smart gown having a most peculiar and unnatural looking promontory on the chest. "No, my dear, I'm not in Carlsbad. Jenks-Smith was called back on business, and I sniffed the wedding in the air and hooked on,--only arrived last night. _Have_ you seen the papers? Hush, I'll tell you later," and her voice sank into an awed whisper, and she gave a startled look as the bride entered on her father's arm, with Ian and Richard as her only attendants. Having heard so much talk of marrying and of weddings, they had asked Sylvia to let them be "bridesmaids," and it seemed she really wanted them. Their faces were solemn to the verge of comedy as they walked hand in hand before her, their feet in brand-new pumps, keeping step and pointing out carefully, while their evident satisfaction brought a smile like a ray of belated sunshine to the face of the serious bride.

I watched Mr. Latham, usually so immovable, during the ceremony as he stepped back from the altar into the shadows, when he left Sylvia finally with Horace. His shoulders lost their squareness, his head drooped; but when I saw that it was to hide the tears that filled his eyes, I looked away. Father says he has seen this type of man, contracted by money-getting, hardened by selfish misunderstanding, recover himself, soften, and grow young again at the transforming touch of grandchildren. Who knows, Sylvia may find her childhood's father again some day.

When we went back to the cottage for luncheon, the bump in Mrs. Jenks-Smith's corsage was removed, and proved to be a gift for Sylvia,--a thick leather case, holding a rich neck ornament of diamonds, a sort of collar with pendants, for the Lady of the Bluffs is nothing if not generous.

"I got it in this way without paying a cent of duty," she said in a stage whisper to Miss Lavinia and me in the hall, as she struggled to release the box, wrenching off a waist hook or two as she did so.

"Jenks-Smith said it didn't look natural, and I'd surely be spotted, but I said I'd like to see mere hired men try to tell a lady how stout or how thin she had a right to be. Almost too gorgeous for a professor's wife? Not a bit; Miss Lavinia, you're not advanced. Nobody knows nowadays, at the launching, how anybody's going to turn out,--whether they'll sink or float,--and diamonds are an all-right cargo, anyway. If she moves up, she can wear 'em, if she slumps, she can sell 'em, and if she just drifts along on the level, she can look at 'em once in a time. No, my dear, diamonds are a consolation that no woman can afford to miss."

Considering her usual careless good nature, it seemed to me that Mrs. Jenks-Smith was very fussy during the luncheon, ill at ease, and strangely anxious to hurry the departure of Sylvia and Horace. The guests, all but ourselves, left first, then Mr. Latham, who went upstairs to take leave of his daughter alone. When Sylvia finally came down, her colour had returned and she looked her radiant self again as she kissed Miss Lavinia and Mrs. Bradford, and went down the steps holding Horace, not by the arm, but clinging to his hand.

As the carriage disappeared around the bend of the road, and as we stood looking at one another, feeling for a second the reaction and the sense of an empty house that always follows the going of a bride, the Lady of the Bluffs sank into a deep chair exclaiming, "Thank the Lord, they've gone!"