Part 61 (1/2)
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
WE GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING
”Sylvia was reading in her grandfather's library when the bell tinkled.”
With these words our chronicle began, and they again slip from the pen as I begin these last pages. When Morton Ba.s.sett left her at the door of Elizabeth House she had experienced a sudden call of the truant spirit.
Sylvia wanted to be alone, to stand apart for a little while from the clanging world and take counsel of herself. Hastily packing a bag she caught the last train for Montgomery, walked to the Kelton cottage, and roused Mary, who had been its lone tenant since the Professor's death.
She sent Mary to bed, and after kindling a fire in the grate, roamed about the small, comfortable rooms, touching wistfully the books, the pictures, the scant bric-a-brac. She made ready her own bed under the eaves where she had dreamed her girlhood dreams, shaking from the sheets she found in the linen chest the leaves of lavender that Mary had strewn among them. The wind rose in the night and slammed fitfully a blind that, as long as she could remember, had uttered precisely that same protest against the wind's presumption. It was all quite like old times, and happy memories of the past stole back and laid healing hands upon her.
She slept late, and woke to look out upon a white world. Across the campus floated the harsh clamor of the chapel bell, and she saw the students tramping through the swirling snow just as she had seen them in the old times, the glad and happy times when it had seemed that the world was bounded by the lines of the campus, and that nothing lay beyond it really worth considering but Centre Church and the court-house and the dry-goods shop where her grandfather had bought her first and only doll. She bade Mary sit down and talk to her while she ate breakfast in the little dining-room; and the old woman poured out upon her the gossip of the Lane, the latest trespa.s.ses of the Greek professor's cow, the escapades of the Phi Gamma Delta's new dog, the health of Dr. Wandless, the new baby at the house of the Latin professor, the ill-luck of the Madison Eleven, and like matters that were, and that continue to be, of concern in Buckeye Lane. Rumors of the sale of the cottage had reached Mary, but Sylvia took pains to rea.s.sure her.
”Oh, you don't go with the house, Mary! Mrs. Owen has a plan for you.
You haven't any cause for worry. But it's too bad to sell the house. I'd like to get a position teaching in Montgomery and come back here and live with you. There's no place in the world quite like this.”
”But it's quiet, Miss, and the repairs keep going on. Mr. Harwood had to put a new downspout on the kitchen; the old one had rusted to pieces.
The last time he was over--that was a month ago--he came in and sat down to wait for his train, he said; and I told him to help himself to the books, but when I looked in after a while he was just sitting in that chair out there by the window looking out at nothing. And when I asked him if he'd have a cup of tea, he never answered; not till I went up close and spoke again. He's peculiar, but a good-hearted gentleman. You can see that. And when he paid me my wages that day he made it five dollars extra, and when I asked him what it was for, he smiled a funny kind of smile he has, and said, 'It's for being good to Sylvia when she was a little girl.' He's peculiar, very peculiar, but he's kind. And when I said I didn't have to be paid for that, he said all right, he guessed that was so, but for me to keep the money and buy a new bonnet or give it to the priest. A very kind gentleman, that Mr. Harwood, but peculiar.”
The sun came out shortly before noon. Sylvia walked into town, bought some flowers, and drove to the cemetery. She told the driver not to wait, and lingered long in the Kelton lot where snow-draped evergreens marked its four corners. The snow lay smooth on the two graves, and she placed her flowers upon them softly without disturbing the white covering. A farmboy whistling along the highway saw her in the lonely cemetery and trudged on silently, but he did not know that the woman tending her graves did not weep, or that when she turned slowly away, looking back at last from the iron gates, it was not of the past she thought, nor of the heartache buried there, but of a world newly purified, with long, broad vistas of hope and aspiration lengthening before her. But we must not too long leave the bell--an absurd contrivance of wire and k.n.o.b--that tinkled rather absently and eerily in the kitchen pantry. Let us repeat once more and for the last time:--
Sylvia was reading in her grandfather's library when the bell tinkled.
Truly enough, a book lay in her lap, but it may be that, after all, she had not done more than skim its pages--an old ”Life of Nelson” that had been a favorite of her grandfather's. Sylvia rose, put down the book, marked it carefully as on that first occasion which so insistently comes back to us as we look in upon her. Mary appeared at the library door, but withdrew, seeing that Sylvia was answering the bell.
Some one was stamping vigorously on the step, and as Sylvia opened the door, Dan Harwood stood there, just as on that other day; now, to be sure, he seemed taller than then, though it must be only the effect of his long ulster.
”How do you do, Sylvia,” he said, and stepped inside without waiting for a parley like that in which Sylvia had engaged him on that never-to-be-forgotten afternoon in June. ”You oughtn't to try to hide; it isn't fair for one thing, and hiding is impossible for another.”
”It's too bad you came,” said Sylvia, ”for I should have been home to-morrow. I came just because I wanted to be alone for a day.”
”I came,” said Dan, laughing, ”because I didn't like being alone.”
”I hope Aunt Sally isn't troubled about me. I hadn't time to tell her I was coming here; I don't believe I really thought about it; I simply wanted to come back here once more before the house is turned over to strangers.”
”Oh, Aunt Sally wasn't worried half as much as I was. She said you were all right; she has great faith in your ability to take care of yourself.
I'm pretty sure of it, too,” he said, and bent his eyes upon her keenly.
There was nothing there to dismay him; her olive cheeks still glowed with color from her walk, and her eyes were clear and steady.
”Did you see the paper--to-day's paper?” he asked, when they were seated before the fire.
”No,” she replied, folding her arms and looking at the point of her slipper that rested against the bra.s.s fender.
”You will be glad to know that the trouble is all over. Ramsay has the senators.h.i.+p, all but the confirmation of the joint session, which is merely a formality. They've conferred on me the joy of presenting his name. Ramsay is clean and straight, and thoroughly in sympathy with all the new ideas that are sound. Personally I like him. He's the most popular and the most presentable man we have, and his election to the Senate will greatly strengthen the party.”
He did not know how far he might speak of the result and of the causes that had contributed to it. He was relieved when she asked, very simply and naturally,--
”I suppose Mr. Ba.s.sett made it possible; it couldn't have been, you couldn't have brought it about, without him.”