Part 5 (1/2)

The answer was not such as she expected, and she gave him a scrutinizing glance. ”Surely, if I have ever seen a laborer, he's one,” she thought, as with woman's quickness she inventoried his coa.r.s.e, weather-stained straw hat, blue cotton s.h.i.+rt crossed by suspenders mended with strings, shapeless trousers, once black, but now of the color of the dusty cornfield, and shoes such as she had never seen on the avenue. Even if Roger's face had not been discolored by perspiration and browned by exposure, its contrast with the visage that memory kept before her but too constantly would not have been pleasing. Nothing in his appearance deterred her from saying briefly, ”I wish you would bring those trunks to our rooms. We have already waited for them some little time, and Mr. Atwood said that his man would attend to them when he came home from his work.”

”That's all right, but I'm not his man, and with another stiff bow he pa.s.sed on.

”Roger,” called Mrs. Atwood from the kitchen door, ”where's Jotham?”

”Bringing home the cows.”

”The ladies want their trunks,” continued his mother, in a sharp, worried tone. ”I wish you men-folks would see to 'em right away.

Why couldn't you quit work a little earlier to-night?”

Roger made no reply, but proceeded deliberately to help himself to a wash-basin and water.

”Look here, Roger,” said his mother, in a tone she seldom used, ”if those trunks are not where they belong in ten minutes, Susan and I'll take 'em up ourselves.”

”That would be a pretty story to go out,” added his sister. ”Little use your buggy would be to you then, for no nice girl would ride with you.”

”Come, come, what's the use of such a bother!” said the young man irritably. ”Mother knows that I'd carry the trunks up on Bald-Top before I'd let her touch them. That's the way it will always be with these city people, I suppose. Everybody must jump and run the moment they speak. Father's right, and we'll have to give up our old free-and-easy life and become porters and waiting-maids.”

”I've heard enough of that talk,” said Mrs. Atwood emphatically.

”Your father's been like a drizzling northeaster all day. Now I give you men-folks fair warning. If you want any supper you must wake up and give me something better than grumbling. I'm too hot and tired now to argue over something that's been settled once for all.”

The ”warning” had the desired effect, for Mrs. Atwood was the recognized head of the commissary department, and, as such, could touch the secret springs of motives that are rarely resisted.

The open kitchen windows were so near that Mildred could not help overhearing this family jar, and it added greatly to her depression.

She felt that they had not only lost their own home, but were also banis.h.i.+ng the home feeling from another family. She did but scant justice to Mrs. Atwood's abundant supper, and went to her room at last with that most disagreeable of all impressions--the sense of being an intruder.

The tired children were soon at rest, for their time of sleepless trouble was far distant. Belle's pretty head drooped also with the roses over the porch as the late twilight deepened. To her and the little people the day had been rich in novelty, and the country was a wonderland of many and varied delights. In the eyes of children the Garden of Eden survives from age to age. Alas! the tendency to leave it survives also, and to those who remain, regions of beauty and mystery too often become angular farms and acres.

Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred still more clearly ill.u.s.trated the truth that the same world wears a different aspect as the conditions of life vary. They were going out into the wilderness. The river was a s.h.i.+ning pathway, whose beauty was a mockery, for it led away from all that they loved best. The farmhouse was a place of exile, and its occupants a strange, uncouth people with whom they felt that they would have nothing in common. Mrs. Jocelyn merely looked forward to weeks of weary waiting until she could again join her husband, to whom in his despondency her heart clung with a remorseful tenderness. She now almost wished that they had lived on bread and water, and so had provided against this evil day of long separation and dreary uncertainty. Now that she could no longer rest in her old belief that there would be ”some way” of tiding over every financial crisis, she became a prey to forebodings equally vague that there might be no way. That HER HUSBAND could spend day after day seeking employment, offering, too, to take positions far inferior to the one he had lost, was a truth that at first bewildered and then disheartened her beyond measure. She felt that they must, indeed, have fallen on evil times when his services went a-begging.

To Mildred the present was dark, and the future most unpromising; but deep in her heart nestled the sustaining thought that she was not unloved, not forgotten. The will of others, not his own, kept her lover from her side. His weaknesses were of a nature that awakened her pity rather than contempt. If he had been a Hercules physically and a Bacon intellectually, but conceited, domineering, untruthful, and of the male flirt genus--from such weaknesses she would have shrunk with intense repugnance. Her friends thought her peculiarly gentle in disposition. They did not know--and she herself might rarely recognize the truth--that she was also very strong; her strength on its human side consisted in a simple, unswerving fidelity to her womanly nature and sense of right; on the Divine side, G.o.d's word was to her a verity. She daily said ”Our Father” as a little child. Has the world yet discovered a purer or loftier philosophy?

CHAPTER VI

ROGER DISCOVERS A NEW TYPE

Young Atwood rose with a very definite purpose on the following morning. For his mother's sake he would be civil to their boarders, but nothing more. He would learn just what they had a right to expect in view of their business relations, and having performed all that was ”nominated in the bond,” would treat them with such an off-hand independence that they would soon become aware that he, Roger Atwood, was an ent.i.ty that could exist without their admiring approval. He meant that they should learn that the country was quite as large as the city, and that the rural peculiarities of Forestville were as legitimate as those which he a.s.sociated with them, and especially with the young lady who had mistaken him for the hired man. Therefore after his morning work in the barnyard he stalked to the house with the same manner and toilet as on the previous day.

But there were no haughty citizens to be toned down. They were all sleeping late from the fatigues of their journey, and Mrs. Atwood said she would give the ”men-folks their breakfast at the usual hour, because a hungry man and a cross bear were nigh of kin.”

The meal at first was a comparatively silent one, but Roger noted with a contemptuous glance that his sister's hair was arranged more neatly than he had seen it since the previous Sunday, and that her calico dress, collar, and cuffs were scrupulously clean.

”Expecting company?” he asked maliciously.

She understood him and flushed resentfully. ”If you wish to go around looking like a scarecrow, that's no reason why I should,”

she said. ”The corn is too large for the crows to pull now, so if I were you I would touch myself up a little. I don't wonder that Miss Jocelyn mistook you for Jotham.”

”It's well,” retorted Roger, with some irritation, ”that your Miss Jocelyn has no grown brothers here, or you would come down to breakfast in kid gloves. I suppose, however, that they have insisted on a tidy and respectful waitress. Will you please inform me, mother, what my regulation costume must be when my services are required? Jotham and I should have a suit of livery, with two more bra.s.s b.u.t.tons on my coat to show that I belong to the family.”

”I think that a little more of the manner and appearance of a gentleman would show your relations.h.i.+p better than any amount of bra.s.s,” remarked his mother quietly.