_ CHAPTER X. MRS. YORKE CUTS THE KNOT
When Alice Yorke came from her jaunt, she had on her face an expression of pleasant anticipation. She had been talking to Dr. Balsam, and he had said things about Gordon Keith that had made her cheeks tingle. "Of the best blood of two continents," he had said of him. "He has the stuff that has made England and America." The light of real romance was beginning to envelop her.
As she entered the hall she met Mrs. Nailor. Mrs. Nailor smiled at her knowingly, much as a cat, could she smile, might smile at a mouse.
"I think your mother is out on the far end of the verandah. I saw her there a little while ago talking with your friend, the young schoolmaster. What a nice young man he is? Quite uncommon, isn't he?"
Alice gave a little start. "The young schoolmaster" indeed!
"Yes, I suppose so. I don't know." She hated Mrs. Nailor with her quiet, cat-like manner and inquisitive ways. She now hated her more than ever, for she was conscious that she was blushing and that Mrs. Nailor observed it.
"Your mother is very interested in schools? Yes? I think that is nice in her? So few persons appreciate education?" Her air was absolute innocence.
"I don't know. I believe she is--interested in everything," faltered Alice. She wanted to add, "And so you appear to be also."
"So few persons care for education these days," pursued Mrs. Nailor, in a little chime. "And that young man is such a nice fellow? Has he a good school? I hear you were there? You are interested in schools, too?" She nodded like a little Japanese toy-baby.
"I am sure I don't know. Yes; I think he has. Why don't you go?" asked the girl at random.
"Oh, I have not been invited." Mrs. Nailor smiled amiably. "Perhaps, you will let me go with you sometime?"
Alice escaped, and ran up-stairs, though she was eager to go out on the porch. However, it would serve him right to punish him by staying away until she was sent for, and she could not go with Mrs. Nailor's cat-eyes on her.
She found her mother seated at a table writing busily. Mrs. Yorke only glanced up and said, "So you are back? Hope you had a pleasant time?" and went on writing.
Alice gazed at her with a startled look in her eyes. She had such a serious expression on her face.
"What are you doing?" She tried to speak as indifferently as she could.
"Writing to your father." The pen went on busily.
"What is the matter? Is papa ill? Has anything happened?"
"No; nothing has happened. I am writing to say we shall be home the last of the week."
"Going away!"
"Yes; don't you think we have been here long enough? We only expected to stay until the last of March, and here it is almost May."
"But what is the matter? Why have you made up your mind so suddenly? Mamma, you are so secret! I am sure something is the matter. Is papa not well?" She crossed over and stood by her mother.
Mrs. Yorke finished a word and paused a moment, with the end of her silver penholder against her teeth.
"Alice," she said reflectively, "I have something I want to say to you, and I have a mind to say it now. I think I ought to speak to you very frankly."
"Well, for goodness' sake, do, mamma; for I'm dying to know what has happened." She seated herself on the side of a chair for support. Her face was almost white.
"Alice--"
"Yes, mamma." Her politeness was ominous.
"Alice, I have had a talk with that young man--"
Alice's face flushed suddenly.
"What young man?" she asked, as though the Ridge Springs were thronged with young men behind every bush.
"That young man--Mr. Keith," firmly.
"Oh!" said Alice. "With Mr. Keith? Yes, mamma?" Her color was changing quickly now.
"Yes, I have had a quite--a very extraordinary conversation with Mr. Keith." As Mrs. Yorke drifted again into reflection, Alice was compelled to ask:
"What about, mamma?"
"About you."
"About me? What about me?" Her face was belying her assumed innocence.
"Alice, I hope you are not going to behave foolishly. I cannot believe for a minute that you would--a girl brought up as you have been--so far forget yourself--would allow yourself to become interested in a perfectly unknown and ignorant and obscure young man."
"Why, mamma, he is not ignorant; he knows more than any one I ever saw,--why, he has read piles of books I never even heard of,--and his family is one of the best and oldest in this country. His grandfathers or great-grandfathers were both signers of the Decla--"
"I am not talking about that," interrupted Mrs. Yorke, hastily. "I must say you appear to have studied his family-tree pretty closely."
"Dr. Balsam told me," interjected Alice.
"Dr. Balsam had very little to talk of. I am talking of his being unknown."
"But I believe he will be known some day. You don't know how clever and ambitious he is. He told me--"
But Mrs. Yorke had no mind to let Alice dwell on what he had told her. He was too good an advocate.
"Stuff! I don't care what he told you! Alice, he is a perfectly unknown and untrained young--creature. All young men talk that way. He is perfectly gauche and boorish in his manner--"
"Why, mamma, he has beautiful manners!" exclaimed Alice "I heard a lady saying the other day he had the manners of a Chesterfield."
"Chester-nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Yorke.
"I think he has, too, mamma."
"I don't agree with you," declared Mrs. Yorke, energetically. "How would he appear in New York? Why, he wears great heavy shoes, and his neckties are something dreadful."
"His neckties are bad," admitted Alice, sadly.
Mrs. Yorke, having discovered a breach in her adversary's defences, like a good general directed her attack against it.
"He dresses horribly; he wears his hair like a--countryman; and his manners are as antiquated as his clothes. Think of him at the opera or at one of Mrs. Wentworth's receptions! He says 'madam' and 'sir' as if he were a servant."
"I got after him about that once," said the girl, reflectively. "I said that only servants said that."
"Well, what did he say?"
"Said that that proved that servants sometimes had better manners than their masters."
"Well, I must say, I think he was excessively rude!" asserted Mrs. Yorke, picking up her fan and beginning to fan rapidly.
"That's what I said; but he said he did not see how it could be rude to state a simple and impersonal fact in a perfectly respectful way."
Alice was warming up in defence and swept on.
"He said the new fashion was due to people who were not sure of their own position, and were afraid others might think them servile if they employed such terms."
"What does he know about fashion?"
"He says fashion is a temporary and shifting thing, sometimes caused by accident and sometimes made by tradesmen, but that good manners are the same to-day that they were hundreds of years ago, and that though the ways in which they are shown change, the basis is always the same, being kindness and gentility."
Mrs. Yorke gasped.
"Well, I must say, you seem to have learned your lesson!" she exclaimed.
Alice had been swept on by her memory not only of the words she was repeating, but of many conversations and interchanges of thought Gordon Keith and she had had during the past weeks, in which he had given her new ideas. She began now, in a rather low and unsteady voice, her hands tightly clasped, her eyes in her lap:
"Mamma, I believe I like him very much--better than I shall ever--"
"Nonsense, Alice! Now, I will not have any of this nonsense. I bring you down here for your health, and you take up with a perfectly obscure young countryman about whom you know nothing in the world, and--"
"I know all about him, mamma. I know he is a gentleman. His grandfather--"
"You know _nothing_ about him," asserted Mrs. Yorke, rising. "You may be married to a man for years and know very little of him. How can you know about this boy? You will go back and forget all about him in a week."
"I shall never forget him, mamma," said Alice, in a low tone, thinking of the numerous promises she had made to the same effect within the past few days.
"Fiddlesticks! How often have you said that? A half-dozen times at least. There's Norman and Ferdy Wickersham and--"
"I have not forgotten them," said Alice, a little impressed by her mother's argument.
"Of course, you have not. I don't think it's right, Alice, for you to be so--susceptible and shallow. At least once every three months I have to go through this same thing. There's Ferdy Wickersham--handsome, elegant manners, very ri--with fine prospects every way, devoted to you for ever so long. I don't care for his mother, but his people are now received everywhere. Why--?"
"Mamma, I would not marry Ferdy Wickersham if he were the last man in--to save his life--not for ten millions of dollars. And he does not care for me."
"Why, he is perfectly devoted to you," insisted Mrs. Yorke.
"Ferdy Wickersham is not perfectly devoted to any one except himself--and never will be," asserted Alice, vehemently. "If he ever cared for any one it is Louise Caldwell."
Mrs. Yorke shifted her ground.
"There's Norman Wentworth? One of the best--"
"Ah! I don't love Norman. I never could. We are the best of friends, but I just like and respect him."
"Respect is a very safe ground to marry on," said Mrs. Yorke, decisively. "Some people do not have even that when they marry."
"Then I am sorry for them," said Miss Alice. "But when I marry, I want to love. I think it would be a crime to marry a man you did not love. God made us with a capacity to form ideals, and if we deliberately fall below them--"
Mrs. Yorke burst out laughing.
"Oh, stuff! That boy has filled your head with enough nonsense to last a lifetime. I would not be such a parrot. I want to finish my letter now."
Mrs. Yorke concluded her letter, and two mornings later the Yorkes took the old two-horse stage that plied between the Springs and the little grimy railway-station, ten miles away at the foot of the Ridge, and metaphorically shook the dust of Ridgely from their feet, though, from their appearance when they reached the railway, it, together with much more, must have settled on their shoulders.
The road passed the little frame school-house, and as the stage rattled by, the young school-teacher's face changed. He stood up and looked out of the window with a curious gaze in his burning eyes. Suddenly his face lit up: a little head under a very pretty hat had nodded to him. He bowed low, and went back to his seat with a new expression. That bow chained him for years. He almost forgave her high-headed mother.
Alice bore away with her a long and tragic letter which she did not think it necessary to confide to her mother at this time, in view of the fact that the writer declared that in his present condition he felt bound to recognize her mother's right to deny his request to see her; but that he meant to achieve such success that she would withdraw her prohibition, and to return some day and lay at her feet the highest honors life could give.
A woman who has discarded a man is, perhaps, nearer loving him just afterwards than ever before. Certainly Miss Alice Yorke thought more tenderly of Gordon Keith when she found herself being borne away from him than she had ever done during the weeks she had known him.
It is said that a broken heart is a most valuable possession for a young man. Perhaps, it was so to Keith.
The rest of the session dragged wearily for him. But he worked like fury. He would succeed. He would rise. He would show Mrs. Yorke who he was.
Mrs. Yorke, having reached home, began at once to lead her daughter back to what she esteemed a healthier way of thinking than she had fallen into. This opportunity came in the shape of a college commencement with a consequent boat-race, and all the gayeties that this entailed.
Mrs. Yorke was, in her way, devoted to her daughter, and had a definite and what she deemed an exalted ambition for her. This meant that she should be the best-dressed girl in society, should be a belle, and finally should make the most brilliant marriage of her set--to wit, the wealthiest marriage. She had dreamed at times of a marriage that should make her friends wild with envy--of a title, a high title. Alice had beauty, style, wealth, and vivacity; she would grace a coronet, and mamma would be "Madam, the Countess's mother." But mamma encountered an unexpected obstacle.
When Mrs. Yorke, building her air-castles, casually let fall her idea of a title for Alice, there was a sudden and unexpected storm from an unlooked-for quarter. Dennis Yorke, usually putty in his wife's hands, had two or three prejudices that were principles with him. As to these he was rock. His daughter was his idol.
For her, from the time she had opened her blue eyes on him and blinked at him vaguely, he had toiled and schemed until his hair had turned from brown to gray and then had disappeared from his round, strongly set head. For the love he bore her he had served longer than Jacob served for Rachel, and the time had not appeared long. The suggestion that the money he had striven for from youth to age should go to some reprobate foreigner, to pay his gambling-debts, nearly threw him into a convulsion. His ancestors had been driven from home to starve in the wilderness by such creatures. "Before any d----d foreign reprobate should have a dollar of his money he would endow a lunatic asylum with it." So Mrs. Yorke prudently refrained from pressing this subject any further at this time, and built her hopes on securing the next most advantageous alliance--a wealthy one. She preferred Norman Wentworth to any of the other young men, for he was not only rich, but the Wentworths were an old and established house, and Mrs. Wentworth was one of the old aristocrats of the State, whose word was law above that of even the wealthiest of the new leaders. To secure Norman Wentworth would be "almost as good as a title." An intimacy was sedulously cultivated with "dear Mrs. Wentworth," and Norman, the "dear boy," was often brought to the house.
Perversely, he and Alice did not take to each other in the way Mrs. Yorke had hoped. They simply became the best of friends, and Mrs. Yorke had the mortification of seeing a tall and statuesque schoolmate of Alice's capture Norman, while Alice appeared totally indifferent to him. What made it harder to bear was that Mrs. Caldwell, Louise Caldwell's mother, a widow with barely enough to live respectably on, was quietly walking off with the prize which Mrs. Yorke and a number of other mothers were striving to secure, and made no more of it than if it had been her right. It all came of her family connections. That was the way with those old families. They were so selfishly exclusive and so proud. They held themselves superior to every one else and appeared to despise wealth. Mrs. Yorke did not believe Mrs. Caldwell really did despise wealth, but she admitted that she made a very good show of doing it.
Mrs. Yorke, foreseeing her failure with Norman Wentworth, was fain to accept in his place Ferdy Wickersham, who, though certainly not Norman's equal in some respects, was his superior in others.
To be sure, Ferdy was said to be a somewhat reckless young fellow, and Mr. Yorke did not fancy him; but Mrs. Yorke argued, "Boys will be boys, and you know, Mr. Yorke, you have told me you were none too good yourself." On this, Dennis Yorke growled that a man was "a fool ever to tell his wife anything of the kind, and that, at least, he never was in that young Wickersham's class."
All of which Mrs. Yorke put aside, and sacrificed herself unstintedly to achieve success for her daughter and compel her to forget the little episode of the young Southern schoolmaster, with his tragic air.
Ah, the dreams of the climbers! How silly they are! Golden clouds at the top, and just as they are reached, some little Jack comes along and chops down the beanstalk, clouds and all.
So, Mrs. Yorke dreamed, and, a trifle anxious over Alice's persistent reference to the charms of Spring woods and a Southern climate, after a week or two of driving down-town and eager choosing of hats and wearying fitting of dresses, started off with the girl on the yacht of Mr. Lancaster, a wealthy, dignified, and cultivated friend of her husband's. He had always been fond of Alice, and now got up a yacht-party for her to see the boat-race.
* * * * *
Keith had thought that the time when he should leave the region where he had been immersed so long would be the happiest hour of his life. Yet, when the day came, he was conscious of a strange tugging at his heart. These people whom he was leaving, and for whom he had in his heart an opinion very like contempt on account of their ignorance and narrowness, appeared to him a wholly different folk. There was barely one of them but had been kind to him. Hard they might appear and petty; but they lived close together, and, break through the crust, one was sure to find a warm heart and often a soft one.
He began to understand Dr. Balsam's speech: "I have lived in several kinds of society, and I like the simplest best. One can get nearer to men here. I do not ask gratitude. I get affection."
Keith had given notice that the school would close on a certain day. The scholars always dropped off as summer came, to work in the crops; and the attendance of late had been slim. This last day he hardly expected to have half a dozen pupils. To his surprise, the school-house was filled.
Even Jake Dennison, who had been off in the mountains for some little time getting out timber, was on hand, large and good-humored, sitting beside Phrony Tripper in her pink ribbons, and fanning her hard enough to keep a mine fresh. A little later in the day quite a number of the fathers and mothers of the children arrived in their rickety vehicles. They had come to take leave of the young teacher. There were almost as many as were present at the school celebration. Keith was quite overcome, and when the hour arrived for closing the school, instead of, as he had expected, tying up the half-dozen books he kept in his desk, shaking hands with the dozen children eager to be turned loose in the delightful pasturage of summer holiday, turning the key in the lock, and plodding alone down the dusty road to Squire Rawson's, he now found the school-room full, not of school-children only, but of grown people as well. He had learned that they expected him to say something, and there was nothing for him to do but to make the effort. For an hour, as he sat during the last lessons,--which were in the nature of a review,--the pages before him had been mere blurred spaces of white, and he had been cogitating what he should say. Yet, when he rose, every idea that he had tried so faithfully to put into shape fled from his brain.
Dropping all the well-turned phrases which he had been trying to frame, he said simply that he had come there two years before with the conceit of a young man expecting to teach them a good deal, and that he went away feeling that he had taught very little, but that he had learned a great deal; he had learned that the kindest people in the world lived in that region; he should never forget their kindness and should always feel that his best friends were there. A few words more about his hopes for the school and his feeling for the people who had been so good to him, and he pronounced the school closed. To his surprise, at a wink from Squire Rawson, one of the other trustees, who had formerly been opposed to Keith, rose, and, addressing the assemblage, began to say things about him that pleased him as much as they astonished him.
He said that they, too, had begun with some doubt as to how things would work, as one "could never tell what a colt would do till he got the harness on him," but this colt had "turned out to be a pretty good horse." Mr. Keith, maybe, had taught more than he knew. He had taught some folks--this with a cut of his eye over toward where Jake Dennison sat big and brown in the placid content of a young giant, fanning Euphronia for life--he had "taught some folks that a door had to be right strong to keep out a teacher as knowed his business." Anyhow, they were satisfied with him, and the trustees had voted to employ him another year, but he had declined. He had "business" that would take him away. Some thought they knew that business. (At this there was a responsive titter throughout the major portion of the room, and Gordon Keith was furious with himself for finding that he suddenly turned hot and red.) He himself, the speaker said, didn't pretend to know anything about it, but he wanted to say that if Mr. Keith didn't find the business as profitable as he expected, the trustees had determined to hold the place open for him for one year, and had elected a successor temporarily to hold it in case he should want to come back.
At this there was a round of approval, as near general applause as that stolid folk ever indulged in.
Keith spent the next day in taking leave of his friends.
His last visit that evening was to Dr. Balsam. He had not been to the village often in the evening since Mrs. Yorke and her daughter had left the place. Now, as he passed up the walk, the summer moonlight was falling full on the white front of the little hotel. The slanting moonlight fell on the corner of the verandah where he had talked so often to Alice Yorke as she lay reclining on her lounge, and where he had had that last conversation with Mrs. Yorke, and Keith saw a young man leaning over some one enveloped in white, half reclining in an arm-chair. He wondered if the same talk were going on that had gone on there before that evening when Mrs. Yorke had made him look nakedly at Life.
When Keith stated his errand, the Doctor looked almost as grave as he could have done had one of his cherished patients refused to respond to his most careful treatment.
"One thing I want to say to you," he said presently "You have been eating your heart out of late about something, and it is telling on you. Give it up. Give that girl up. You will have to sooner or later. They will prove too strong for you. Even if you do not, she will not suit you; you will not get the woman you are after. She is an attractive young girl, but she will not remain so. A few years in fashionable society will change her. It is the most corroding life on earth!" exclaimed the Doctor, bitterly. "Convention usurps the place of every principle, and becomes the only god. She must change. All is Vanity!" repeated the Doctor, almost in a revery, his eyes resting on Keith's face.
"Well," he said, with a sigh, "if you ever get knocked down and hurt badly, come back up here, and I will patch you up if I am living; and if not, come back anyhow. The place will heal you provided you don't take drugs. God bless you! Good-by." He walked with Keith to the outer edge of his little porch and shook hands with him again, and again said, "Good-by: God bless you!" When Keith turned at the foot of the hill and looked back, he was just reentering his door, his spare, tall frame clearly outlined against the light within. Keith somehow felt as if he were turning his back on a landmark.
Just as Keith approached the gate on his return home, a figure rose up from a fence-corner and stood before him in the starlight.
"Good even'n', Mr. Keith." The voice was Dave Dennison's. Keith greeted him wonderingly. What on earth could have brought the boy out at that time of the night? "Would you mind jest comin' down this a-way a little piece?"
Keith walked back a short distance. Dave was always mysterious when he had a communication to make. It was partly a sort of shyness and partly a survival of frontier craft.
Dave soon resolved Keith's doubt. "I hear you're a-goin' away and ain't comin' back no more?"
"How did you hear that--I mean, that I am not coming back again?" asked Keith.
"Well, you're a-sayin' good-by to everybody, same's if they were all a-goin' to die. Folks don't do that if they're a-comin' back." He leaned forward, and in the semi-darkness Keith was aware that he was scrutinizing his face.
"No, I do not expect to come back--to teach school again; but I hope to return some day to see my friends."
The boy straightened up.
"Well, I wants to go with you."
"You! Go with me?" Keith exclaimed. Then, for fear the boy might be wounded, he said: "Why, Dave, I don't even know where I am going. I have not the least idea in the world what I am going to do. I only know I am going away, and I am going to succeed."
"That's right. That's all right," agreed the boy. "You're a-goin' somewheres, and I want to go with you. You don't know where you're a-goin', but you're a-goin'. You know all them outlandish countries like you've been a-tellin' us about, and I don't know anything, but I want to know, and I'm a-goin' with you. Leastways, I'm a-goin', and I'm a-goin' with you if you'll let me."
Keith's reply was anything but reassuring. He gave good reasons against Dave's carrying out his plan; but his tone was kind, and the youngster took it for encouragement.
"I ain't much account, I know," he pleaded. "I ain't any account in the _worl'_," he corrected himself, so that there could be no mistake about the matter. "They say at home I used to be some account--some little account--before I took to books--before I _sorter_ took to books," he corrected again shamefacedly; "but since then I ain't been no manner of account. But I think--I kinder think--I could be some account if I knowed a little and could go somewheres to be account."
Keith was listening earnestly, and the boy went on:
"When you told us that word about that man Hannibal tellin' his soldiers how everything lay t'other side the mountains, I begin to see what you meant. I thought before that I knowed a lot; then I found out how durned little I did know, and since then I have tried to learn, and I mean to learn; and that's the reason I want to go with you. You know and I don't, and you're the only one as ever made me want to know."
Keith was conscious of a flush of warm blood about his heart. It was the first-fruit of his work.
The boy broke in on his pleasant revery.
"You'll let me go?" he asked. "Cause I'm a-goin' certain sure. I ain't a-goin' to stay here in this country no longer. See here." He pulled out an old bag and poked it into Keith's hand. "I've got sixteen dollars and twenty-three cents there. I made it, and while the other boys were spendin' theirn, I saved mine. You can pour it out and count it."
Keith said he would go and see his father about it the next day.
This did not appear to satisfy Dave.
"I'm a-goin' whether he says so or not," he burst forth. "I want to see the worl'. Don't nobody keer nothin' about me, an' I want to git out."
"Oh, yes! Why, I care about you," said Keith.
To his surprise, the boy began to whimper.
"Thankee. I'm obliged to you. I--want to go away--where Phrony ner nobody--ner anybody won't never see me no more--any more."
The truth dawned on Keith. Little Dave, too, had his troubles, his sorrows, his unrequited affections. Keith warmed to the boy.
"Phrony is a lot older than you," he said consolingly.
"No, she ain't; we are just of an age; and if she was I wouldn't keer. I'm goin' away."
Keith had to interpose his refusal to take him in such a case. He said, however, that if he could obtain his father's consent, as soon as he got settled he would send for him. On the basis of this compromise the boy went home. _