The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 24, 18 June 1908, Page 3

The Storyteller

THE DOWER RIGHT

The mea.dow and gently sloping hillside beyond ran with the highway for a mile. Midway on the hillside you could see th.i red dower-house. But you could not see within, to where the old lady sat beside the window of her humiliation, and looked down the long meadow where the invaders . rode every day to watch their relentless scarlet machines sowing -wheat as if each grain were a dragon's tooth, or mowing it as if they were guillotines at work upon ranks of golden aristocrats.

In the pride of youth she had chosen this window for. her own, because from it she could command so wide a view of her realm. Especially she had never glanced down that great meadow without a thrill" of pride— as now, in the evil days, she never beheld it without a pang. Of all this the invaders had no idea. That she was an enemy, and the dower-house was a grim fortress, andvthemselves the wicked besiegers of that fortress—why, they were too young and joyous to imagine such preposterous things. So they went on sowing and reaping in her one-time fields, and riding by "her whitepillared portico, innocently parading their youth and comradeship and affluence before the face of her age and her loneliness and her poverty— her bitter poverty that migjit not even keep the house of her fathers for her own people to inherit. The girl invader was the worst. She was twentyfive, and she had been married to the other invader for six years, and two little boys were singing out • mother ' after her the whole day long ; but for all that, she looked a mere girl to the enemy at her loophole in the honeysuckle on the portico. And so she was— just a big, rosy, delighted girl, as she cantered by on her own brown mare, Chips. Her name, by the way, was Rose. The old lady heard him calling her by it one day— his was Terence. And always when she caught sight of the old lady she would nod gaily, and call, ' Good morning ! ' or 1 Good evening ! ' as the case might be, in country fashion.

To... the old lady these children, wild with their first freedom and their first own home, were as red flags flaunted. After such an encounter as we have indicated, she would leave the pleasant porch, and go to sit in the dusky parlor, surrounded by family portraits and memorials of past days, and open the family Bible on a marble-topped table cold as a tombstone, seeking consolation in certain verses once possessed of power to heal an unhappy and lonely heart. But that girl's fresh face and voice would remain in« her memory, would distract her, would taunt her with an invulnerable joyousness. She could not help but look up at one particular portrait set over the tall white mantel-shelf— such a boy's face it was, and smiling ; and whenever she looked memory cried, 'We were like them once ! ' Then she would sit, forgetting the book, with her tears of old age on her withered cheeks and the dull despair of old age in her heart.a rt. Now it would simply have broken Rose's own heart to have had the faintest conception of all this, for she was just as sweet as she looked. One day. indeed, Terence did ..say, ' Girl, I don't half-believe that old lady likes.,Ajjs,' and another day, ' Elosie, sure as sunrise she hates us,' but Rose only flouted him. ' Terry.' she said, on this last occasion, ' you're too imaginative fur a farmer. Stop maligning human nature and go put your cultures to soak. Your beans won't be worth photographing if you don't get them planted soon.' ■ • . -~~,, Terence grinned. c But, Rose, she's just sent "me wol'l not to use her- road any more. That means 1 must cut across the meadow with another road.' 4 Vtcjl, wo must he a nuisance, Terry. I don't blame her M. all. We should have had our own road long ago. You can't set me against an old lady with curls, and a lace cap and a Chinese silk shawl and a gold-headed cane, and I'm going .to see her to-morrow.' ' She hasn't been to see you,' mentioned Terence. * ' She ,doesn't call on anyone,' retorted Rose, * since she's been so crippled with rheumatism. Sally says so.' She looked across from their temporary cottage to the red dower-house. Its white pillars gleamed in the dusk. N 1 We'll make a great old place of it some day, girl,' said Terry.

, Don'ti Terry !. ' cried Rose. Then she explained; .at sounds as if we were just— waiting:' 'They are,' said the old lady the next evening to the young minister's wife, * just waiting. They, must - think me an unaccommodating old woman.' ' Now,, Aunt Hale,', remonstrated Sally Patton, 'if you would only consent to know Rose.' 1 No,' interposed the old lady. ' She can ride by my doors— though I think I've put a stop to that— but she shan't come inside it. . I've a few rights left.' She shook her beautiful thick, white curls as she said this, and struck her cane sharply on the polishedfloor. Like an echo the big brass knocker fell. Sally started and leaned .forward, looking through the front . window. «•*.••• ' ft's Rose Carter, Aunt Hale,' she said, with a sort of timid firmness. 4 Hortense is out, I think. Shall I go to the .door ? ' llf you will be so kind, Sally,' assented the old lady,, with great composure. * In here ? ' asked Sally, brightly. 4 Go,' replied the old. lady,- who was-~enjoying- herself. J "~ ■ She lifted her fine, deliberate voice a trifle, and the fire in her, eye sprang high. ' You will please say that Mrs. Hale regrets that infirm health compels her to deny herself to strangers.' * Rose heard. She blushed scarlet— that was the girl in her— but her head went up, and the fire in her . hazel eyes leaped too. Between these two fires 'little Sally Patton halted.' To her relief, Rose's humor came to rescue the situation. She smiled, held out her hand, broke into lively words of greeting, and allowed herself to be sent away with a perfect good nature that assumed the old ' lady's message to be as polite as it sounded. ■ Within, the old lady harkened irately to the in- . vader's fresh young voice. Twenty years back the house had rung with such voices. She grew suddenly homesick _with the worst homesickness ,there is, for . one cannot ever'~turn and journey back into any past, , however dear and passionately longpd for. Therefore Sally, re-entering, did not find the old lady looking as triumphant as she expected' She was rather cross to Sally, who was her relative by marriage and who came in for the privileges of relationship. 1 You ought not to be alone here, aunt,' said - the little won Van, as she rose to go. ' St. John frets over you all the time.' The old lady frowned. ' I lived here by myself during a civil war,' she said. 4 But ' — began Sally. She stopped, distressed. It hardly seenied tactful to suggest a burglar or a stroke of paralysis to an old lady just as you were leaving her by her lone self. clt does make us uneasy,' she concluded lamely. On her way down the path she saw Rose cantering through the long meadow and watched her wistfully. She was the only married woman in Sally's experience who kept the light-hearted freshness of girlhood. Sally herself could not manage it all, witn a trio of little ; girls to bring up on one hundred pounds a year, and rent free. She- was learning to do white embroidery for an exchange, however, and hoped to manage, some day. In the meadow Rose met Terry tragically. 'You'll take my advice next time, madam,'' he said. Rose winked back the tears. 'It does look as if we had it all, Terry boy,' she murmured. l ' Let's chuck the whole thing, then,' suggested i Terry, cheerfully. - * There are plenty of other good places— without do wef- rights. 1 Rose turned, looked back yearningly. 'jl couldn't give it up, Terry,' she .admitted. ' I just couldn't.' • Then,' said Terry, 4 you're as bad as I am, and I've no more sympathy to .waste on you.' 'I'm not,' retorted Rose, indignantly/ ' for I'd love her if she'd let me.' S,he gathered up her reins. 1 Where are you . off to ? ' , 'Up the meadow and home by the road. * Won't you came, too ? ' But affairs of .importance, it appeared, detained Terence, and Rose started on her round alone. "" - Half-way up -the meadow the hill rose somewhat steeply and was crowned with a scattering wood of " pines. ■ Rose found herself following a narrow path to the Hilltop, and, once there, a pale gleaming among the dark branches- allured her downward. 1 Here -where the pines grew thickest, and even ' in March harbored tiny drifts of show, she came on one of the old family burial grounds once to be found on every plantation" in the State. Time has let in the wild

vines land creeping glasses to many*. ' Many more have been -obliterated by the ploughshares of hew owners. But , this .enclosure, secreted among the pines'-, ahd hedged with long, unpruned box -trees, - seemed still a place that waited .to welcome and enfold the' -difeweary. ' '~ - . ■ ' X Its- woodfen gate had crumbled ; but its single tall shaft stood upright, as if protecting certain little graves nestled under periwinkle vines a foot deep/ One of these was such a mite of a mound in its cradle of worn graystone. Rose had dismounted now and was standing over it. 1 It's almost as little as— mine,' she thought. She stooped to remove the dead leaves and twigs with a gentle hand. Her eyes were musing and deep. Just such a tiny, tiny mound she had left behind her in a northern State when she came to Virginia. No one ever understood why she cared so much for that unnamed morsel of a daughter who had lived only long enough to die ; but even her two big, beautiful boys "could not make her forget, and- she always bore in her heart the memory of that wee, unmothered grave. _And she had kept it so sweet with baby fiowers^-viblets, • little white roses, white daisy stars small as, the faraway stars of heaven seem to our gazing eyes. But no one had understood— even Terry had never understood. - ~ " * The old lady's roses were in > full bloom' tall branches of crimson roses, branchy" bushes of white roses, brambly bushes of yellow roses, and vines in wild, untethered tangles of roses. Sally exclaimed over them on her way up the ,walk. 'I see by that basket that you robbed me I- 2 — she called. - ' I wish you'd come to-morrow, aunt,' said Sally. ' St. John is to have everything" real appropriate and pretty-. The children will sing, and we are to have a special little ceremony at the soldiers' graves. We want your roses for, those— they are finer than anyone else has— they are the loveliest roses I ever saw.! St. -John says we'd all get too careless if it wasn't for these special days of remembering. " He likes to have .people make the most of them.' She picked up her basket from the step and moved away as she spoke. The old lady leaned back, letting her eyes - follow the alert figure flitting about the lawn. Once she had cut her own roses, and wreathed them with her own memories for the graves of, her dead ; _but in recent years all anniversaries had fallen from their old-time importance in her mind. She had. stopped observing them as she had stopped going to church every Sunday morning, or planting her early bulbs every autumn —as she had stopped pretty much everything except ' ■ mere living in its -barest simplicity. • Do come, Aunty! ' urged Sally once more across her overflowing basket -of beauty. ' Uncle Nelse can .drive you.' . - The old lady shook her head firmly ; but for all that the words put her in the temper to do something she had not done for several years. • ' Hortense,"' she said that night .to the colored woman who attended her, '.ask^ypur father to put the horses in the carriage for me to-morrow afternoon ~if the weather is fair. I think it will be,' she added anxiously, her heart beginning to be set on th{>t . something. - , :^' :f_ 4 Baby,' said Rose the next£ day, to her youngest, • Where's brother ? ' . N ' " « v- . ■ " 1 Papa .tooked him.' . 1 Then I'll take you. Tumble in.' He rolled over the back of the seat into the- cart beside her. His heavy brown hair rippled back from' an angelic brow, and his heavenly brown eyes questioned her intentions. To the possessor of a serious artistic eye he suggested the cherub" out of an Italian altar-piece ; but his mother was onore frivolous. ' Ludwell Harrison Carter,' she said suddenly, ' you look exactly like a delicious bonbon. ~J think I'll eat you " up. 1 . *** 1 She proceeded to devour him with kisses, while .he gave chuckling screams of delight. * Let me drive Chippy,' he gurgled, taking-brazen advantage of the situation. " - - • Oh, you're on my box, baby boy ! ' She lifted him back to his scat and removed her box to_her lap, while he held the reins along a level stretch of road. It was a, big ; white box from" her- old florist', and now we know where the invader was going, and what an inexcusable thing she was going to do. Yet ' it was nothing in the world but a bit of the sweetish selfishness : for the comforting of her own heart, very homesick on this day of all the year, for a tiny

flower-heaped mound— flower-heaped, yet what meaning had flowers placed by a caretaker ? She left the cart at the meadow bars, and with the white box swinging from one hand and the cherub swinging from the other gained 'the silent little enclosure among the pines. The sunny peace of the day descended dovelike on her spirit as she knelt deep in the netted vines and uncovered her white baby roses, her violets, her fairy daisies. The boy pressed closer, his lovely little face aglow And alight. He caught her suddenly under her round chin with his soft, eager, baby hands. 'Is they for my little sister, mommie '—the words stumbled out, soft and eager, too—' my sweet^ sweet little bit of a sister ? ' That set her lips quivering. ' Yes, my precious,' she said, holding up her face to be kissed. -~ And this was the picture the old lady beheld with an amazement, an indignation not to be put on paper. The pine-needles carpeting the wood road had blotted out the sound of her carriage wheels. She might have descended from the skies or risen -up out of the earth as she confronted the invader, who sprang to her feet confounded and put to shame, and clinging desperately to the one masculine protector in reach. All at once, as if by special revelation, she comprehended the enormity of their impertinence. It was written on the old lady's face as she waited— quite openly waited. ' Forgive me ! ' stammered Rose. It was a doubledistilled inadequacy, but it was all could think of. She had been startled pale ; but now she blushed deeply and moved forward. ' I think you are forgetting your pretty flowers,' reminded the old lady, who conspicuously bore flowers of her own. As the discomfited invader stooped to recover her flowers a dreadful thing happened. Bitter tears brimmed over and rolled down her cheeks. It was all to have heen so sweet, and now — . The boy gazed in her face with perplexed eyes. ' Come, sweetheart,' she said, and passed by the old lady, the defrauded mother heart by the insulted mother heart, and the invader's' tears were plain to be read upon her cheeks. Inexplicably and unexpectedly her aspect touched the old lady to a belated comprehension. In a flash it came to her that she was very old and that the invader was very young, and that her long, long years between had indeed been lived to little purpose if she could let this girl go past her and out of her life with those tears on her sweet, hurt face. And the boy, how beautiful he was ! ' Child ! ' she called. The invader looked back, pale once more, and dul,y wondering, and behold ! the old lady offering a shaking hand. ' Forgive me,' she said ; for when she capitulated she did it nobly and without reserve. She kept the young hand in hers. ' Come, sit by me here on this bench. May I see the flowers ? They are very beautiful. You were going to put them on my little daughter's grave, were you not ? ' She considered Rose with kindly keenness. ' Why, my dear ? ' ' Because—' said Rose. She stopped, began again. 1 Because I could not put them on my own baby's.' 1 Tell me,' said the old lady. Who would have known her ! * She was only three weeks old,' said Rose, apologetically ; but, oh ! miracle of a like loss, someone understood at last ! 1 I know,' said the old lady. She looked at the little mound. 'Mine lived .a month.' ' I've all her little things,' confided Rose ; and you saw where the boy got that soft, eager way of his.' ' I know,' said the old lady again. She torched the flowers. ' Put yours there to-day.'—' The Companion.' _____________ '