The Ancient Law

Drawing back into the corner of the staircase, Emily glanced down upon the tomatoes lying in the bottom of the basket; then without raising her eyes she spoke in a voice which might have uttered appropriately a lament upon the universal tragedy of her sex.

"I suppose I may as well make them plain?" she said.

CHAPTER V

Treats Of A Great Passion In A Simple Soul

FOR several weeks in August Ordway did not go into Tappahannock, and during his vacation from the warehouse he made himself useful in a number of small ways upon the farm. The lawn was trimmed, the broken fences mended, the garden kept clear of wiregrass, and even Mrs. Brooke's "rockery" of portulaca, with which she had decorated a mouldering stump, received a sufficient share of his attention to cause the withered plants to grow green again and blossom in profusion. When the long, hot days had drawn to a close, he would go out with a watering-pot and sprinkle the beds of petunias and geraniums which Emily had planted in the bare spots beside the steps.

"The truth is I was made for this sort of thing, you know," he remarked to her one day. "If it went on forever I should never get bored or tired."

Something candid and boyish in his tone caused her to look up at him quickly with a wondering glance. Since the confession of his marriage her manner to him had changed but little, yet she was aware, with a strange irritation against herself, that she never heard his voice or met his eyes without remembering instantly that he had a wife whom he had not seen for seven years. The mystery of the estrangement was as great to her as it had ever been, for since that afternoon in the garden he had not referred again to the subject; and judging the marriage relation by the social code of Beverly and Amelia, she had surmised that some tremendous tragedy had been the prelude to a separation of so many years. As he lifted the watering-pot he had turned a little away from her, and while her eyes rested upon his thick dark hair, powdered heavily with gray above the temples, and upon the strong, sunburnt features of his profile, she asked herself in perplexity where that other woman was and if it were possible that she had forsaken him? "I wonder what she is like and if she is pretty or plain?" she thought. "I almost hope she isn't pretty, and yet it's horrid of me and I wonder why I hope so? What can it matter since he hasn't seen her for seven years, and if he ever sees her again, she will probably be no longer young. I suppose he isn't young, and yet I've never thought so before and somehow it doesn't seem to matter. No, I'm sure his wife is beautiful," she reflected a moment later, as a punishment for her uncharitable beginning, "and she has fair hair, I hope, and a lovely white skin and hands that are always soft and delicate. Yes, that is how it is and I am very glad," she concluded resolutely. And it seemed to her that she could see distinctly this woman whom she had imagined and brought to life.

"I can't help believing that you would tire of it in time," she said presently aloud.

"Do you tire of it?" he asked in a softened voice, turning his gaze upon her.

"I?" she laughed, with a bitterness he had never heard in her tone before, "oh, yes, but I suppose that doesn't count in the long run. Did there ever live a woman who hasn't felt at times like railing against the milk pans and denying the eternal necessity of ham and eggs?"

Though she spoke quite seriously the simplicity of her generalisation brought a humorous light to his eyes; and in his imagination he saw Lydia standing upon the white bearskin rug against the oval mirror and the gold-topped bottles upon her dressing-table.

"Well, if I'd made as shining a success at my job as you have at yours, I think I'd be content," was all he said.

She laughed merrily, and he saw that the natural sweetness of her temper was proof against idle imaginings or vain desires.

"You think then that it is better to do a small thing well than a big thing badly?" she inquired.

"But it isn't a small thing," he protested, "it's a great big thing – it's the very biggest thing of all."

A provoking smile quivered on her lips, and he saw the dimple come and go in her cheek.

"I am glad at least that you like my ham and eggs," she retorted mockingly.

"I do," he answered gravely, "I like your ham and eggs, but I admire your courage, also."

She shook her head. "It's the cheapest of the virtues."

"Not your kind, my dear child – it's the rarest and the costliest of achievements."

"Oh, I don't know how serious you are," she answered lightly, "but it's a little like putting a man on a desert island and saying, 'make your bed or lie on the rocks.' He's pretty apt to make his bed, isn't he?"

"Not in the least. He usually puts up a flag of distress and then sits down in the sand and looks out for a ship."

Her voice lost its merriment. "When my ship shows on the horizon, it will be time enough to hoist my flag."

A reply was on his lips, but before he could utter it, she had turned away and was moving rapidly across the lawn to the house.

The next morning Ordway went into Tappahannock, not so much on account of the little business he found awaiting him at the warehouse, as urged by the necessity of supplying Beverly with cigars. To furnish Beverly three times a day with the kind of cigar he considered it "worth while for a gentleman to smoke" – even though his choice fell, in Ordway's opinion, upon a quite inferior brand – had become in the end a courtesy too extravagant for him to contemplate with serenity. Yet he knew that almost in spite of himself this tribute to Beverly was now an established fact, and that as long as he remained at Cedar Hill he would continue to supply with eagerness the smoke which Beverly would accept with affability.

The town was dull enough at mid August, he remembered from the blighting experience of last summer; and now, after a fierce drought which had swept the country, he saw the big, fan-shaped leaves on Mrs. Twine's evening glory hanging like dusty rags along the tin roof of the porch. Banks was away, Baxter was away, and the only acquaintance he greeted was Bill Twine, sitting half drunk, in his shirt sleeves and collarless, on the front steps. There was positive relief when, at the end of an hour, he retraced his steps, with Beverly's cigars under his right arm.

After this the summer declined slowly into autumn, and Ordway began to count the long golden afternoons as they dropped one by one into his memory of Cedar Hill. An appeal to Mrs. Brooke, whom he had quite won over by his attentions to Beverly and the children, delayed his moving back into Tappahannock until the beginning of November, and he told himself with satisfaction that it would be possible to awake on frosty October mornings and look out upon the red and gold of the landscape.

Late in September Banks returned from his vacation, and during his first visit to Cedar Hill, he showed himself painfully nervous and ill at ease. But coming out for a walk with Ordway one afternoon, he suggested at the end of their first mile that they should sit down and have a smoke beneath a young cherry tree upon the roadside. As he lit his pipe he held the match in his hand until it burned his fingers; then throwing it into the grass, he turned upon his companion as eloquently despairing a look as it is in the power of a set of naturally cheerful features to assume.

"Smith," he asked in a hollow voice, "do you suppose it's really any worse to die by your own hand than by disease?"

"By Jove!" exclaimed Ordway, and the moment afterward, "Come, now, out with it, Banks. How has she been behaving this time?"

Banks lowered his voice, while he glanced suspiciously up at the branches of the cherry tree beneath which they sat.

"She hates the sight of me," he answered, with a groan.

"Nonsense," rejoined Ordway, cheerfully. "Love has before now worn the mask of scorn."

"But it hasn't worn the mask of boredom," retorted the despairing Banks.

For a minute his answer appeared final even to Ordway, who stared blankly over the ripened cornfield across the road, without, for the life of him, being able to frame a single encouraging sentence in reply.

"If it's the last word I speak," pursued Banks, biting desperately at the stem of his pipe, "she cannot abide the sight of me."

"But how does she show it?" demanded Ordway, relieved that he was not expected to combat the former irrefutable statement.

"She tried to keep me away from the springs where she went, and when I would follow her, whether or no, she hardly opened her mouth to me for the first two days. Then if I asked her to go to walk she would say it was too hot for walking, and if I asked her to drive she'd answer that she didn't drive with men. As if she and I hadn't been together in a dog-cart over every road within twenty miles of Tappahannock!"

"But perhaps the custom of the place was different?"

"No, sir, it was not custom that kept her," replied Banks, in a bitterness that scorned deception, "for she went with others. It was the same thing about dancing, too, for if I asked her to dance, she would always declare that she didn't have the strength to use her fan, and the minute after I went away, I'd see her floating round the ball-room in somebody else's arms. Once I did get her to start, but she left off after the first round, because, she said, we could not keep in step. And yet I'd kept in step with her ever since we went on roller skates together."

He broke off for an instant, knocked the cold ashes out of his pipe, and plucking a long blade of grass, began chewing it nervously as he talked.

"And yet if you could only have seen her when she came down to the ball-room in her white organdie and blue ribbons," he exclaimed presently, in an agony of recollection.

"Well, I'm rather glad on the whole that I didn't," rejoined Ordway.

"You'd have fallen in love with her if you had – you couldn't have helped it."

"Then, thank heaven, I escaped the test. It's a pretty enough pickle as it is now."

"I could have stood it all," said Banks, "if it hadn't been for the other man. She might have pulled every single strand of my hair out if she'd wanted to, and I'd have grit my teeth and pretended that I liked it. I didn't care how badly she treated me. What hurt me was how well she treated the other man."

"Did she meet him for the first time last summer?" asked Ordway.

"Oh no, she's known him ever since she went North in the spring – but it's worse now than it's ever been and, upon my word, she doesn't seem to have eyes or ears for anybody else."

"So you're positive she means to marry him?"

"She swears she doesn't – that it's only fun, you know. But in my heart I believe it is as good as settled between them."