The long shadows of the lugubrious Lombardy poplars had already begun to stretch out in far-reaching lines, as if laying dusky fingers on the aged mansion, and the sun shone across the river with a light reddened by the autumn hazes. The knitters, as they turned at the sound of Edith's footfall, shone in a sort of softened glory, and into this they saw her descend as she came down the winding stair.
"Father is asleep," Miss Grayman said, stepping into the porch with a light tread. "I am going down to the shore for a breath of air before the night mist rises. You will hear father's bell if he wakes."
She moved slowly down the path which led toward the river, and the regards of the two old women followed her as she went.
"She is a born lady," Sarah said, not without a certain pride as of proprietorship.
"She is that," Hannah acquiesced. "Does she know he's comin'?"
"I just ain't had the sconce to tell her," was the response. "Sometimes 't seems just as though I'd ought to tell her, and then agen 't seems if 't would n't do no kind or sort of good. Two or three times she's sort of looked at me 's if she had an idea something was up, but even then I could n't bring it out."
"When 's he comin'?"
"Any day now. He was in Boston when he wrote, and he's likely to be on the boat 'most any day."
Hannah laid down her knitting for a moment in the breathless excitement of this announcement. The romance of young George Souther and Edith Grayman had thrilled her as nothing in her own experience could have done, so much more real and so much more important were these young people to her mind than was her own personality. For ten years the tale, brief and simple though it was, had for her been the most exciting of romances, and the possibility of the renewal of the broken relations between the lovers appealed to her every sense.
The story of the ill-starred loves of the young couple was really not much, although the two gossips knitting in the sun had spun its length over many a summer's afternoon. Young, lovely, and lonely, Edith Grayman had responded to the love of the manly, handsome son of her nurse as unconsciously and as fervently as if the democratic theories upon which this nation is founded had been for her eternal verities. She had been as little aware of what was happening as is the flower which opens its chalice to the sun, and the shock of discovery when he dared to speak his passion was as great as if she had not felt the love she scorned.
Indeed, it is probable that the sudden perception of her own feelings aroused her to a sense of the need she had to be determined, if she hoped to hold her own against her lover's pleading. She was beset within and without, and had need of all her strength not to yield.
"She gave in herself ten years ago," Sarah commented, following the train of thought which was in the mind of each of the sisters as they watched Edith's graceful figure disappear behind a thicket of hazel bushes, turning russet with the advance of autumn. "She stood out till that night George was upset in that sail-boat of his and we thought he was never comin' to. It makes me kind o' creepy down my back now to recollect the screech she give when she see him brought in; an' mercy knows I felt enough like screechin' myself, if it had n't 'a' been for knowin' that if I did n't get the hot blankets, there wa'n't nobody to do it. She could n't deny that she was in love with him after that."
"But she sent him off," interposed Hannah, in the tone of one repeating an objection which persistently refused to be explained to her satisfaction.
"Yes," Sarah returned; "that's what you always say, when you know as well 's I do that that was to please her father; and there he lies bed-rid to-day just as he did then, and just as sot in his way as ever he was."
The pair sighed in concert and shook their gray heads. Of the real significance of the romance which lay so near them they were almost as completely ignorant as was the great yellow cat, who opened his eyes leisurely as Hannah let fall her ball of yarn, and then, considering that upon the whole the temptation to chase it was not worth yielding to, closed the lids over the topaz globes again with luxurious slowness.
Themselves part of the battle between the old order and the new, the good creatures were hardly aware that such a struggle was being waged.
"She said," Sarah murmured, bringing forward another scrap of the story, "that she never 'd marry him 's long 's her father objected, and if I don't know that when once Leonard Grayman 's sot his mind on a thing to that thing he 'll stick till the crack o' doom, then I don't know nothin' about him; that's all. She won't go back on her word, and he won't let her off, and that's just the whole of it."
"No," Hannah agreed, sniffing sympathetically, "they won't neither of 'em change their minds; that you may depend upon."
"He'd object if he was in his coffin, I do believe," Sarah continued, with a curious mixture of pride in the family and of personal resentment. "The Graymans are always awful set."
"George must be considerable rich," Hannah observed, in a tone not without a note of reverence; "he's sent you a power o' money, first and last, ain't he?"
"Considerable," the other replied, with conscious elation. "I never used none of it. He kept sendin' till I told him it wa'n't no manner o'
mortal use; the family would n't let me use it for them, and I had more 'n I knew what to do with anyway. I've got more 'n 'nough to bury me decenter 'n most folks."
"Yes, I s'pose y' have," Hannah assented.
The knitters sat silent a little time, perhaps reflecting upon the thoughts which the mention of the last rites for the dead called up in their minds. The shadows were growing longer very fast now, and already the afternoon had grown cooler.
Suddenly a step sounded on the graveled walk, and a firmly built, handsome man of thirty-two or three came around the house and neared the porch where the old women sat.
"George!" cried old Sarah, so suddenly that the cat sprang up, startled from his dreams of ancestral mice. "Where on earth did you come from?"
"I want to know!" Hannah exclaimed, rather irrelevantly, in her excitement dropping a stitch in her knitting.
She was instantly aware of the misfortune, however, and while the mother and son exchanged greetings after their ten years' separation, Hannah occupied herself in endeavors to pick up the loop of blue yarn which her purblind eyes could scarcely see in the dimming light. When the stitch had been secured, she proffered her own welcome in sober fashion, being, in truth, somewhat overcome by this stalwart and bearded man whom she remembered as a stripling. The two women twittered about the robust newcomer, who took his seat upon the porch steps, pouring out each in her way a flood of questions or exclamations to which he could hardly be expected to pay very close attention.
After a separation of ten years the greetings were naturally warm, but the Southers were not a folk given to demonstrativeness, and it was not to the surprise of Mrs. Souther that before many minutes had passed her son said abruptly:--
"Where is she?"
"There, there," his mother said, in a tone in which were oddly mingled pride, remonstrance, and fondness, "ain't you got over that yet?"
"No," he responded briefly, but laying his hand fondly on that of his mother. "Where is she?"
"Like as not she won't see you," his mother ventured.
"She sent for me."
The two women stared at him in amazement.
"Sent for you?" they echoed in unison, their voices raised in pitch.
"Yes," he said, rising and throwing back his strong shoulders in a gesture his mother remembered well. "I don't know why I should n't tell you, mother. She said she had been proud as long as she could bear it."
The situation was too overwhelmingly surprising for the women to grasp it at once. Their knitting lay neglected in their laps while they tried to take in the full meaning of this wonderful thing.
"It is n't her pride," old Sarah said softly. "'T 's his; but she would n't say nothin' against her father if she was to be killed for it."
"Is she in the house?" he asked.
"No; she 's down to the shore," his mother answered, with a gasp.
At that moment sounded from the house the tinkle of a bell. The two women started like guilty things surprised.
"Oh, my good gracious!" ejaculated Hannah under her breath.
"What is that?" demanded George.
"That's his bell," Mrs. Souther answered. "He wants me. You need n't mind."
"But he must have heard--" began Hannah breathlessly. Then she stopped abruptly.
"Do you think he heard me?" George asked.
"Oh, he 'd wake up about this time anyway," his mother said. "Besides,"
she added, with a novel note of rebellion in her voice, "what if he did?
You have a right to come to see me, I should hope."
Again the bell tinkled. Old Sarah turned to go into the house.
"You'll find her down to the shore," she repeated.