At the Sign of the Fox: A Romance

It was the 10th of January. At Gilead winter had been a-masking all through December, and played the part of a fantastic snow-draped Columbine in the Christmas pantomime where, the North Wind being piqued to keep his distance, she was wooed by the South and West Winds alternately amid a setting of warm noons, dramatic sunsets, and moonlight nights of electric clearness, to the song of the Moosatuk’s mad racing.

With January the reign of the North Wind began in a wrath of sleet and ice that bound forest, field, and river also in cruel, glittering shackles, covering the wayside granaries and driving the faithful birds of the season, hooded and clad in sober garb of grays and russet, to beg from door to door like mendicant friars of old.

Even before its close, each day of the New Year had been checked by a double cross from the calendar that hung on the door of Keith West’s pantry, as if by its complete obliteration she hoped to hurry time itself.

Waiting for others to act had never before fallen to Miss Keith’s lot in life. For twenty years her comings and goings, her waking and sleeping, and even the setting of the first spring brood of embryo broilers had depended upon herself alone, for she had long since substituted an incubator for that coy and freakish feathered female known as a setting hen. Consequently this delay at the very outset of a new order of things found her restless and in no very amiable mood. Also Judith Dow had written that, as Miss Keith had promised to come the first of the year, she had reserved her room and must charge her accordingly, which, as the whole affair was upon a nominal basis, irritated her not a little.

In writing to Adam Lawton of the determination to leave the farm, the 1st of January had been the date she had set for starting for Boston en route to Matrimony, and when, a short time after Christmas, Brooke had combined her reply to the unanswered letter with the announcement that she herself expected to go to take charge of the place as near the 1st of January as possible, Miss Keith had hastened to complete her arrangements.

Brooke had written concisely, yet with entire frankness; but even then Miss Keith did not compass the exact condition of her cousin’s affairs, or understand that as far as his relation with the world stood he was as helpless and irresponsible as the day of his birth. She knew that money and health had been lost, but fancied that, after a few months’ retirement, more voluntary than enforced, as had been the case with one or two families of the wealthy summer colony at Stonebridge, every one concerned would swing back to the old pace again.

Nevertheless she took great pride in making the evidence of her thrifty stewardship apparent on every side. The hired man had been well-nigh frantic at the number of times that he had been obliged to whitewash spots that had dried thin in the cow and poultry houses. A fringe of unthreshed rye straw made a lambrequin over the entrance to the stall of Billy, the general utility horse with the long, common-sense face. The front gate, always removed from its hinges at the coming of frost, had been scrubbed before being stowed away in the attic, and the plant boxes that edged the front porch and held nasturtiums in summer were filled with small cedar bushes and branches of coral winterberry in remembrance of Brooke’s youthful love of such things.

The outside condition of things gave Miss Keith much more satisfaction than did the inside arrangement of the house. Her only concern about them was lest the mischievous boy should upset everything and doubtless stone the cows, torment Laura, the sedate barn cat, and turn the laying hens out in the cold; for to her spinster mentality if there was a dubious quantity, it was the growing boy, the last straw under which the many-humped back of female patience must break.

She had considered the house the pink of perfection until she peopled it with New Yorkers accustomed to every luxury, and then the gay flowers of the chintz slip covers that hid the haircloth gloom of the parlour furniture began to pale and fail to hold their own, and the texture of the freshly laundered dimity curtains, those upstairs having wide hems, while those below were edged with tatting of the wheel pattern, seemed to grow coarser as the days went by.

And all the while that she bustled to and fro, now in the cellar to see that the stones had not slipped in the pork barrel and allowed the meat to rise above the brine, then to the attic to be sure that her personal possessions of bedding, linen, and tableware, neatly put up in barrel, bale, and bundle until her marriage and final move, did not take up more room than was necessary,—Tatters followed her, either so close to heel that he literally seemed to dog her footsteps, or else sitting a little way apart with his eyes fastened upon her with a blended look of dread and reproach. Then she would often drop whatever she held and raising his face (yes, Tatters had a face, not a “muzzle”) between her hands, plead with him to tell her what he made of it all and if he believed she could be happy away from Gilead, and if he thought that he could follow any one else to market, allow her to shake out his mat, and choose juicy bones that were not too hard for his middle-aged teeth. All of which showed that she did not rejoice in thought at the First Cause as completely as would, under the circumstances, have been desirable; while Tatters understood that this was not the accustomed affectionate babble or the confidential discourse of everyday doings in which he was frequently consulted, and he would raise his head and give, not his usual howl belonging to moonlight nights, but a strange bay like an echo, deep down in his throat.

Three times in those ten bleak January days had she given what she declared aloud to be a “final dusting” to each room. Three times had she baked bread, cake, pies, and custard for the invalid (no, the third time she made boiled soft custard to break the monotony), and then hovered between the dread of waste and surfeit in consuming the food.

However, on the tenth day of waiting her spirits rose, for soon after breakfast Robert Stead stopped on his way back from Gilead, whither he rode daily, rain or shine, to the post-office, as the rural carrier went to Windy Hill but once a day and that in early afternoon, to say that he had just heard from Dr. Russell and expected him up from Oaklands that afternoon, as he was coming to meet Adam Lawton at the request of his New York physician, in order to see the invalid safely established after his precarious journey.

In addition to this bit of news, Stead brought a fine pair of wild ducks, shot a few days previous, farther down where the river was not ice-locked, and he had taken the wise precaution of having them dressed by José, his Mexican man of all work, for in Miss Keith’s agitation at the knowledge that her kinsfolk were actually coming that very day, the task of picking pin-feathers would have been impossible.

In fact her hands trembled so, as she took the basket from Stead, that, contrary to his habit of taciturnity, he questioned her closely as to her health, and if he could help her in any preparations, and finally, after leading Manfred to the stable, followed Miss Keith into the house only to find her in the kitchen seated, as Dr. Russell had some months before, with her face pressed against Tatters’ ears in a vain effort to stifle her sobs.

“I’ve wished for kin so long that now they are coming it doesn’t seem as if I could bear it,” she said by way of explanation. “If it was only Adam and Brooke, I wouldn’t mind; I’ve sampled her, and though she’s full of spunk, she’s as pleasant as if she never had a cent, but to think of that high-spirited southern woman, perhaps lording it over me, it’s too much, even though I’m only going to hold over a day or two to give them the lay of the land, as it were. Then like as not their city help will take me for a servant, for they’ll not likely bring less than two for all the cooking and the waiting that they are used to, which reminds me that they’ll need to use the living room to dine in, for of course they won’t eat in the kitchen as I’ve done, and what with turning the south parlour into a bedroom (which it was in his mother’s day) for Adam, so that he can get out on the porch easily, there won’t be any best room at all.

“Would you help me move the table and dresser with the glass door into the living room? Larsen bangs furniture so when he does it, and the deal table from the summer kitchen can come here for the help.”

Jumping up—“There’s some one knocking now! Dear me, it’s the Bisbee boy with a telegram. Open it, do, and give him a quarter from the shelf by the clock, for riding up with it,” and Miss Keith sank back in the rocking chair and closed her eyes like some one about to have a tooth drawn, who dreaded the sight of the instruments.

Silent Stead opened the blue envelope with the studied deliberation with which he performed every act of life, except riding Manfred, at which time the two abandoned themselves to mutual impulse. Shaking out the sheet, he read slowly:—

“To-day at two-thirty!” ejaculated Miss Keith, who, mind you, had been more than ready for ten days; “then there’s no time to fix up the living room, or do more than sweep and tidy up and get dinner,—they will have to put up with the kitchen for once. Why do they get out at Stonebridge? It is three miles farther than Gilead Station, and a closed carriage means one of Bisbee’s hacks, for the rockaway must go too for the help. Has that boy of his gone?” Stead hurried to the road, but the boy was disappearing down the third hill at a pace that forbade recall.

“I will go down and order the carriage for you,” Stead volunteered, “and tell them to put in hot stones and plenty of rugs; it’s a cold drive from Stonebridge, but they come that way doubtless because the express stops there and not at Gilead. They could not bring a man in Mr. Lawton’s condition so long a journey in a way train.”

“If you would, I should be so relieved, and one thing more. I know you make a point of keeping away from folks, especially women, and these are strangers to you; but they’ll be so worried likely as not they’ll hardly notice you. Now would you be so good as to meet them and see they find the carriage and get properly started, and tell Bisbee to keep to the lower road in spite of the trolley until they reach the third hill? It’s far less jolty and better shovelled out.

“You see Brooke says, ‘Please meet us,’ and it doesn’t look hospitable to send an empty hack, as if it was to meet a funeral; besides which there wouldn’t be room, and I can’t spare the time, though, as I suppose the boy is small, they could set him between.”

“Yes, I will go to meet them,” answered Stead, hesitating a moment and still looking at the telegram, which he folded absent-mindedly and dropped into his pocket. “I do not think you need fear seeing Mrs. Lawton. I knew her family and met her once long ago; she is a gentlewoman to her finger-tips, and such are never overbearing,” and after making this unusually long speech Silent Stead went out for his horse, Tatters bounding in front of him joyously, for dogs and children always swarmed about the lonely man whenever they had the chance, and they alone, Dr. Russell excepted, were welcome at his retreat on Windy Hill.

Like many capable people, who fuss aimlessly when there is really little to do, but bring their best efforts to bear swiftly under stress, Miss Keith set in motion certain necessary preparations for an afternoon meal, which should be a compromise between a country dinner and supper, and then went to the south parlour, until a few days ago her pride and the most precise best room in the neighbourhood, and sitting quietly down with hands folded in her lap, took a final survey.

Something had suddenly changed her attitude toward the room. She ceased thinking of it as her state apartment, sacred to sewing society meetings and the more formal and rare social function of a high tea to welcome the wife of a new minister, and now looked at it as it was to be, the bedroom to which her Cousin Adam was coming for rest, and as she sat there it occurred to her that it was the very room in which he had been born.

Then there stole over her one of those subtle inspirations called intuition, with which the Creator has blessed woman as a token of sympathy with their weaknesses and a reward for much unspoken suffering, and thereby more than bridged the difference of her physical inequality with man. If the hope was to bring Adam Lawton back to himself, what could be more suitable than that the surroundings should be those of his early youth?

Ringing the dinner bell out of the back door, the sign to Larsen that he was wanted, Miss Keith began by taking the decorated “fireboard” from before the wide fireplace, and brushing up the fragments of swallow’s nests that had fallen down since the regular autumn clearing. Going to a deep closet under the back stairs, she pulled out a large bundle wrapped in papers and cloth, which being unrolled gave forth a pair of long-necked andirons, with oval head-pieces and curiously curved legs, made of what was known in the old days as princess metal, a warm-hued alloy of copper and brass. Setting these in the fireplace, she directed Larsen, who now appeared in the carpet slippers without which he never dared come indoors, to bring in logs and lay a substantial fire with backlog, forestick, catstick, and kindling, such as would outlast a night, instead of the mere “splutter blaze that needs tending like a spoiled child,” as she called the modern wood fire.

Next she had the ornate and hideous black-walnut bed, a product of the “ugly sixties,” that she had long regarded as a patent of respectability, unscrewed, taken up garret, and put under the eaves, from which she unpacked the frame of a slender-limbed four-poster of mellow, unstained mahogany. The Wests had always been of plain farming stock, and had never possessed carved mahogany or beds of the famous pineapple pattern. Dull and lustreless as was the wood, she set the man to work with rags and a compound of beeswax, oil, and turpentine, of which she always kept a jar for brightening spotted furniture. Meanwhile she untied a bundle shaped like a pillow, and carefully unfolded curtains, valance, and tester of dimity, finished with a cross-stitch border, mended carefully here and there, and yellow with age.

Looking at the clock, which had not yet struck ten, she turned the fabric over carefully, evidently weighing something in her mind, the while saying aloud, “Yes, I’ll simply scald them, and iron them out with a bit of starch. To bleach them would take weeks, and besides this old dimity will never stand the strain.”

While the irons were heating she returned to her reconstructive attempt. The canvas bottom was laced firmly to the bed frame, the bedding adjusted with mathematical precision, and finished with a cheerful patchwork quilt from one of the attic chests. From the floor of her own room she dragged a great rug made of rags in the herring-bone pattern, and spread it over the somewhat faded parlour carpet, which it concealed, all but a narrow border. A work-stand, with fat stomach and many little drawers, and an old chintz-covered English arm-chair, with high back and head-rest flaps at the top, were also brought to light and put in place, while the haircloth parlour set, in its flowered outer covering, suggestive of a gay domino worn over ministerial clothes, was distributed in living room and hall, the long sofa being obliged to seek refuge under the plant window in the angle of the kitchen itself.

Twelve o’clock saw the bed draperies ironed and fastened in place, the yellow hue of the dimity harmonizing with the painted woodwork and blending with the wall paper of a cheerful nosegay pattern that Brooke had chosen several years before, much to Miss Keith’s disappointment, as at the time embossed papers with effects of gold, silver, and copper were much in vogue in Gilead.

Still not quite satisfied, Miss Keith swept into her apron all the accumulations of little meaningless nothings that covered table and mantel-shelf. Seeking for something with which to replace them, she gathered half a dozen books from the old desk case in the living room, and set a pair of iron candlesticks as sentinels on the corners of the mantel-shelf, to guard a row of polished shells of various sorts.

Raising the flap of the table near the west window, that coming between two closets formed a small bay, Miss Keith placed half a dozen geraniums upon it, that were rather overcrowding the plant window in the kitchen. Satisfied with that quarter of the room, she was haunted by the partial recollection of some bit of furniture that had once filled in the angle between chimney and door leading to the back stairs, yet refused to become definite. But presently the veil lifted, and going to the attic for the twentieth time that morning, she returned followed by a bumping sound, one bump for each stair of the two flights, twenty-six in all, and presently the light of the fire that had kindled slowly cast sidewise glances at a mahogany cradle, from under whose hood three generations of little Wests had first gazed out into life.

With a sigh of content Miss Keith folded her arms, searched every nook in the room with eyes into which there crept a moisture, born neither of nervousness nor of grief, but of an emotion in which race instinct and true womanliness of heart were blended, and as, the circle of the room being rounded, she looked beyond into the square hallway, her eyes stopped, as if asking for courage, upon the face of the tall clock, above which a full-rigged brig had been sailing for more than a hundred years toward the harbour it never reached. At the same moment it struck the six strokes of the three-quarter hour, and the words it said sounded like “Well done! well done! well done!”

In January, though the days have begun to lengthen minute by minute, dusk begins to weave its shadows soon after four o’clock, and this fabric was blending hill and river in its impenetrable gray when Miss Keith’s keen eyes, now strained with watching, saw a man on horseback coming up the second hill, while farther down, turning from the cut that connected the upper and lower roads, two vehicles could be seen moving slowly, the rockaway being in the lead, but as to their occupants, nothing was discernible.

Throwing a heavy shawl about her, Miss Keith reached the gate at the same moment as Robert Stead, who flung himself from his horse the better to answer her sudden fusillade of questions. Tatters, who had followed her to the porch, paused with one paw raised, sniffed the wind, and came no farther, in spite of the sight of his friend.

“Have they come? Does Adam look badly? Can he walk? How much help did they bring? Where are the trunks? Did they have them taken off at Stonebridge and changed to the way train for Gilead?”

Smiling in spite of himself, Stead made answer, counting on his fingers as he did so that he might check off the questions:—

“The family have all come. Mr. Lawton seems very ill and wan, but as I have not seen him for many years, I cannot speak of his looks comparatively. I do not think that he can walk; the porters carried him from the car, and his wheel-chair is lashed behind the coach. They have brought no maids. Their luggage will be at Gilead to-night, and Bisbee has agreed to deliver it in the morning. Mr. and Mrs. Lawton, with Dr. Russell, who came on with them, it seems, are in the coach, and Miss Brooke and her brother are in the rockaway. I will house Manfred for a few moments if I may, so that I may help the doctor get his patient safely indoors.”

Half turning about, Stead hesitated a moment and then added hurriedly, but with much emphasis, “For God’s sake get indoors, Miss West, and don’t stand staring down the road like that, nor mention maids, nor ask a thousand questions before they are fairly inside the door. No one knows just how much Adam Lawton remembers or understands; but his wife and daughter are neither dumb nor blind, and both look spent.” And Miss Keith, too conscience-stricken to be angry at the rating from an almost stranger, fled in and closed the door before the rockaway came over the last hill grade, and paused, as all vehicles did, on the long plateau that reached and passed the house.

Adam junior, long, lanky, and sandy of hair and skin, got out and swung his sister to the ground. Something was bundled up under one of his arms, but head and ears alone were visible. “Grandpa Lawton all over again, Scotch hair and all! and he’s brought one of those snub-nosed dogs, as I live!” ejaculated Miss Keith, from behind the curtain that screened the glass half of the door, at the same time wondering if the proper moment had arrived for hospitality. Brooke and young Adam waited for the coach to draw up before they even looked houseward, and then Dr. Russell, with serious cheerfulness, helped Mrs. Lawton, whose face Miss Keith could scarcely see for the load of pillows that she handed to her daughter. Stead and the doctor deftly bore out their burden, and Miss Keith opened the door, stepping within its shadow. So Adam Lawton came home again, surrounded by his family.

Brooke entered first, close by her father, and spying Miss Keith, there was a single moment of strained, painful silence, but only a moment, for, dropping her pillows and holding out her hand with a little smile in which the doctor and Stead alone discerned a pathetic droop, her silver voice said, “Here I am, Cousin Keith; I’ve come back to my River Kingdom, and I’ve more than kept my promise, by bringing all the others with me;” then the tension relaxed, every one spoke, though quietly, and they carried Adam Lawton into the south parlour, where the fire burned upon the wide hearth as steadily as if it had never been extinguished in all those intervening years, and set him in the old chintz-covered chair.

Miss Keith held back in stiff reserve, and Mrs. Lawton followed, at first blindly. Then, as her eyes, focussed to the firelight, took in the details of the room in one swift glance,—bed hangings, quilt, cradle, and all,—she caught her breath and turned toward Miss Keith with arms extended, and whispered, “Ah, Cousin Keith, how did you know?—how did you think of it? They say that he may come back to himself by the long way of childhood; and how could he better do that than here in his mother’s room?” And the head, with its lovely crown of silver, rested against the taller woman’s bosom, and that swift touch of sympathy bound them doubly as kin.

“That’s a bully fire and no fake,” said the Cub, suddenly, after examining the long, thick log with the toe of his shoe; then he followed Miss Keith toward the kitchen, led both by curiosity and the smell of the supper in preparation.

“Where is that dog?” asked Miss Keith, abruptly. “I don’t know what Tatters will say to him, so you had best not bring him in too sudden.”

“That’s what the man said,” replied the Cub, cheerfully, “but your dog couldn’t help liking Pam; she’d make friends with a lion.”

“She. Oh, that’s different,” sniffed Miss Keith.

For the moment Dr. Russell was busy in taking Adam Lawton’s pulse, and when Brooke turned to speak to Robert Stead he had silently slipped away. “Never mind, Miss Brooke,” said the doctor, who read her thoughts; “Stead is a strange fellow, though a man to be trusted, but I know of no more bitter punishment to him than verbal thanks. You may need to remember this. I found out long ago that the best gratitude that any one may show him is to let him have a motive for doing something, no matter how trivial, for some one else,—lack of motive is his curse.”

Then Dr. Russell also passed out into the living room, and the three were left alone.

“Mother, are you glad that we have come?” asked Brooke, going to her with that new look of complete understanding that each had worn toward the other since that fateful night when Brooke had decided.

“Glad, my daughter? I cannot say how thankful! Oh, if only I could be sure that we could stay!”

“No ifs, mother,” said Brooke, gently, her eyes opening wider as she gazed into the fire. “You know in our new creed of work there is to be plenty of love and faith and hope, but not a single if. In fact, I always did think if a poor, leaky word, that let people escape from all sorts of nice promises; now we will simply banish it,—you and I and Adam and—father.”

Lowering her eyes to the hearth-rug, she became aware of a shaggy form stretched out there—Tatters, couchant, with his solemn eyes fastened upon hers, watching their every movement questioningly. In answer to his appeal, Brooke knelt on the rug before him, raising him so that his paws rested on her shoulders, and whispered, “We are of your people, Tatters, and we are so tired and lonely. Won’t you love us, and let us live here with you?”

Then Tatters, who had not yet moved his eyes from Brooke’s, touched the tip of her nose with his tongue as lightly as the brush of a moth’s wing, and dropping his head to her lap, closed his eyes, as if in sign of complete confidence.