The warm October weather lay over the Drennen homestead at Warne. This was a house gigantic and austere, its gray stone walls throwing into relief its red brick porch, veined with ivy stems, like an Indian’s face, whose warrior blood is raging, leant against a rock boulder.

Under the shade of the falling vine-fringe Margaret sat, passive and quiet, on the veranda. From under drooping lids, long-lashed, her brown eyes looked out with a sort of sweet and sober studiousness. Her reddish-brown hair appeared the color of old metal beaten by the hammer here and there into a lighter flick of gold, rolling back from her straight forehead and caught in a loose, low knot. The corners of her mouth were lifted a little, giving an extra fulness to sensitive lips, and the long rise of her cheek, from chin to temple, was without a dimple.

The haze hung an opal tint over the blue hillsides and lent to nearer objects a dreamy unreality. The atmosphere reflected Margaret’s mood. She was conscious of a certain tired numbness. Her acts of the past few weeks had a sort of elusiveness in perspective, and the old house at Warne, with its gloomy stables, taciturn servants, its familiar occupants—even she herself—seemed to possess a curious unreality.

Across the field ran the wavering fringe of willow which marked the little sluggish brook with the foot-log, where often she had waded, slim-legged, as a child. There was the old stable loft from which she had once fallen, hunting for pigeons’ eggs. There were the same gloomy holes under the eaves, from which awful bat shapes had issued for her childish shuddering. Only the master of the house was changed, and he was Melwin Drennen, Lydia’s husband. As a child, he had carried her on his shoulders over the fields when she had visited the place. She had liked him unaffectedly, and the great sorrow of his life had hurt her also.

She was a mere child then, and had heard it with a vague and wondering pain. It had been a much-talked-of match—that between her cousin and this man—and it was only a week after the wedding, at this same old place, that the accident had happened. Lydia had been thrown from her horse. She was carried back to a house of mourning. The decorations were taken from the walls, and great surgeons came down from the city to ponder, shake their heads, and depart. He, loving much, had hoped against hope. Margaret remembered hearing how he had sat all one night outside her door, silent, with his head against the wainscoting and his hands tight together—the night they said she would die.

And that was twelve years ago! She had bettered slightly, grown stronger, walked a little, then declined again. Now for five years past her life had been a colorless exchange of bed and reclining-chair, and, in this period, she had never left the house.

Margaret shivered in the sun as she thought. At intervals she had heard of his life. “Such a lovely life!” people said. She had thought of his self-sacrifice and devotion as something very beautiful. It had been an ever-present ideal to her of spiritual love. In her own self-dissatisfaction she had flown to this haven instinctively, as to a dear example. A strange desire to stab herself with the visual presence of her own lack had possessed her. But in some way the steel had failed her. She was conscious now of a vague self-reproach that her greater sorrow was for Melwin and not for the invalid. Surely Lydia was the one to be sorry for, and yet there was an awfulness about the life he led that she was coming to feel acutely.

The crying incompletion, the negative hollowness of it, had smote her. His full life had stopped, like a sluggish stream. His vitality, his energies, could not go ahead. He was bound through all these years to the body of this death. Love had broadened his gaze, lifted his horizon, and then Fate had suddenly reared this crystal, impassable wall, through which he must ever gaze and ever be denied. He was condemned still to love her and to watch agonizedly the slender gradations, the imperceptible stages by which she became less and less of her old self to him.

Margaret gazed out across the velvet edge of the hills, and felt a sense of dissatisfaction in the color harmony. A doubt had darkened the windows of her soul and turned the golden sunlight to a duller chrome. She was so absorbed that she caught a sharp breath as the French window behind her clicked raspingly and swung inward on its hinges. It was Melwin.

He came slowly forward through the window, holding his head slightly on one side as though he listened for something behind him. She found herself wondering how he had acquired the habit. His face was motionless and set, with a peculiar absence of placidity—like a graven image with topaz eyes. To Margaret it suggested a figure on an Egyptian bas-relief, and yet he looked much the same, she thought, as he had ten years before. Perhaps his beard was grayer and he was more stoop-shouldered, and—yes, his temples looked somehow hollower and older. He had a way of pausing just before the closing word of a question, giving it a quaint and unnatural emphasis, and of gazing above and past one when he spoke or answered. When he had first greeted her on her arrival, Margaret had turned instinctively in the belief that he had spoken to some one unperceived behind her.

“Will you go in to—Lydia?” he said, difficultly. “I think she wants you.”

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As Margaret came down the stairway a moment later, tying the ribbons of her broad hat under her chin, his look of inquiry met her at the door, and the tinge of eagerness in his lack-lustre eyes faded back into stolidity again as she told him it was only an errand for Lydia.

She jumped from the piazza and raced around the drive toward the stables. Creed, the coachman, whose wool was growing gray in a lifetime of allegiance to the Whiting stock, was standing by the window, holding a harvest apple for the black, reaching lip and white, impatient teeth of his favorite charge inside the stall. He dropped his currycomb as he saw her.

“Mornin’, Miss Marg’et. Want me fur sump’n?”

“No, I only came for Mrs. Drennen to see how Sempire’s foot is. She says he stepped on a stone.”

The black face puckered with a puzzled look, that broadened into a smile the next instant.

“Marse Drennen done tole dat to Miss Liddy ez a skuse fo’ he not ridin’ mo’. She all de time tryin’ to mek he git out an’ gallavant. He ain’t nuver gwine do dat no mo’. Miss Liddy, she al’ays worryin’ feared Marse Drennen moutn’t joy heseff, an’ he al’ays worryin’ cause she worryin’. She mek up all kinds ob things fur he to do dat way, an’ he jes humor her to think he do ’em, an’ she nuver know no diffunce.”

Margaret had seated herself on the step and was looking up. “You’ve always been with her, haven’t you?”

Creed smiled to the limit of his heavy lips. “’Deed I hev. When Miss Liddy wuz married she purty nigh fou’t to fotch me wid her. Her ole maid sister, she wantter keep me wid dee all back dar in New O’leens. You see I knowed Miss Liddy when she warn’t a hour ole an’ no bigger’n a teapot.

“Meh mammy wuz nussin’ de li’l mite in her lap wid a hank’cher ober her, an’ I tip in right sorf to cyar a hick’ry lorg an’ drap on de fiah. Dat li’l han’ upped an’ pull de hank’cher offen her face an’ look at me till I git cl’ar th’oo de do’. She wuz de peartest, forward’st young ’un! An’ she growed up lak she started, too. Marse Drennen he proud lak a peacock when he come down dyar frum de Norf an’ cyared her off wid he.”

“I remember how pretty she was.” Margaret spoke softly.

“Does yo’ sho ’nuff? She wuz jes ’bout yo’ age den. Her ha’r wuz de color ob a gole dollar, an’ her eyes wuz blue ez a catbird’s aig. She wuz strong as a saplin’, an’ she walk high lak a hoss whut done tuck de blue ribbon et de fa’r.”

Sempire arched his shining neck and whinnied gently for another apple. Creed stroked the intelligent face affectionately. “Whut mek yo’ go juckin’ dat way?” he said. “Cyarn’t you see I’se talkin’ to de ledy?”

He looked into the fresh young face beneath the straw hat with its nodding poppies and drew a deep breath.

“It do hurt me, honey, to see de change! Don’t keer how hard I wucks, I feels lonesome to see how de laugh an’ song done died in her froat. ’Twuz jes one stumble dat done it. She an’ Marse Drennen wuz gallopin’ on befo’ de yuthers. Pres’n’y she look back to see ef I wuz comin’. De win’ wuz blowin’ her purty ha’r ’bout ev’y way, an’ her eyes wuz sparklin’ jes lak de sun on de ice in de waggin ruts. Jes dat minit de hoss slip, an’ I holler an’ he done drap in er heap on he knees, an’ Miss Liddy she fall er li’l way off an’ lay still.

“Seem lak meh heart jump up in meh mouf. I wuz de fust one dyar. She wuz layin’ wid her ha’r ober her face an’ her po’ li’l back all bent up agin de groun’!

“Marse Drennen he go on turrible. He kneel down dyar in de road an’ kiss her awful, an’ beg her to open her eyes, an’ say he gwine kill dat hoss sho’. Den we cyared her back to de house, an’ she nuver know nuttin’ fo’ days an’ days. De gre’t doctors do nuttin’ fer her. She jes lay an’ lay, an’ et seem lak she couldn’t move, only her haid. Marse Drennen he nuver leabe her. He jes set in de cheer an’ rock heseff back an’ forf lak a baby an’ look at her an’ moan same’s he feelin’ et too.

“He don’ nuver git ober et no mo’. Peers lak she’d git erlong better now ef he didn’t grieve so. He hole he haid up al’ays when he roun’ her. He wuz bleeged to do dat, to keep her from seein’ he disapp’inted, ’cause she wuz al’ays sickly an’ in baid to nuver rekiver. He face sorter light up wid her lookin’ on, an’ he try to cheer her up, meckin’ out dat tain’ meek no diffunce. Hit did, do’! He git out o’ her sight, he look so moanful; he ain’t jolly an’ laughin’ lak when he wuz down Souf co’tin’, an’ I hole he hoss till way late.

“She al’ays thinkin’ ob him now, an’ he don’ keer fer nuttin’—jes sit wid he chin in bofe han’s on de po’ch lookin’ down. He heart done got numbed. Seems lak de blood done dried up in he veins an’ some time he gwine to shribble up lak er daid tree whut nuver gwine show no red an’ yaller leabes no mo’. He jes live al’ays lak he done los’ sump’n he couldn’ fin’ nowhar.”Margaret arose from the step as he paused and turned his dusky face away to pick up the fallen currycomb.

As she walked back to the house Melwin’s figure as she had seen him on the porch rose before her memory—the face of a sleeper, with the look of another man in another life. Before her misty eyes it hung like a suspended mask against the background of the drab stone walls.

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