*

  Lucy Gayheart hurried on with no particular thought in her mind except that she would go home by another way; she would go up Main Street as far as the old high school, and turn west a good four blocks north of Mrs. Ramsay’s. She had loved and admired Mrs. Ramsay all her life, and for that reason she couldn’t bear to see her now. Once, since she first came home in September, Lucy had stopped at Mrs. Ramsay’s house, but it was all she could do to sit through a short call. Her throat closed up, and her mind seemed frozen stiff. Her old friend could not help her — only one person in Haverford could help her. She was going to the post-office now on the chance of seeing him, as she had gone on many another morning. All the business men went for their mail at about half past nine. Suddenly she remembered that the school-bell had rung a long while ago. She might be too late; she hurried faster.

  The double doors of the post-office were hooked back because of the warm weather. Men were going in and coming out. Lucy went to her father’s box and slowly turned the combination lock about, purposely getting it wrong. She was waiting for someone. In a few moments Harry Gordon came in. The bank lock-box was a little way beyond Jacob Gayheart’s. He passed behind Lucy without seeing her, opened his box, and threw the letters into a leather bag he carried. As he turned to leave, Lucy stood directly in his way.

  “Good morning, Harry.”

  He looked up, pulled off his hat, and exclaimed:

  “Why, good morning, Lucy!” As if he were very much surprised to see her here; as if she had never been away and never come back; as if there had never been any special friendship between them. His voice had just that impersonal cordiality he had with unimportant customers or their womenfolk. She might have been a girl from one of the farms on which he held a claim he would gladly be rid of. And his eyes seemed to look at her through thick glasses, though he never wore any. Keen, sparkling, pale blue eyes, as cold as icicles. He was not stiff with her, — perfectly casual; and he went out of the post-office and down the street with that easy, confident stride with which he used to go out on the diamond in old baseball days, when he was the best pitcher in the Platte valley and Lucy was a little girl watching from the grand-stand.

  Again and again since she came back to Haverford they had met like this; and it was always just the same: the same affectation of surprise, the same look, the same tone of voice — to one who knew all the shades of his voice so well. If he had been embarrassed or curt, she might have got round it. But there was no breaking through this particular manner of his. Poor farmers couldn’t break through it when Harry proposed a settlement little to their advantage and much to his own. He had a natural vigorous heartiness which was as convincing as his fresh complexion. It was so open and unlike the manner of a skinflint, that a slowwitted man couldn’t realize he had agreed to a hard bargain until it was over and he was driving home in his wagon.

  If she could only get a message to him, Lucy was thinking as she walked away. She wanted little more than a friendly look when he passed her on the street, the sort of look he used to give her, careless and jolly. It would be enough if he would stop on the street-corner occasionally and tell her a funny story in his real voice, which very few people ever heard, and look at her with the real kindness that used to be like a code sign between them whenever they met.

  Lucy did not go directly home, though she knew Pauline was waiting for the morning paper. She went up to the north end of town, to the little Lutheran church, and sat down on the steps. It lay higher than the rest of Haverford, at the edge of the open country, and one could look out over the low hills, chequered with brown, furrowed wheat-fields, to the windings of the Platte River. She sat down there because she was tired, and then she forgot to think about the time. The sunlight fell warm on the wooden steps. An osage orange hedge shut out the only house that was near by, and the place was quiet and friendly. Presently she heard a bell, — the school-bell! Then it must be eleven o’clock. She hurried home as fast as she could.

  Pauline was in the dining-room, setting the table. Lucy went straight to her.

  “I’m sorry I forgot to bring the paper home, Pauline. I went for a walk and was gone longer than I meant to be.”

  “Oh, that’s all right!” said Pauline in the cheery tone which meant that it wasn’t right at all.

  Lucy put the paper down and went quickly upstairs to her own room. Good heavens, why had she become so sensitive to people’s voices! Everyone she met spoke to her in an unnatural, guarded tone. Her father’s seemed to be the only honest voice in town.

  Pauline called to her that lunch was ready. She came downstairs and took her place at the table, opposite her sister. Mr. Gayheart always lunched in town, at the Bohemian beer saloon. Pauline brought in a platter of mutton chops; the coffeepot and vegetables were already on the table. “Any important letters?” she asked as she sat down.

  “Important? No.” Lucy supposed she must mean a letter calling her back to Chicago.

  Pauline chattered away. As a little girl Lucy had trained herself to close her mind when her sister went rambling on. (Even then it had seemed to her that most women talked too much.) Now, as then, she tried to keep her mind on something outside the house. Pauline had a very informal way of eating when they were alone; neglected her food to talk, and then gobbled. Lucy couldn’t dismiss things of that kind lightly as she used to. They chafed her and made her shrink into herself.

  Suddenly Pauline came out with something which she really wanted to say, and then Lucy heard her.

  “There, I nearly forgot after all! Mrs. Ramsay telephoned and said she very particularly wanted you to come in this evening. She wants just you, because I was there last week, the day after Madge came. You know we all liked Madge. Can you realize she has a boy in college this year?”

  “Yes, I remember him. We called him Toddy. His real name was Theodore, wasn’t it? I suppose I’ll have to go.”

  “Of course you will. You were always a special favourite.” Pauline gave a generous emphasis to this sentence. And it was generous of her, Lucy admitted; for Mrs. Ramsay had always treated Pauline like Pauline and Lucy like Lucy. But was generosity ever a grace when it came with a pull? Wasn’t it like the quality of mercy and the gentle dew? Her sister broke in upon her reverie.

  “Lucy, you’re not eating anything again! That’s why you’ve lost your colour. You know, it’s not becoming to you to be pale. There’s a new preparation of cod-liver oil—”

  Lucy interrupted her firmly. “Pauline, I took that medicine when I first came home to please you, not because I thought it would do me any good. It doesn’t help people to eat when they are not hungry. I worked too hard last summer, and had a kind of nervous smash-up at the end of it. The only thing that will help me is to be alone a great deal. That’s why I came home, and why I don’t go to see people. That’s why I begged you to leave the orchard, too. I didn’t lose my job, as some of our friends seem to think. My coming away put Professor Auerbach to a great deal of trouble. But he wouldn’t let me try to work when I was sick.”

  “Well, Lucy,” said Pauline as she began gathering up the dishes, “that’s the most reasonable explanation of things you’ve given me yet. Of course I want to help you to get well. But if you expect people to help you, you must tell them a little about what is the matter. And you certainly have kept us in the dark.”

  “I know.” Lucy spoke contritely, but she drew closer back within herself and looked at the floor. “I’m not a very reasonable person. You’ve had a good deal to put up with. I think I’m beginning to get a little steadier.”

  Pauline had spoken kindly, and she still meant to be kind when she went on:

  “You must be plain and outspoken with your own folks, Lucy, and not theatrical. We aren’t that kind, and we don’t know how to behave.”

  “Yes, I understand, Pauline.” Lucy spoke very low. She was not angry, but she went upstairs to her own room without once meeting her sister’s eyes.

  A few moments later Pauline saw her go out of the house carrying an old carriage robe, and disappear into the apple orchard behind the garden.

  2

  ALL AFTERNOON LUCY lay in the sun under a low-branching apple tree, on the dry, fawn-coloured grass. The orchard covered about three acres and sloped uphill. From the far end, where she was lying, Lucy looked down through the rows of knotty, twisted trees. Little red apples still clung to the boughs, and a few withered grey-green leaves. The orchard had been neglected for years, and now the fruit was not worth picking. Through this long, soft, late-lingering autumn Lucy had spent most of her time out here.

  There is something comforting to the heart in the shapes of old apple trees that have been left to grow their own way. Out here Lucy could remember and think, and try to realize what had happened to her: remember how the kind Auerbachs had come to her that morning (long ago it seemed) and taken her home with them. Paul had understood, without being told, that she must get away, must go home, that she wished never to see Chicago again.

  Mrs. Auerbach did all her packing for her, made explanations to the bakery people, got her railway ticket, took Lucy to the train. She had even made up a little package of “keepsakes” at Sebastian’s studio, before his lawyer came in to clean everything out; some of the handkerchiefs left in his drawer, a pair of his gloves, photographs of himself and his friends, a few of his books, scores he had marked. She selected these things without consulting Lucy and sent them by express to Haverford. They now lay in the bottom of Lucy’s trunk. They meant nothing to her; she couldn’t bear to look at them.

  To have one’s heart frozen and one’s world destroyed in a moment — that was what it had meant. She could not draw a long breath or make a free movement in the world that was left. She could breathe only in the world she brought back through memory. It had been, and it was gone. When she looked about this house where she had grown up, she felt so alien that she dreaded to touch anything. Even in her own bed she lay tense, on her guard against something that was trying to snatch away her beautiful memories, to make her believe they were illusions and had never been anything else. Only out here in the orchard could she feel safe. Here those feelings with which she had once lived came back to her.

  Her father’s house was accounted comfortable; she could recall that she used to take pride in it. But all those wooden dwellings in Western towns were flimsily built, — built for people without nerves. The partitions were too thin, especially between the upstairs chambers. Her own room was next Pauline’s. She could not cry, or switch on her light, or turn over in bed, without knowing that her sister heard her.

  Out here in the orchard she could even talk to herself; it was a great comfort. She loved to repeat lines from some of Sebastian’s songs, trying to get exactly his way of saying the words, his accent, his phrasing. She tried to sing them a little. It made her cry, but it melted the cold about her heart and brought him back to her more than anything else did. Even that first air she ever played for him, “Oh that I knew...where I might find Him...” she used to sing it over and over, softly, passionately, until she choked with tears. But it helped her to say those things aloud to her heart, as if something of him were still living in this world. In her sleep she sometimes heard him sing again, and both he and she were caught up into an unearthly beauty and joy. “So shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in their heavenly Father’s realm.” It was like that, when she heard him in her sleep.

  But sometimes she was afraid of sleep, and did not go to bed, but sat up in a little chair by the window for hours rather than take that chance. There had been nights when she lost consciousness only to drop into an ice-cold lake and struggle to free a drowning man from a white thing that clung to him. His eyes were always shut as if he were already dead; but the green eyes of the other, behind his shoulder, were open, full of terror and greed. She awoke from such dreams cold and exhausted with her struggle to break that cowardly embrace. Then she would lie awake for the rest of the night, shivering. Why had she never told Sebastian she knew this man was destined to destroy him? Why hadn’t she thrown herself at his feet and pleaded with him to beware of Mockford, that he was cowardly, envious, treacherous, and she knew it!

  After one of these terrible nights Lucy was afraid to trust herself with anyone. A very little thing might shatter her self-control. She would come out here under the apple trees, cold and frightened and unsteady, and slowly the fright would wear away and the hard place in her breast grow soft. And now the orchard was going to be cut down; the old trees were feeling the sun for the last time this fall.

  *

  Just behind the orchard was the pasture where Mr. Gayheart used to graze a horse, in the days when he kept one. Two years ago Pauline had this field ploughed up and planted in Spanish onions. She marketed very profitable crops, and that sealed the fate of the orchard.

  Lucy had been at home only a few weeks when she was awakened one morning by the sound of an ax. She listened languidly for a moment, then suddenly realized that it wasn’t somebody chopping wood. The sound was not like that at all; there was no vibration. The ax was cutting into something alive. She sprang out of bed, caught up a dressing-gown, and ran to her father’s big room at the back of the house, which looked out over the yard and the orchard. Her father was in the bathroom, shaving. From his window she could see a man in the orchard, cutting down an apple tree. She ran down the back stairs to the kitchen, where Pauline was getting breakfast, and told her to go out to the orchard, quick! Someone was cutting a tree.

  Pauline looked sidewise out of her rather small eyes. Her voice was not quite natural as she tried to answer carelessly.

  “I told Poole to come today, but I didn’t tell him to come so early. I’m sorry if he wakened you.”

  “But what’s the matter with the tree? Why is he cutting it?”

  Pauline broke an egg into the hot saucepan. “Hadn’t I told you we are going to clear away the old orchard?”

  “Clear away — Oh, where is Father?”

  Startled by the frantic note in her sister’s voice, Pauline pushed the eggs to the back of the stove and turned round.

  “Father has agreed to it. You surely must know, Lucy, that he turns in very little money toward the running of this house. My onion crops have done a good deal for us. I am having the orchard cut down this fall and the ground prepared, so that I can put it into onions and potatoes in the spring. I can’t be going out to the farms all the time to look things over, and I’m sure the tenants cheat me. But here I can have a crop under my eyes and make a good thing of it. I have to turn some trick, to keep the place going.”

  “But, Pauline, don’t do it this fall. Don’t do it now, when I’m so miserable!”

  “Try to be reasonable, Lucy. I’ve made all the arrangements, and if I put it off I lose a year’s crop.”

  Lucy was still scarcely awake. She caught Pauline’s chubby hand and broke out wildly: “I can’t stand it, I can’t! It’s all I have in the world just now. Leave it this year, and I’ll pay you back what you lose, truly I will. I’ll soon be making money again, and I’ll pay you every cent. Pauline, go out and send that man away! Listen, it’s down! He’ll begin on another. I can’t stand it!” Lucy dropped into a chair, and her head sank upon her bare arms on the kitchen table. Her hair was hanging in two braids over her shoulders which were shaking with bitter sobs. Pauline frowned darkly, but her own eyes filled with tears. She couldn’t doubt the desperateness of Lucy’s distress, and she looked so helpless. Not since she was a child had she ever begged for anything like that. Pauline bent over the table and gave her sister an awkward, spasmodic hug.

  “There, there, Sister. I didn’t know you would take it so hard. I’ll let it stand till next fall. But won’t you feel just the same about it then?”

  Lucy lifted her face. “I won’t be here then. I’ll be off making my living, somewhere. I know you have to make up for Father’s easy ways.” She said this very low, and swallowed a lump in her throat. “But if you’ll just — just humour me this year, you’ll never be sorry. Some time you’ll understand.”

  “All right, my dear. I’ll go and send Poole away. And you go upstairs now and put your clothes on. Take this cup of coffee along, and drink it while you dress.”

  Lucy took it with gratitude, and went up the back stairs slowly, meekly, like a child who has been whipped until, as they say, its will is broken.

  At the top of the stairs, before the door of his bedroom, stood a man who was also afraid of Pauline. He was freshly shaven, in a clean shirt, with bay rum on his greying hair and goatee. He took the coffee-cup from Lucy, put it on his dresser, and then took her in his arms. He kissed her with love, as he always did when he kissed her at all, on her lips and eyes and hair. He said not a word, but, keeping his arm around her, went with her to her own door, carrying the coffee.

  3

  AS LUCY WAS coming in from the orchard just before sunset, she found Pauline waiting for her on the back porch, with a cape over her shoulders.

  “Lucy, you’ll take cold, you shouldn’t be out there after four o’clock without a coat on. I never could make you wear clothes enough when you were little. It’s just the same now. Mrs. Ramsay called up again and wants to speak to you. You will have to go there tonight.”

  Lucy said she supposed she must. There was only one thing she really liked to do in the evening. She and her father had been playing some sonatas of Mozart after he came home from the shop. He had a harsh tone on the violin, but he seemed to enjoy playing with her so much that she enjoyed it, too.

  After supper she walked toward the town and turned into the street that people jokingly called Quality Street, because Mrs. Ramsay lived at one end of it and the Gordons at the other. Mrs. Ramsay was sitting in her high-backed chair beside the big front window, the shades up and the silk curtains drawn back. This had always been her way, though her house was so near the sidewalk that every passer-by could gaze in; her neighbours sometimes said it looked as if she were giving a reception to the street. As a little girl Lucy had loved to come to this house; such comfortable rooms, old-fashioned furniture, and soft, flowered carpets. She used to like the feeling that here there was a long distance between the parlour and the kitchen, that they were not always being mixed up together as they were at home. Mrs. Ramsay was then the only woman in town who kept two maids; now Mrs. Harry Gordon kept a man and his wife, Pauline had told her.