True, and Other Stories

by George Parsons Lathrop

CHAPTER X.

THE LIKENESS.

You remember how little Lance had seen of Adela Reefe, and that he knew her scarcely at all. But this makes it the stranger, and rendered it at the time all the more unaccountable to him, that, on her removal from his neighborhood, he should have been afflicted with a sense of vacancy, and should have suffered from the melancholy which one might expect to feel when suddenly separated from a dear friend. Was he not engaged to Jessie, and thoroughly contented in his love? Moreover, Adela had not entered into his life as an important factor. Yet, now that she was gone, he perceived how quickly and completely the web of surmises which he had thrown around her had taken him also into its tangles. Her identity and destiny had engaged his thoughts far more deeply than he had guessed.

Acting on his offer of assistance, and obeying Dennie's wish, Sylv presently came to him to suggest that he would like to go to Newbern to pursue his studies.

"But I have just made arrangements," Lance told him, "to put up a small building where we can experiment with reed-pulp; and I expected you to assist me."

Not without embarrassment, Sylv made known the special reason proposed by Dennie for his going. Lance thought the plan a rather curious one, and allowed himself a queer, vicarious jealousy on Dennie's account, at the notion of his being so far from Adela when his brother should be in the same town with her. But he had promised to help Sylv; so he consented to send him to Newbern and maintain him there for a while, the cost to be returned in future services.

"Perhaps Dennie will take a hand with me in the pulp experiments," he reflected.

Thus it came to pass that a shed was built in the woods not far from the manor, where a boiler and a small beater and washer were placed, convenient to the limited water supply from a "run" or creek. An experienced vatman was sent for from the North; Dennie was engaged to collect and haul reeds, and aid in other ways when he could. All this involved a good deal of expense, and the colonel watched the work with suppressed horror at the young man's extravagance. But the experiments went on, and Lance became enthusiastic over the details of drying the reeds, getting the mixture of caustic alkali just right for boiling, and trying rags in various proportions. Finally he was able to produce from the vat a few sheets of tolerably good hand-made paper, on which he fancied that he could see already inscribed a record of the profits that were to be his.

It took many weeks, however, to accomplish that much. At first Jessie entered into the new enterprise with great interest, and made it doubly charming to him; but after a while, finding that it consumed her lover's time and distracted his attention from her, she began to regard the fascinating shed, with its boiler and engine and rude apparatus, as a dangerous rival. Nothing daunted by such symptoms of her discontent as he observed, Lance continued his application with a fervor that seemed to her little less than fanatical. Meanwhile he saw Dennie very often, and was constantly in receipt of news about Adela from him.

Indeed, since neither Aunty Losh nor Dennie had ever become enslaved to the luxury of reading, it was necessary for Lance to interpret Adela's letters to them. These epistles, in the beginning, were somewhat slight and informal. They would begin thus: "I write to inform you that I am enjoying good health. I hope you are the same." But as she went on with her studies, and as the various particulars of her new life appealed more decidedly to her attention, her style became more familiar and cordial; she described what happened at the school, day by day, and often lit up her account of events with flashes of humor that, to Lance, were delightful. She hit off some of the absurdities of modern routine education with a surprising sharpness of perception, and was greatly amused at the old theologian who attended to the religious instruction of the girls. He had shown her some books of Hebrew, the characters in which reminded her of her own invented patterns in silk and beads. But withal it transpired from what she wrote, that she made astounding progress in her lessons. She quickly outstripped her classmates in their work, and was promoted to a higher grade. Lance wondered whether this were due to the stored-up energy of a nature that was in some respects primitive, or whether it came from inherited aptitude—an aptitude derived partly, through the dim centuries, from Gertrude Wylde. Several times she alluded to Lance, and sent to him reserved messages of friendly thanks for his kindness; but perhaps she would not have written so familiarly on other topics if she had known that he was to see her letters. The truth was, it had not occurred to her that her betrothed and his aunt would apply to Lance to decipher her letters. And Lance, embarrassed by these references to himself, refrained from disclosing them.