She did not need to explain that it was a relief because the motion, the company, the change of scene, would help crowd from her mind the dread of to-morrow when her husband would have to take the stand against Doctor West; she did not need to explain this, because Blake’s eyes read it all in her pale, feverish face.
Blake shook hands with Doctor Sherman, dismissed his chauffeur, and took the wheel. They spun out of the city and down into the River Road—the favourite drive with Westville folk—which followed the stream in broad sweeping curves and ran through arcades of thick-bodied, bowing willows and sycamores lofty and severe, their foliage now a drought-crisped brown. After half an hour the car turned through a stone gateway into a grove of beech and elm and sycamore. At a comfortable distance apart were perhaps a dozen houses whose outer walls were slabs of trees with the bark still on. This was The Sycamores, a little summer resort established by a small group of the select families of Westville.
Blake stopped the car before one of these houses—“cabins” their owners called them, though their primitiveness was all in that outer shell of bark. A rather tall, straight, white-haired old lady, with a sweet nobility and strength of face, was on the little porch to greet them. She welcomed Elsie and her husband warmly and graciously. Then with no relaxation of her natural dignity into emotional effusion, she embraced her son and kissed him—for to her, as to Westville, he was the same man as five years before, and to him she had given not only the love a mother gives her only son, but the love she had formerly borne her husband who, during his last years, had been to her a bitter grief. Blake returned the kiss with no less feeling. His love of his mother was the talk of Westville; it was the one noble sentiment which he still allowed to sway him with all its original sincerity and might.
They had tea out upon the porch, with its view of the river twinkling down the easy hill between the trees. Mrs. Blake, seeing how agitated Elsie was, and under what a strain was Doctor Sherman, and guessing the cause, deftly guided the conversation away from to-morrow’s trial. She led the talk around to the lecture room which was being added to Doctor Sherman’s church—a topic of high interest to them all, for she was a member of the church, Blake was chairman of the building committee, and Doctor Sherman was treasurer of the committee and active director of the work. This manœuvre had but moderate success. Blake carried his part of the conversation well enough, and Elsie talked with a feverish interest which was too great a drain upon her meagre strength. But the stress of Doctor Sherman, which he strove to conceal, seemed to grow greater rather than decrease.
Presently Blake excused himself and Doctor Sherman, and the two men strolled down a winding, root-obstructed path toward the river. As they left the cabin behind them, Blake’s manner became cold and hard, as in his office, and Doctor Sherman’s agitation, which he had with such an effort kept in hand, began to escape his control. Once he stumbled over the twisted root which a beech thrust across their path and would have fallen had not Blake put out a swift hand and caught him. Yet at this neither uttered a word, and in silence they continued walking on till they reached a retired spot upon the river’s bank.
Here Doctor Sherman sank to a seat upon a mossy, rotting log. Blake, erect, but leaning lightly against the scaling, mottled body of a giant sycamore, at first gave no heed to his companion. He gazed straight ahead down the river, emaciated by the drought till the bowlders of its bottom protruded through the surface like so many bones—with the ranks of austere sycamores keeping their stately watch on either bank—with the sun, blood red in the September haze, suspended above the river’s west-most reach.
Thus the pair remained for several moments. Then Blake looked slowly about at the minister.
“I brought you down here because there is something I want to tell you,” he said calmly.
“I supposed so; go ahead,” responded Doctor Sherman in a choked voice, his eyes upon the ground.
“You seem somewhat disturbed,” remarked Blake in the same cold, even tone.