In the morning the Cub hastened to the barn. Either the old-fashioned latch had sprung up, or some one had been there before him, for the little fox, having eaten every scrap of food, and thereby gained strength, had gone his way, which, according to the string of footprints, was up in the rock and hemlock country behind the farm. Yet after supper on that night, and all the others that came before the spring thawing, a woman’s figure, wearing a cape under which was concealed a dish of scraps, outwitting Tatters, slipped from the pantry door, and going around the barn, halted at a flat rock set in a group of hemlocks, presently returning with the empty platter, her face wearing as rapt an expression as that of some pious woman of old carrying food to the haunts of hermit or saint of the pillar.
February, as if sick of its dreary self, suddenly fell away before March’s vigour, and its first gusty mood had softened before Brooke and Adam realized themselves at least the sole guardians of their parents and the homestead; yet in spite of this and the work it entailed, the Cub managed to spend at least a couple of hours a day with Stead at the lodge on Windy Hill, and Brooke tried to snatch a little time for painting, but even with her mother’s help her toil was by far more constant and exacting than her brother’s. However, direct motive had come to both of them, and that alone can make one walk sure-footed on the tight rope which at intervals through life replaces a safe path. Brooke worked persistently, using Tatters, Pam, and Robert Stead’s hunting dogs as studies, conscious of crudeness, imperfections, and the need of criticism, but letting nothing quench her spirit as long as the spark of vitality flashed back at her. She longed for the warm weather to come, so that she might work outdoors, and use as a studio an old hay-thatched shed on the hillside, once a sheepfold, which opened northeast toward the river valley.
At this juncture Robert Stead, whose technical training and passionate love of nature and animal life gave his words more than a casual value, stepped in, both as encourager and critic, and Brooke eagerly promised to try a picture of Manfred,—“a serious order,” Stead called it,—as soon as the season would permit. Meantime he brought her books and studies of animal anatomy, of whose cost she little guessed, and in explaining the details to her forgot both his warp and himself, becoming for the time that most enthralling of beings, the man of middle age who blends all the directness and fervour of youth with the subtle and reassuring charm of matured experience.
Was it a wonder that Brooke was glad at his coming? Between herself and the usual man twice her age she would have felt need for greater ceremony of outward deference. With Stead the friendship had begun on the most informal of footings, and been almost instantly cemented with the gratitude born of his kindness to her brother, as well as the mutual isolation of the two households; while over it all hung Dr. Russell’s words of caution, that owing to the peculiar circumstances of his life, she must not regard Stead in the same light as other men or magnify his little acts of kindness. Dear honest doctor, even he, with all his fine humanity, could not diagnose the human emotions with anything like finality.
Here again the need of money in hand, even for canvas, pressed upon Brooke, and like many another before her, she seized what came nearest to hand; and when the Cub discovered a head of Pam upon the cover of the sugar bucket, he straightway removed it from the closet to his room, thereby letting some very early ants into the sugar.
One great lesson in portrait art Brooke learned for herself in those lonely days, that whatever the care and detail of finish, the life and likeness is the work of but a few strokes.
Meanwhile the fox’s head on the bread-board stood on the mantel-shelf in the kitchen, watching Brooke as she went about her work, until she began to feel a mysterious kinship with the little doglike animal of the narrow eyes, and talked to it as if it was a human companion.
One day she had gone for a call at Mrs. Enoch Fenton’s, where, ever since that first January afternoon, she went when the tension of the mental and physical became too great, to be soothed and relaxed by the cripple’s cheerful common sense. She felt more than ever the absolute necessity of adding at once to the family income, as for the second time since their arrival she had been obliged to draw on the slender principal. Though the real motive for the visit was to consult the Deacon, indirectly, through his wife, about the likelihood of finding a man willing to cultivate the farm on shares, the talk drifted toward the topic of ways and means, in spite of Brooke’s constant resolve to keep such matters to herself.
“If you want to get folks’ money steady,” Mrs. Fenton said, pausing in her occupation of sewing a button on one of the Deacon’s blue hickory shirts, and using her thimble finger to point and emphasize her remarks, “you must give ’em something they want and need in exchange for it, and what they need most constant is something good to eat!”
Brooke smiled to herself, thinking of the pieman’s similar reasoning concerning his wife’s “revelation,” but did not in any way apply the matter personally until Mrs. Fenton’s next sentence.