Oldfield: A Kentucky Tale of the Last Century

by Nancy Huston Banks

WHAT OLDFIELD THOUGHT AND SAID

Thus it was that all the peace and beauty of those glorious midsummer days brought neither rest nor pleasure to Anne.

The quiet awakening of the tranquil world, soft as the tenderest trembling of a harp; the first musical tinkling that came murmuring up from the misty meadows with the earliest stirring of the flocks and herds; the gentle calling of the dumb creatures; the aerial flute notes wafted down the leafy arches of the dew-wet woods; the palest glory of the dawn coming for the perpetual refreshment of the earth; the final coronation of the Day King with the marshalling of his dazzling lances through the royal red and gold of the hilltops,—all these wonders of a marvellously beautiful world were to Anne but the dreaded daily summons to the renewal of a hopeless conflict.

It was like her never to think of sitting elsewhere than in the old place—at her husband's side by the open window—after beginning to play cards. It would have been utterly unlike her to have thought of doing anything else, to have considered for a moment what her neighbors might think or say. For hers was a nature condemned at its creation to a loneliness even greater than that in which every soul must forever dwell apart. All her life she had lived as one alone on a desert island. Now, under this supreme anguish of living, the amazed gaze of the whole world, its approval or its disapproval, would have been to her—had she thought of it—no more than the moaning of the winter wind through the graveyard cedars.

And yet, naturally enough, this utter unconsciousness upon Anne's part did not lessen in the least the shock which the entire community felt on seeing her—Anne Watson—of all women in all the world at the card-table by the open window, in view of everybody passing along the big road! Those who first saw the incredible sight could scarcely believe their own eyes. Those who first heard of it utterly refused to credit it until they had made a special trip up and down the big road, twice passing the window, in order to see and to make sure for themselves. And then, when there was no longer room for doubt or dispute, a sort of panic seized the good people of Oldfield. With this appalling backsliding of Anne Watson's the whole religious and social fabric seemed suddenly going to pieces.

Only Lynn Gordon and the doctor knew the truth. Lynn had not told his grandmother of Anne's visit nor of her request. His grandmother was not one to whom he would have spoken of anything which had touched him keenly or moved him deeply. And he had even not told Doris, whom he would most naturally have trusted, certain of being understood, certain, too, of sympathy for Anne. A feeling of delicate consideration for Anne, a sense that she had trusted him, only because she could not do otherwise, that she had opened her reserved heart to him, who was almost a stranger, only because she was forced to do it, under terrible necessity,—all these mingled feelings had a part in holding him silent. To the doctor alone he felt that he should give a full account of what had taken place. But when he tried to tell even him, Lynn unexpectedly found it very hard to make Anne's motives and position as clear to another person as he had felt them to be. He realized for the first time that she had somehow made him feel much more than she had been able to put into words. She had so few words—poor Anne—and the few that she had were meagre indeed. The impulsive, warm-hearted young fellow stammered, and reddened, and laughed at himself, in a manly embarrassment that was a pleasant thing to see, as he tried clumsily to put the matter before the doctor in its true light, and in a way to do justice to Anne. Fortunately the doctor understood at once, and might have understood had the young man said even less than he finally found to say. That friend of humanity had learned something of Anne's character during her husband's long illness. Two earnest natures, stripped for a shoulder to shoulder contest with death over a sick-bed, come as near, perhaps, to knowing one another as any two souls may ever approach. A doctor's very calling, moreover, must reveal to him—as hardly the confessional can reveal to another man—the winding mazes of the simplest, sincerest woman's conscience.

When the doctor went home after talking with Lynn, he tried to show his wife that there was no occasion for the widespread excitement over this unaccountable change in Anne. He hoped that an off-hand word to his wife might have some effect in settling the swirl of gossip which circled the village, faster and faster, with Anne's continued appearance at the card-table, as the continual casting of pebbles agitates a stagnant pool. But Mrs. Alexander, good, kind, charitable woman though she was, could only sigh and shake her head. She said that she had never understood Anne, but that she had always respected her sincerity, no matter how widely she herself might differ in opinion. But what could anybody think or say of Anne's sincerity now? The doctor's wife cast a shocked, frightened, glance at the Watson house. Such open, flagrant backsliding really was enough to make the lightning strike.

And Mrs. Alexander's view was the one held by most of the Oldfield ladies, all of whom took the incomprehensible affair much to heart. Only Miss Judy and Kitty Mills saw nothing to alarm, nothing to wonder at, nothing in the least unnatural in Anne's change of attitude. But then, Miss Judy was well known to believe that everybody always had some praiseworthy motive for everything, if others were only clear-sighted enough to perceive it. Her pure mind was a flawless crystal, reflecting every ray of light from many exquisite prisms, but sending nothing out of actual darkness. And no one ever regarded seriously the views of Kitty Mills, who was notoriously willing for every one to do precisely as he liked, as nearly as he could, without any explanation or any reason whatever, so that her opinion had the very slight value which usually pertains to the opinions of the easily pleased. All the other Oldfield ladies were too deeply shocked, too utterly amazed, to know what to think, or what to say, or what to do. They could only gather in solemn, excited conclave at one another's houses, and discuss the situation daily and almost hourly, with growing wonder and bated breath.

Sidney was, of course, the central figure in this, as in all other things vital to the life of the village. As much at a loss for once as the dullest, she held nevertheless to her high esteem for Anne, and in canvassing the strangeness of the latter's conduct from house to house, as she felt compelled to canvass it, she invariably spoke of her with great kindness, even while admitting that it would be hard for a Philadelphia lawyer to find out what Anne meant by whirling round like a weathercock. It is likely that Sidney took off her bonnet and let down her hair oftener, and shook it out harder, and twisted it up tighter, at this time, than at any other period of her entire professional career. She used, indeed, to stop all along the big road—anywhere—and hang her bonnet on the fence, while she shook her hair down and twisted it up again; and her knitting-needles flew faster than they had ever done before or ever did afterward. One day, as she happened to be entering the doctor's gate to keep an important engagement with Mrs. Alexander, she saw Miss Pettus standing before the Watson house, gazing at the window,—which had now become the stage of a mystery play,—and not only gazing, but staring as if some dreadful sight had suddenly turned her to stone. Sidney called to her, but she did not turn or respond in any way for some minutes; and when she finally joined Sidney and the doctor's wife on the latter's porch, where they were sitting, she was really pale from agitation and actually sputtering with excitement.

"Chips!" she gasped, sinking into a chair. "Poker chips. I saw 'em with my own eyes and heard 'em with my own ears! I give you both my sacred word as a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church in good standing."