Oldfield: A Kentucky Tale of the Last Century

by Nancy Huston Banks

But the softest dusk of heaven, the completest peace of earth, is powerless to calm the storm which beats upon the spirit. Lynn Gordon strode on as though to confront the full glare of life's fiercest turmoil. He was driven by such stinging humiliation as he had never expected to know; he was goaded by such pain of mind as made his very body ache. So that he thus went forward, swiftly, fiercely, for a score of paces, and then he stopped and stood still, arrested by a sudden thought which was as blasting as a flash of lightning. For an instant his hot and heavy-beating heart seemed to cease its rapid throbbing and to grow suddenly cold with sickening fear. Another moment and he felt as if a living flame wrapped him again from head to foot, so intolerable was the burning shame that flashed over him. Had Doris seen him—as his grandmother had seen him? Had Doris recognized in his guarded attitude toward her an intended warning to guard her own heart—as his grandmother had said? Had Doris felt—as his grandmother had charged—that he had thus offered her the most unpardonable indignity that an honorable man can offer a modest woman?

Under the shock of the thought he recoiled from it as too monstrous to be true. That exquisite, spotless child! That sacred embodiment of peerless beauty! He could have groaned aloud as the unbearable thought clung like a flaming garment. Yet he could not cast it from him; and out of the smoke of memory there now came swirling many little half-forgotten incidents. Small things, which had then seemed at the time to be trifles light as air, now came back, seeming confirmations strong as proof of holy writ. Under the light of this fiery revelation one recollection stood out more distinctly than any other. He remembered giving Doris some simple little gift. He saw again in this dim, unpeopled dusk, even more clearly than he had seen it then, the bewitching brightness of her beautiful face, the soft radiance of her lovely, uplifted eyes, as he had put the bauble in her eager little hands. And now, while he still saw her thus, he heard his own voice saying an incredible thing. He now heard himself—not some dull, blundering, brutal dolt—saying something vague about its being strictly an "impersonal" sort of present.

Ay, he heard again the very tone in which his own voice uttered these inconceivable words. And then he saw again the dawning bewilderment which crept over the sunny transparency of the exquisite face; the slow shadowing of the soft dark eyes, raised so frankly, so confidingly to his; the quick-coming, quicker-going, quiver of the sweet rose-red lips. At last, as though the glass through which he had seen darkly were miraculously become as clear as crystal, he saw again the quivering fall of the long, curling lashes over the lily cheeks, which reddened suddenly, as they rarely did, before growing swiftly whiter than ever; the sudden proud lifting of the golden head, which naturally drooped like some rare orchid too heavy for its delicate waxen stem: the brave, steady, upward look from the soft eyes, now suddenly grown very bright: the abrupt laying down of the simple gift by the little hand, which was always so gently deliberate in all that it did: the hasty moving away of the slender form, which had, up to that time, rested at his side in the perfect trust which only the timid ever give.

All this rushed back, bringing an unendurable self-revelation. The firmest, deepest foundations of his character were shaken in his own estimation. His pride of uprightness, his pride of intelligence, his pride of good breeding, his belief in his own right feeling, his reliance upon his own quickness of perception, his faith in his fineness of sensibility,—all these now stood convicted of weakness and falsity. Faster and more confusedly many self-delusions flew through the stress of his mind, as burning brands are borne by violent gusts of wind. Thus was hurled the recollection of that day in the graveyard, the day from which had dated this growing aloofness of Doris, an aloofness so gentle that he had mistaken it for timidity; the day from which had dated her increasing unwillingness to continue these daily strolls—an unwillingness so subtle that he had taken it for nothing more than natural anxiety about Miss Judy. Not until this moment had he had the remotest suspicion of the truth, even though it had gradually frozen the sweet freedom of her innocent talk into the silence of cold constraint.

He had been standing still, bowed under this intolerable weight of humiliation, crushed beneath this overwhelming burden of self-reproach. Now he went slowly onward, unseen and unheard, through the gathering darkness and the deep dust. When he came within sight of the light shining behind the white curtain over the one window of Doris's humble home, he paused again and leaned on the fence and looked at the window for a long time. He felt that he could not go nearer it that night, that he could not face Doris until he had more fully faced his own soul. As he gazed at the white light, he thought how like it was to the girl herself, so simple, so clear, so steady, so open, shielded only by the single whiteness of purity. A soft breeze coming over the hills rippled the silver leaves,—grown as dark now as the sombre plumes of the cypress tree,—and stirred the white curtain as if with spirit hands. And then as he lingered there came to him a wonderful change of feeling. The thought of her stole softly to him through the warm starlight, sweet as the breath of the white jessamine. A great, deep tenderness welled up in his heart and went out to her, sweeping all before it—all untrue dreams of ambition, all false thinking, all self-delusion. Then he knew that he loved her; then he knew that he had loved her from the instant that his eyes had fallen upon her, a vision of beauty framed in roses; then he knew that he would love her with the highest and finest love that was his to bestow—so long as he should live.

When this bitter-sweet truth came home to his troubled heart, it brought with it a calm, tender sadness. Even as he recognized it he felt that his own blind folly, his foolish conceit of wisdom, had robbed him of whatever chance, whatever hope he might have had, of winning her love in return. The fatal, unforgivable blunders into which he had fallen so blindly must forever stand in the way. And he hardly dared think there ever could have been any hope, even had he not so hopelessly offended. For humility is always the hall-mark of true love. To be loved by the one beloved is always true love's most wondrous miracle.

With a last lingering look at the light shining through the white curtain, Lynn turned slowly and went down the big road toward his grandmother's house, now lying dark and silent beneath the tall trees which stood over it and amid the thick shrubbery which crowded around it. The passionate emotion with which he had left it had passed wholly away. The love filling his mind and heart, as with the sudden unfurling of soft wings, left no room for anything hard or unkind or bitter. He had almost forgotten the hard words with which his grandmother had so cruelly stoned him; he had wholly forgiven them. For newly awakened love can forgive almost any harshness in the awakening. He was not, in fact, thinking of his grandmother at all; he was thinking solely of Doris, and was planning to see her at the earliest possible moment on the morrow. It was not easy of late to see her alone; he realized this now with a guilty pang which touched his new peace with the old pain. Only on the previous evening he had found her gone from her home, without leaving a message for him, as she always used to leave one. Only by the merest accident had he met her coming out of Miss Judy's gate; only by the most urgent persuasion had he been able to induce her to take the accustomed walk to the graveyard, which she used always to be so ready and even eager to take. Ah, that walk up the hillside, which had been as a torch to the tinder of his grandmother's anger! For that, also, as for everything else, he alone was to blame. It was too late to undo what had been done; but never again through any fault of his should evil speaking or evil thinking approach her spotless innocence. It was not for his strong arms to protect her; his own folly had forfeited all hope of that sweetest and most sacred privilege. Nevertheless, he might still beg her to forgive him, even though he knew that forgiveness was impossible for an offence such as his. And he might still tell her that he loved her and ask her to be his wife, although he knew only too well that she would refuse. And then, having done what he could, he would go on with his work. He had not forgotten his ambition, nor had he thought of giving it up; but his old foolish belief that the happiest marriage must hamper a man's life plans had gone with the rest of his blinding delusions. He no longer thought of needing both hands free for the climbing of ambition's unsteady, long ladder. It now seemed to him that he never could win anything worth the winning without Doris to hold up his hands; that nothing either great or small was worth the winning unless shared by her. And his self-delusion had forever lost him all hope of this. Yet he might still beg her to forgive him, he might still tell her that he loved her and ask her to be his wife. Nothing should deny him that honor and happiness—if he were but spared to see another morning's light.

It came with all the misty glory of the late southern summer. There was something melancholy, something foretelling the saddest days of the year, in the sighing wind which drifted the browning leaves of the old locust trees, wafting them down to the thinning grass. The dim woods belting the purpled horizon already lifted banners of scarlet and gold, waving them here and there on the hillsides, among the fast-fading verdure. The sumac bushes were already binding the foot of the far green hills with brilliant bands of crimson. The near-by blackberry briers were already richly spotted with red. The trumpet-vine, with the dazzling cardinal of its splendid flowers and the rich, dark green of its luxuriant foliage, already made all the crumbling tree-trunks and all the falling rail fences gorgeous mysteries of beauty. The golden-rods were already full-flowering, already gilding the meadows where the black-eyed Susans, too, were aglow, and where the grass was still vividly green beneath the purple shadows cast by the distant hills—the sad, beautiful, dark shadows which slant before the coming of fall. Beyond the shadows and beyond the hills, the summer sun still flooded the warm fields, turning the vast billowing seas of tobacco from blue-green into golden green. And the wide, deep corn-fields, now flowing in silver-crested waves, were already melting into molten gold.

The great ships of this vast inland ocean of grain—the huge, heavy-laden wagons, rising high at the ends like the stem and stern of a vessel, and drawn by doubled and trebled teams—already labored, swayingly, on their way to the Ohio River to deliver their cargoes of wheat to the big steamers which were waiting to bear them away to the whole world. Many of these lurched thunderingly by Lynn Gordon, wholly unheeded, as he went on that morning to seek Doris Wendall. It was very early, as early as he could hope to find even Doris awake, notwithstanding that she awakened with the birds. The wild morning-glories, clinging, wet, fragrant, and sparkling, on all the fences along the wayside, were not closed, and still held out their fragrant blue cups, striped with red like streaks of wine, and brimming with dew. The evening primroses also had forgotten to close, and were still blooming bright and sweet, close in the corners of the fences. Lynn bent down to gather the freshest and sweetest, because it somehow reminded him of Doris, though he knew not why or how. As he straightened up he suddenly saw her!—with a great leap of his heart. There she was, within a stone's throw, just entering Miss Judy's gate. He was not quite near enough to speak had he found any words; and, although he went swiftly toward her with the long, firm stride of a strong-willed man approaching a distinct purpose, she had flitted out of sight before he reached the gate. He was not sure that she had seen him, but he felt that she had; and the feeling brought back the new distrust of himself, the new lack of confidence in his own judgment, the new insecurity in his own knowledge of what was best to do. All these strange and painful feelings, which he had never known till the humbling revelation of the previous night, rushed together now, to hold him dumb and helpless, with his unsteady hand on the little broken gate.

He turned with a nervous start at a sound by his side. Sidney had drawn near without his seeing her. She stood within a few paces, looking at him, and knitting as usual, but with a look of trouble on her honest face. Silently he bowed and stepped aside, holding the gate open for her to pass through.