Oldfield: A Kentucky Tale of the Last Century

by Nancy Huston Banks

"I—I seem—to disremember something," the colonel went on, forgetting this momentary, formless annoyance. He sat still and silent for a space, trying to remember why he had come. He put his shapely hand to his high forehead in mild confusion. His thick, curling, silver hair fell around his face and upon his shoulders in rather wild disorder.

"Little Judy is a mighty pretty girl—delicate, sweet, and fair as a sweet-brier blossom. No prettier nor sweeter girl ever footed the Virginia Reel in this whole Pennyroyal Region. You will give her and her honored father my message, if you please, young sir. 'Colonel Fielding's compliments and also Miss Alice Fielding's compliments to Major Bramwell and his daughter.' You will not forget?"

"I will not forget, sir," said Lynn Gordon, as steadily as he could speak.

"And—and what else was it? What else did I come for? Tell me this instant, you black rascal!" the colonel now cried, again turning upon his servant in excited, displeased bewilderment. "What do you mean—I say, sir—by sitting there without saying a word? What was it I wanted to say about that young John Stanley, who's eternally hanging round my house? What did somebody tell me about him—only this morning? What's the matter with you, can't you speak, boy?"

The old negro's heavy lips were trembling so that he could not have spoken had there been anything to say. He sat bolt upright, gazing straight before him at the dust of the deserted highway; his ragged coat was as carefully buttoned as his fine livery used to be; he held the reins—broken and spliced with rope—over the poor old horse, which stood with a dejected droop, precisely as he used to hold the fine, strong, lines over his master's spirited bays.

"Well—drive on home, then," the colonel said, after a moment's hesitation, suddenly recovering his usual mildness. "Perhaps I may remember—and if so you may fetch me back."

Lynn watched the buggy disappear amid the thickening clouds of dust, and when it was out of sight he turned with a sigh toward the people who were still coming and going, looking sadder when they went than when they came. He was surprised to see how many were passing through that humble little broken gate, with its pathetic fastening of a loop of faded ribbon, too weak to bar a butterfly. He had not thought there were so many in all Oldfield, counting both black and white, for both were now coming and going. He presently realized that some of these sad comers and sadder goers were not Oldfield people, that some lived farther away, and this knowledge filled him with greater surprise. For he would not have supposed that Miss Judy was known by any one beyond the compassing hills, so completely had her life seemed bound about by the wooded borders of the village. He had never known until now how far-reaching the influence of gentleness may be; he had never realized until this moment that goodness always wins more friends than greatness.

He said something of this to the doctor's wife, when she came softly after an hour had passed and silently sat down beside him on the bench under the window. She did not reply at once, but she took his hand and pressed it with the sympathy which common trouble begets in every feeling heart. She did not know how keenly he was craving sympathy, how sorely he himself was needing it, how bruised and broken he was by the spiritual crisis—the greatest of his life—through which he was passing so hardly. It was only that her tender heart was tenderer than ever, because she had come direct from the tavern.

Thus the two sat for a few moments in silence, listening to the soft sounds which came at long intervals from the shadowed quiet within Miss Judy's room. At length the doctor's wife began to talk in the hushed tone which the feeling use near the dying—who appear to hear nothing but the Call; and near the dead—who appear to hear nothing—nothing for evermore. She said that Miss Judy had not been told of the judge's death; and that she mercifully knew nothing of the horror which had gone before the tragedy. There was no need now that she ever should know, so the doctor's wife said, with filling eyes. It would be time enough when the two met on the Other Side. And then—with that resistless reaching toward the unknowable, which always moves us when we feel the Mystery near, so near that it appears as if we have but to put out our hand to seize the invisible black wings which forever elude mortal grasp—she asked him if he believed that Miss Judy would know even then. She, herself, she said, could not see how a soul as gentle as the soft one then fluttering to escape its frail earthly prison, or how a soul as just as the one which had already found sacrificial release from a life of suffering, could be happy in heaven if it still knew the pain and the wrong and the cruelty of this world. But, however that might be, all would surely be well hereafter with these two. The doctor's wife, rising to go back to the tavern, where other sad duties were yet waiting to be done, declared this with conviction. These two had not had their just share of happiness here; in fairness it must be awaiting them elsewhere, she concluded, lapsing into the simple audacity of everyday faith.

Lynn walked with her a little way along the big road, and when she had gone some distance and he still stood looking after her, he heard again the sound of wheels and saw a vehicle approaching through the clouds of dust. He thought at first that the colonel had "remembered" and was returning; but as the dust-clouds shifted he recognized his grandmother's coach with a start of surprise, and a feeling very like alarm came over him as he saw that she herself, erect, massive, white-robed, sat within the coach. He waited, standing still till the coach drew nearer, and then went outside and turned down the folding steps—from which the little black boy sprang—and assisted her to descend. But he did not speak, nor did she. Silently he offered his arm and she took it as silently as it had been offered, and they went together toward the passage door. It touched him to see with what difficulty she walked. It moved him thus to realize suddenly how old she was. It seemed to him that age was a very pitiful thing. Yet it also impressed him to see what a fine, stately personage she still was; to read in the respectful eyes which followed her that she was still the great lady of the country, as she always had been.