Maple House sheltered a mixed brood. J. Y. Wayne, seconded by Mrs. J. Y., was the head of the family. Their daughter, Nance Sterling, and her babies represented the direct line, but the orphans, Alan Wayne and Clematis McAlpin, were on an equal footing as children of the house. Alan was the only child of J. Y.’s dead brother. Clematis was also of Wayne blood, but so intricately removed that her exact relation to the rest of the tribe was never figured out twice to the same conclusion. Old Captain Wayne, retired from the regular army, was an uncle in a different degree to every generation of Waynes. He was the only man on Red Hill who dared call for a whisky and soda when he wanted it.
Drawn by Reginald Birch
“ALONG THE RIBBON OF THE SINGLE ROAD SCURRIED AN OVERLADEN DONKEY”
When Alan reached the house, Mrs. J. Y. was in her garden across the road, surveying winter’s ruin, and Nance with her children had borne the captain off to the farm to see that oft-repeated wonder and always welcome forerunner of plenty, the quite new calf.
Clematis McAlpin, shy and long-limbed, just at the awkward age when woman misses being either boy or girl, had disappeared. Where, nobody knew. She might be bird’s-nesting in the swamp or crying over the “Idylls of the King” in the barn loft. Certainly she was not in the house. J. Y. Wayne had seen to that. Stern and rugged of face, he sat in the library alone and waited for Alan. He heard a distant screen-door open and slam. Steps echoed through the lonely house. Alan came and stood before him.
Alan was a man. Without being tall, he looked tall. His shoulders did not seem broad till you noticed the slimness of his hips. His neck looked too thin till you saw the strong set of his small head. In a word, he had the perfect proportion that looks frail and is strong. As he stood before his uncle, his eyes grew dull. They were slightly blood-shot in the corners, and with their dullness the clear-cut lines of his face seemed to take on a perceptible blur.
J. Y. began to speak. He spoke for a long quarter of an hour, and then summed up all he had said in a few words:
“I’ve been no uncle to you, Alan; I’ve been a father. I’ve tried to win you, but you were not to be won. I’ve tried to hold you, but it takes more than a Wayne to hold a Wayne. You have taken the bit with a vengeance. You have left such a wreckage behind you that we can trace your life back to the cradle by your failures, all the greater for your many successes. You’re the first Wayne that ever missed his college degree. I never asked what they expelled you for, and I don’t want to know. It must have been bad, bad, for the old school is lenient, and proud of men that stand as high as you stood in your classes and on the field. Money—I won’t talk of money, for you thought it was your own.”