Ariel Custer E-Book

Grace Livingston Hill

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Ariel Custer stood for a moment on the old white pillared porch of her childhood’s home and watched the wagon drive out the gate and down the road toward town with the last pieces of her grandmother’s dear old furniture. They were being taken to Ezra Brownleigh’s to be stored for her until some time in the dim and distant future when she should be able to wrest from the great unfriendly world a home and a spot to put them. Ezra Brownleigh had bought them in for her at the auction sale the week before.
It was very early in the morning and the sun was still making long slant rays of brightness over the old lawn between the oak trees, and shrubs. A mocking-bird was singing wildly sweet in the maple by the library window as if there were no such thing as sorrow and desolation in the bright world, fairly splitting his throat with praise; and in the intervals of his trills Ariel could hear the creaking of one wagon wheel as it lumbered over the ruts on the old Virginia road. It seemed to be lumbering over her stricken young heart as she watched it out of sight down the familiar road.

Leseprobe

GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL

ARIEL CUSTER

1925

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782383837848

ARIEL CUSTER

CHAPTER I

Ariel Custer stood for a moment on the old white pillared porch of her childhood’s home and watched the wagon drive out the gate and down the road toward town with the last pieces of her grandmother’s dear old furniture. They were being taken to Ezra Brownleigh’s to be stored for her until some time in the dim and distant future when she should be able to wrest from the great unfriendly world a home and a spot to put them. Ezra Brownleigh had bought them in for her at the auction sale the week before.

It was very early in the morning and the sun was still making long slant rays of brightness over the old lawn between the oak trees, and shrubs. A mocking-bird was singing wildly sweet in the maple by the library window as if there were no such thing as sorrow and desolation in the bright world, fairly splitting his throat with praise; and in the intervals of his trills Ariel could hear the creaking of one wagon wheel as it lumbered over the ruts on the old Virginia road. It seemed to be lumbering over her stricken young heart as she watched it out of sight down the familiar road.

Suddenly the tears blurred into her eyes and her white throat stirred hysterically. It seemed as if she could not bear it. All that was left of the dear old home, every memento of precious father and mother and frail little grandmother who had lingered longest with her on the earth, was packed into that rickety wagon and going down the road to storage. Ariel caught her breath and turned quickly inside the door. Not even the mocking-bird must see her weeping. She was a Custer and the Custers kept their pride and bore smiling what came to them. She must not be weak nor faint-hearted. Besides, was not God in His heaven? Was He not watching over her tenderly, even though for the time it seemed as if He had withdrawn His tender care? The faith of her grandmother was in her strongly. Somewhere ahead there was brightness, or if there was not, there was the brightness of eternity when her way of this pilgrimage was over. She had no thought of blaming God for the trials, or the darkness, or the hardships of the way she had to go to meet Him. That she was on her way Home was a settled fact in her mind which no sophistry could disturb. She might have to suffer through a century more or less, but the loyalty of her heart belonged to God and she was one of those in whom Faithfulness is written large; who would willingly “let on they died of typhoid fever” rather than let the world think she had been forsaken by her God. God couldn’t forsake. That was the keynote of her life. Whatever came was under His overruling hand, and could never overwhelm because His grace was sufficient. Therefore she was safe wherever and however she might find herself.

Ariel was one of those rare girls somehow left over from what the world whimsically calls with a smile and a sneer, “the Victorian Age” though it is to be doubted if even the Victorian Age saw many like her.

She still had her hair, all of it, wonderful hair, long and heavy with a glint of copper and a ripple in it that caught the sunlight and turned it into spun gold. It crowned her lovely head in classic lines that no modernist can achieve, and perhaps would be incapable even of admiring. She had eyes of the clear translucent blue of an aquamarine, and the delicacy of her features, and the fervent vivid look of her would make one wonder to see her in a crowd.

Now, as she turned back to the empty echoing house, sorrow clothed her as in a hallowing garment, and her face wore an ethereal look; that look perhaps that her young mother had seen in her baby face, and called her “Ariel.”

She stood for a moment in the wide hall, that ran from front to back of the house, with its glass doors into the garden at the back and a glimpse of fields and hills beyond; the hall where her mother’s feet had trod; where her own childish laughter had rung out; where her little grandmother had loved to sit in the deep old rocker in her rusty black silk and her fine sheer ruffles and cap, doing delicate embroidery while Ariel studied on a cushion outside the door and the kitten curled in a black and white ball at her feet. How the memories flocked!

There through the wide arch was the old parlor where she had practised her music at the old square piano, with mother-of-pearl flowers set in its polished rosewood above the keyboard. Like ghosts the old furniture came trooping back and peopled the empty rooms. The Chippendale desk! The gate-leg table! The portrait of grandfather over the mantel! It was as if their various spirits had stolen away from their new owners and crept back to bid her farewell.

There on the other side was her father’s library where she had spent hours poring over his big volumes; while he wrote at his desk, and now and again looked up and smiled, and said:

“Having a good time, little girl?”

Back of the library was the dining room with windows on the garden and the sunshine flooding it all the morning. There had been blue willow plates against the landscapes on the wall, and the great old mahogany sideboard reached the full length of the space between the windows. If only she might have kept the sideboard! It was so beautiful and old and rare. It seemed so a part of her life and her family. But Ezra Brownleigh had said it would bring more money than anything else she had, and she needed the money so much! But perhaps she would some day save money enough to buy it back—when she had a home. Oh—when she had a home—!

With the breath of a sob she dropped upon her knees, and a long ray of sunlight stole through the mullioned window over the front door and laid gentle fingers of gold upon her hair like a halo, as with clasped hands and closed eyes she prayed earnestly,

“Oh, dear Father in Heaven, I feel so frightened, and so lonely! Please take hold of my hand and go with me—!”

Then she went with swift steps over to the window seat where lay her grandmother’s Bible beside an old fashioned travelling bag and picking it up opened it and tried to read through blurring tears. She had taken the Bible from her grandmother’s chest of drawers just before the man had come to take the things away. It was bulky to carry, but she felt she must have it with her. It would not seem so lonely in the great strange city to which she was going if she might have grandmother’s Bible.

And it opened of itself to an old tried and true passage that had given comfort many times before in days of stress:

“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

A look came over her face like unto the look of her illustrious warrior ancestor whose painted portrait had been wont to hang on the wall above the stair landing. It was as if she had just received marching orders from her captain. She lifted her firm little chin and a light was in her eyes like one who sees a vision.

She was going forth to fight. She did not expect an easy way. But her Lord was with her, even unto the end. With determination she set her face to the going.

Quickly she ran up the stairs to glance into every room and be sure nothing had been left behind. All was clean and empty as befitted the house that was being handed over from the Custer family to a new owner. Not a bit of dust anywhere. Only a scrap of faded lilac ribbon fallen from the drawer when she opened it to take out the Bible. She picked it up quickly as something precious and hid it in her pocket. It was one of the ribbons from grandmother’s old needle book. She must not leave it there for strangers to fling away.

She came down stairs swiftly, gave one last sorrowful glance about the empty rooms and went out, closing and locking the door. Once more she paused with her hand still on the key, and looked abroad at the day which was beginning to glow with Springtime. The mocking-bird in the lilac bush was answering the mocking-bird in the maple now, and an ache grew in her throat as she realized that she was going from it all forever; her home, her lawn, her lilac bush and her mocking-bird, out into an unknown world. In all probability she might never hear a mocking-bird sing from that lilac bush again.

Then she shut her lips tight on the sob that sprang in her throat, turned the key in the lock, and with one last glance at the distant hills just taking on their spring verdure in soft pastel tints, she picked up the old fashioned satchel that stood ready at her feet and started down the path to the gate, every step carrying her away from her childhood, her dear old home, and all that she counted dear in the world, every step bringing the tears to her eyes, and the ache into her throat.

But being a Custer she did not yield to her mood. She dashed the tears from her eyes, swallowed hard on the lump in her throat, and lifting her chin with a kind of finality she went out the gate and down the road, walking straight as a young sapling, her little patrician head held high. The morning was early, the dew yet on the young grass by the roadside, but not even a bird should see her go drooping away from Virginia. She would go forth as one goeth to battle, a shining mark for an enemy, but a valiant one.

She hastened her steps as she passed the old Breckenridge place. She had said a sad farewell to old Miss Sally, the sole remaining representative of that family, who had been dear friends with her family. She did not want to go over it again. If Miss Sally should spy her out of the window she would be sure to stop her for another last word, and perhaps a hot buttered roll or some delicacy to take with her, and Ariel felt she could not bear it.

But Miss Sally did not see her and she slipped by safely and reached the straggling village street without encountering any old friends.

She must stop at the Real Estate office and leave the key for the new owners. Then she hoped to escape to the station without more ado. There had been invitations to breakfast in plenty, and also to stay overnight, but Ariel had declined them all on the ground that there were things to do at the house and she would not have time in the morning to stop for a formal breakfast. She had not let anyone know that her last night was to be spent alone in the old house. They had thought that Dinah the old faithful Negro servant was to be with her, or there would have been protests too strenuous to resist; but Dinah had had opportunity to ride to her new home with a farmer who was driving that way the afternoon before, and the girl had insisted upon her going. In fact she had been glad to be alone for those last hours. Somehow they seemed too sacred for even Dinah to intrude upon. And so she had spent the night alone in the old country seat, empty of all furniture save the few things she had saved for her own, which had gone down the road that very morning to be stored indefinitely at Ezra Brownleigh’s house for her.

The past week had been one long good-bye, and Ariel dreaded another word of it. Her Custer pride was worn almost threadbare. She must not let them suspect how her heart was failing her about going out into a world of uncertainty alone. Someone would try to take her in, or do for her, if anyone suspected, and that must never be. She was a Custer and she was a Christian, and she must face the world alone with God.

The minister had written to a cousin of his in the North who was librarian in a big city library and she had promised to take Ariel in and teach her to be a librarian. The minister had felt that the many years spent in her father’s library reading to him and browsing among his fine collection of literary gems had well fitted her for such a position, and she was looking forward with a sad anticipation to the joy of handling books once more. Her father’s books had been sold three years before to provide the necessities of life for herself and her grandmother during her grandmother’s last lingering illness. Even the money from the books was every cent gone now. Ariel longed for books, and she felt that a life spent among them would not be like a life exactly among utter strangers. There would be sure to be some old friends among the volumes.

Ezra Browleigh had not yet come down to his office. It was early. He doubtless had not expected her to come so soon. So she left the key with the office boy who was shooting marbles in the path outside the step. She was glad to escape the kindly parting from the gentle old man her father’s friend who would gladly have taken her in and made her his own child if he had had the means to provide for her. As it was he had told her that if everything did not go right she was to come right home to Virginia and he would take care of her. Ariel never intended to burden him with any care of herself, even though things went very wrong indeed, but she thanked him and smiled sunnily into his faded eyes till he cheered up, marvelling at the Custer courage, rejoicing in the valiant spirit.

Arrived at the station Ariel had almost an hour to wait for her train. There was plenty of time to run over to Aunt Janey Whiting’s and get breakfast, or even to go as far as Martha Ann Gibbon’s little cottage where she knew there was always delicious corn pone and plenty of fresh milk for breakfast, and where she would be more than welcome. But Ariel did not feel like eating. There seemed to be a door locked in her throat that prevented her from swallowing. It seemed to her she never would be hungry again. So after she had bought her ticket and checked her small ancient trunk she crossed the tracks behind the station and walked away down a willow-bordered road to the old bridge where the trees hid her from the village, and she could be alone and think.

The old bridge crossed a little stream that wound down from the distant mountain and was sparkling now in the sunlight as she stopped and laid her arms on the rail looking down into the water.

The trees on either bank were softly dappled with small green leaves, and bordered the bright curving water with feathery foliage, deepening here and there into the rich dark green of the cypress and pine. Beyond was the mountain, blue and mysterious in its morning mist, with a brilliant sky above in which floated little lazy fleecy clouds. The beauty of it was like a pain in her heart as she looked upon it for the last time perhaps for years. A sudden realization came over her of how dear it all was, the sky and the trees and the water, her dear Virginia mountains, and what it would be not to see them any more, and once more the Custer courage almost failed her, and she bowed her head on the old bridge and prayed:

“Dear Heavenly Father, don’t let me break down. Help me to be brave. I know you’re going with me.”

But bye and bye the peace of it all sank into her heart and she was able to look upon the familiar scene and drink it into her memory for a future time of need.

The distant whistle of the south bound train warned her at last that her time of waiting was almost over, and she hurried down the road and was ready to cross the tracks as soon as the Southern train was gone.

But she was not let to leave her home town absolutely uncheered. Miss Sallie Gibbons was standing on the platform anxiously looking up the road for her as she crossed the tracks, with a little box of hot beaten biscuits, cold chicken and pound cake for her lunch. She had sat up half the night preparing it. Ezra Brownleigh, too, hobbled down five minutes before the north bound train to wish her Godspeed. Three minutes later a noisy troop of little girls and one boy whom she had taught music, came plunging down the street, their arms full of big bunches of blue violets and golden buttercups which they pressed upon her. The boy had a big red apple and a very small toad in a match box which he offered her for company on the way. She made him eat the apple himself and told him to take care of the toad for her till she returned. Then the train came whistling down the track, the girls smothered her with moist kisses, Miss Sallie Gibbons folded her in her arms and wept in her neck, and Ezra Brownleigh tried to smile with the tears rolling down his cheeks. She was gone, out into the great wide world of the North! Out to earn her living and win her way. Out toward the end somewhere, which is Eternity!

CHAPTER II

Judson Granniss had always been a lonely boy.

From his birth his mother had tried to dominate him, as she had always dominated his father. She spent her time in shooing him away from almost everything he wanted to do or think or be. And much of the time she succeeded, because he had inherited from his father a gentle, kindly, unselfish nature. But because he was also her child and had as strong a will as hers, there were times when he became like adamant, and then there was war between them.

Strangely enough at such times Judson reminded her of her dead husband whose gentle kindly nature had yielded to her will except on rare occasions when the matter at issue concerned some one else, and then he too became adamant.

Judson’s father was a dreamer, by nature an inventor, who had by stern integrity and patient perseverance added to a small inheritance until in the small country town where they had lived when Judson was a child, he had become a power. Then one day he loaned a large sum of money to an old school mate, Jake Dillon by name, who came to him with a tale of a fortune in jeopardy and a motherless child. For the sake of the motherless child Joe Granniss loaned him enough money to set him upon his feet. Jake Dillon became a rich man, and Joe Granniss died a very poor one, because he had trusted his old friend and had loaned the money without security. His wife Harriet never gave him another hour’s peace while he lived after she learned of the transaction, and it is to be supposed that she also spent time on Jake Dillon,—and he certainly deserved anything he got,—for Harriet was not the woman to leave her duty toward her fellow man’s sins undone.

Joe Granniss closed his kindly thin lips and lived the remainder of his chastened days with very few words, and a wearied look on his prematurely aging face. He didn’t fall sick but he failed from day to day, and one morning he didn’t get up.

Harriet prodded him because she didn’t believe in a grown man giving up to illness, but he only smiled sadly at her, and as the days went by she grew alarmed and hurried around to get a will out of him. She, who had ruled his will all her life, must needs supplicate at the last for the will she had tried to crush. Yet she couldn’t manage it after all to get everything put in her name. He would leave five thousand from the pittance he had remaining to Judson. The mother couldn’t budge him from that. He didn’t argue. He didn’t even talk. Just shook his head and said, “Jud must have something all his own.” Finally she succeeded in tying that up so that Judson couldn’t have it until he was thirty if he married before that time without her consent. The dear man must have been almost over the border or he would have foreseen what that would mean to Judson, but he finally assented, and soon after the signing of the will, closed his dreamer’s eyes and died.

As he lay there with the dignity of death upon him he seemed so suddenly young again, like one who sees a vision at last and is hastening after, that Harriet in her sudden grief, grew half impatient with him even in death. What right had he to look like that when she was left here on earth to slave alone without him? It was just like him to leave her like that, most of the money gone, and he look glad, actually glad in death!

Judson Granniss remembered keenly those first days after his father’s death. He felt so alone, so utterly desolate. For they two, his father and himself, had come to be a sort of close corporation, allied against the mother. Not that there had been any outward hostilities. She was the Captain and they both did what she said, with a kind of age-old courtesy, a sort of gallantry, because she was a woman, and a wife, and mother, their wife and mother. The old time courtesy had been as much toward the wifehood and motherhood as toward the woman herself. They had quietly, without voicing it, each recognized that the other had things to bear. They loved her but she made them bear a great deal. She lashed them with her tongue unmercifully, sometimes unjustly; yet they were loyal to her. In all matters not absolutely vital to them they yielded, and sometimes when Judson’s indignant young eyes would plead with his father to have his own way about going off with the boys for a school game, or something of that sort, the father would say: “She’s the only mother you’ve got, Jud, you know,” and Jud’s face would relax, and a look of surrender come into his eyes, though one could see his very soul was rebelling.

It was on one occasion like this that the father, watching his boy closely, had suddenly roused with a determined look and said to his wife sharply:

“No, Harriet. It isn’t right. He’s a boy. You must let him go. He’ll never be a man if you coddle him so. Go, Judson. I’ve said it!” And Judson with a quick wondering glance at his firm father and astonished mother, went, before another word could be said. Whatever his father said to his mother after he was gone, he never knew, but never again did she try to keep him away from the games among the boys, and he grew to be a giant among them in achievements.

Judson could remember in those first days after his father’s death, that his mother wrote long letters to Jake Dillon. Angry letters they must have been summoning him to audience. Twice he came. Harriet sent her son to bed, but Jake Dillon talked in a loud raucous voice, a swaggering, braggety voice. Jud couldn’t help hearing some things he said. He didn’t understand altogether about it, but he gathered that Jake Dillon maintained that he owed his friend Granniss nothing. It was a chance they both took. He had won and Granniss had lost. That was all. Nevertheless Harriet extracted money from him on both occasions, and when he died he left a strange will with life provision for Harriet, and a home with his daughter Emily, provided Harriet would consent to be Emily’s companion and look after her comfort. If Emily died first the house and property were to go to Harriet. The will caused a great uproar among the Dillon cousins. They tried to stir up Emily to break the will, but Emily was a peaceable, gentle soul, with a strong sense of justice, and she may have had her own reasons for thinking her father did right in making tardy amends to the family of one of his victims.

Judson Granniss was a mere boy when Jake Dillon died and Harriet prepared to leave their country home in Mercer, and move to the Dillon house in a suburb of the neighboring city.

Emily Dillon was an utter stranger to them both and Jud balked with all his father’s gentle strength at the move, but Harriet was firm, and they went. The boy wore a hard belligerence in his eyes that first day, and barely spoke to their new house mate, but it did not take him long to perceive that Emily Dillon liked the invasion as little as he enjoyed coming, and in her gentle quiet way was holding them aloof. As the days went by, her smile turned wistfully to his gruff reticence, and gradually they grew to like one another, and almost without words, or even outward sign, to make common cause together in bearing the tyranny of Harriet Granniss.

Emily Dillon was kind to the boy, bought him surreptitious candy, did little things for his comfort when his mother was out at some town function, or on a shopping orgy, even bought a modest automobile for his use as he grew older, which she never learned to drive herself although it was tacitly known as her car. Harriet ruled that as well as everything else in the house, and drove hither and yon whenever she could get Judson out of working hours, and Emily only got an occasional ride now and then. But Emily went on her quiet repressed way growing sweeter and more gentle as the years went by. Judson often wondered why she bore it all. Why she didn’t send them away, take some law action or other, or even go away herself. She had money enough herself without the house. Sometimes he reasoned with his mother that she ought to be the one to go, but she only shut her large lips stubbornly, and drew her brows into an angry frown, and told him he was a poor fool who didn’t know what he was talking about. Sometimes he thought that when he was a little older he would talk to Emily Dillon about it and try to do something to help her get away from the situation, which he could see plainly would never have been of her choosing; but the time had never yet seemed to come. He sometimes meditated going away himself as he grew older for he felt as if he was an intruder in this woman’s home, but whenever he contemplated this some little incident would show him that Emily Dillon was really fond of him, and would miss him if he went; that his presence was really a comfort to her in a situation that would otherwise have been to her well nigh intolerable. He could not help seeing that his mother was hard and intolerant, and yet beneath it all there was a kind of allegiance to her in his heart, the feeling that he was her natural protector. And if he had failed in this feeling there would have been always the memory of his father’s old words in his childhood: “She’s the only mother you’ve got, you know, Jud” that would somehow soften his belligerence.

But it was when Judson grew into young manhood, had finished school and gone to work, that his mother’s solicitude annoyed him most. He had reached the “girl” stage of most young men, and his mother couldn’t understand why he didn’t develop a normal interest in them. His shy retiring nature had held aloof from girls while he was in school. He did not like their airs and artificiality. Somewhere in his strong quiet nature was hidden a deep respect and worship for true womanhood. He held an old fashioned high ideal of woman which entirely protected him from any interest in modern girls.

But Harriet would not have it so. Son of hers must go the gait of an ordinary young man. If he did not take to social life naturally he must be made to. That was what she was his mother for. So she undertook to engineer him into society with the result that she found her hands full.

She began by inviting a surprise party for him on his birthday while he was still in high school.

Judson was sitting at the dining room table studying algebra when they came down upon him, and he rose in anger and bewilderment and glared at them as they surged into the room giggling and shouting to one another. They were not particularly interested in Judson Granniss. They considered him dull. But they were always interested in a gathering of their clans with cake and ice cream and a good time generally.

Harriet Granniss had not been modest in her invitations nor discriminating. She had invited the young people in her son’s class who attended the high school dances, and added a few from the list of a select private school whose parents were wealthy and influential. She had hired a victrola, and prepared a startling array of cake and sandwiches and salad, and the stage was set for a successful affair, but from the start her son’s attitude was hostile. He regarded his party as an invasion, and stood glaring at them until his mother had to call him to account. Whereupon he gravely saluted them all, watched them helplessly through the evening of gaiety as he would have stood by at a gathering of his mother’s Aid Society, ready to render aid, but not to participate. He could not dance and he would not try to learn, though the bob-haired Boggs girl was all too eager to teach him. He finally retreated to the kitchen to help with the ice cream and cake. Harriet Granniss’ party was a great success, but Judson got no further into society than he had been before. When they were all done giggling their thanks to the mother, and had said a perfunctory good night to the stern young host, his mother turned upon him angrily, and poured a torrent of abuse and advice upon his unbowed head. He listened to her all the way through, with lifted chin and almost haughty look in his gray eyes, and when she was done he said:

“You’ve made a big mistake, Mother. I’m sorry to disappoint you if that’s what you want, but they’re not my kind, and I don’t want them, nor they don’t want me.”

Then he turned and went quietly up to his room and his mother was left alone to “tread the banquet hall deserted” and reflect upon her failure. She bitterly charged it to his strange nature inherited from his unfortunate father, “the mistake of her youth” as she phrased it.

But Harriet Granniss did not give up. She never gave up any thing. He was her son and he must be made to go the way of men. Her only mistake had been that she hadn’t begun sooner. So she took to scraping acquaintance with girls and inviting them home to see her. Jud would come home from his work and find to his dismay a smiling maiden seated in the parlor and a festive air about the dining room, and he would be sent with unwilling feet to change into his best suit. More reluctant feet would carry him back to the down stairs regions after his mother had issued the call to dinner three times at least, and he would sit through the meal silent and taciturn and his mother wondered why it was that her son should be so sullen whenever anybody came to the house.

Jud was not naturally disagreeable, but it maddened him to have his mother select girls and fling them at him in this open way. He grew wary, and approached his home at night from the back way, entering cautiously, and absenting himself for a meal whenever he had reason to suspect his mother was meditating another dinner guest, and so there grew between them an irritation that was well nigh to wrecking any kind of an understanding there might have been between such a mother and son. They simply were not built on the same plan and it was impossible for Harriet at least to understand this and make allowance for it. She daily and openly bewailed her fate to have such a son, so taciturn, so unconventional, so stubborn.

Emily tried to put in a little gentle word for him now and then, urging his mother to wait and let him alone, to trust to nature to bring the right companionship, for in truth Emily Dillon did not admire the girls that seemed to interest Harriet Granniss. “Girls with some spirit and a little pep to them” she called them. To Emily Dillon they were often coarse and bold and forward. With their flashy apparel, their cosmetics, their loud voices, their unrestrained conversation and actions, and even in several cases their cigarette smoking, Emily Dillon could not understand how Jud was expected to tolerate them. She had however learned that to argue or oppose was but to set Harriet Granniss like adamant to her purpose, so she went her quiet way, said little, smiled always with polite dignity on whatever guest Harriet presented at the table, and watched Jud with satisfaction. She could not help being glad that he did not “fall” as his mother termed it, for any of the girls she brought to the house. Emily Dillon loved Jud as though he had been a younger brother and she revelled in his fine reserve and splendid strength.

Emily Dillon had been her father’s protector and slave as a young girl, because she had promised her dying mother to stay with him and take care of him. Sometimes she had been able to keep him from drinking for months at a time, but she had paid the price of alienation from friends and kindred, and from all the things that a young girl counts dear. She had kept his house and tended him like a child when he was drinking, and disagreeable. She bore with his tyrannies and petty cruelties and loved him in spite of it all, she had submitted to scrimping and going without when she knew he was well able to buy her all she wanted, without a murmur; and she had never failed in her loyalty to him and his wishes, though it had gone hard with her when she suspected that he was being unjust and dishonest with others; and so when at last his death set her free and then she found that his will had laid his bonds upon her once more, and put a woman tyrant over her in his place, she gravely and sweetly submitted, knowing that the justice of God might demand this in restitution. Not for even freedom would she hint to any that her father had not been right in anything. Not for worlds would she leave a just debt of his unpaid. This it seemed was the only way to repay the injustice done to Joe Granniss years agone, and so this she must endure. And, well, what did it matter? Life was not a golden pavement to walk down without a care.

The cousins raged and reasoned; they urged and protested, but she was gently firm. She would carry out her father’s will. And she lived her quiet life apart, going about in her own house, yet not in reality its mistress, keeping her reserves in spite of all the grilling that Harriet Granniss gave her, looking back to a few bright days in the past, looking ever forward with golden vision to a time when it all should be over forever.

For Emily Dillon had one bright memory in her life that was like a gorgeous jewel, for which all the rest of her sombre life was like a dull but lovely antique setting, valuable because it held the jewel.