Brand Whitlock

“ They reviewed their old dreams, and now they could laugh at their defeated wish to live, even in an humble way, in Macochee.
“It was funny, wasn’t it?” said Marley. “I was very young then,—nothing, in fact, but a kid.”
“Are you so very much older now?” asked Lavinia with a slight hint of teasing in her tender voice.
“Well,” Marley replied, with a seriousness that impressed him, at least, as the ripe wisdom of maturity, “I am not much older in years, but I am in experience, and in knowledge of life. You see, dear, you can measure time by the calendar, but you can’t measure life that way. ”

“ And Wade Powell did that!”
Marley spoke in the sardonic humor the wounded and beaten spirit likes to employ in dealing with itself. But Lavinia hushed him.
“You just can not talk that way about yourself, Glenn,” she declared with her finest air of ownership. “I won’t let you.”
“Well, it’s so humiliating,” he said.
“Why, no, it can’t be that,” Lavinia argued. “You can not feel humiliated. You have done nothing that need cause you any humiliation. We are the only ones who can humiliate ourselves; nothing but our own actions can humiliate us; no one else can.” ”

“ The clock in the Court House tower boomed out the heavy hours. Sometimes the harmonies of the singing negroes were borne over the town.
And to Marley and Lavinia those days, and those evenings of purple shadows and soft brilliant stars, were but the setting of a dream that unfolded new wonders constantly. They were but a part of all life, a part of the glowing summer itself, innocent of the thousand artificial demands man has made on himself. Lavinia went about with a new expression, exalted, expectant; a new dignity had come to her and a new beauty ”

“ When she had done so, she dropped her sewing suddenly into her lap, and looking up, said:
“He thinks everything of you, doesn’t he?”
“I believe he likes me,” Marley said, as modestly as he could put it.
“Who could help it?”
Lavinia looked at Marley, and he leaned over, and took her hands.
“I am glad you can’t, sweetheart,” he said.
“Do you know,” she went on, “I think it is because you have been kind and good to him—just as you are kind and good to every one. His life is lonely; he is an outcast, almost; no one cares for him, and he appreciates your goodness.” ”

“ Lavinia cried.
“No,” Mrs. Blair whispered. “Can’t you tell mama now?”
And then with her mother’s arms about her Lavinia told her all. When she had finished she lay tranquilly. Mrs. Blair was relieved and yet her troubles had but grown the more complicated. She saw all the intricate elements with which she would have to deal, and she quailed before them, realizing what tact would be required of her.
“The coming of love should be a time of joy, dear,” she said presently. Even in the darkness, she could see the white blur of Lavinia’s face change its expression. A smile had touched it. ”

“ While Marley dusted his begrimed fingers with his handkerchief, Powell blew the dust off the top of the book; he slapped it on the arm of his chair, the dust flying from it at every stroke. He picked up his spectacles, put them on and turned over the first few leaves of the book.
“You might begin on that,” he said presently, “until we can borrow a Blackstone or a Walker for you. This book is the best law-book ever written anyway; the law’s all there. If you knew all that contains, you could go in any court and get along without giving yourself away; which is the whole duty of a lawyer.” ”

“ The grass in the yard grew long, and the bushes languished in the heat. Judge Blair’s beans clambered up their poles and turned white; and Connie’s sweet peas grew lush and rank, running, as she complained, mostly to leaves. The house seemed to have withdrawn within itself; its green shutters were closed. In the evening dim figures could be seen on the veranda, and the drone of voices could be heard. At eleven o’clock, the deep siren of the Limited could be heard, as it rounded the curve a mile out of town. After that it was still, and night lay on Macochee, soft, vast, immeasurable. ”

“ The spectacles, the gray in his hair, the wrinkles in his face, the looseness of the skin at his jaws and at his throat—where a fold of it hung between the points of his collar—all told that Wade Powell had passed the invisible line which marks life’s summit, and that his face was turned now toward the evening. There was the touch of sadness in the indistinct conception of him as a man who had not altogether realized the ambitions of his youth or the predictions of his friends, and the sadness came from the intuition that the failure or the half-failure was not of the heroic kind. ”

“ Judge Blair and Wade Powell and every one had told him that, and suddenly he felt an impatience with them all, as if they were responsible for the conditions they described; they all conspired against him, men and conditions, making up the elements of a harsh, intractable fate.
And Marley grew bitter against every one in Macochee; they all gossiped about him, they were all determined to drive him away; well, let them; he would go; but he would come back again some day as a great, successful lawyer, looking down on them and their little interests, and they would be filled with envy and respect. ”

“ At their feet lay the little fields, in the distance they could see a man plowing with two white horses; off to the right lay the water-works pond, gleaming in the afternoon sun.
“What are you thinking of?” Marley said.
“I was thinking that it would be nice to live in the country.”
“I was thinking that very thing myself!” exclaimed Marley. Their eyes met, and they thrilled over this unity in their thoughts. It was marvelous to them, mysterious, prophetic.
“Some day I could buy a farm,” Marley said; “out that way.”
“Yes,” Lavinia replied, “away off there, beyond those low trees. Do you see?” ”

“ She was flushed with pleasure and excitement, and tapping her foot in time with the chords Payson and Gallard were trying on their instruments. Marley saw her surprise.
“I ought not to have come,” he said; “I’ve no business here.”
The look of disappointment in Lavinia’s eyes had gone, and in its place was now an expression of sympathy.
“It makes no difference,” she said. And then she added in a low voice: “I’ll not dance either; there are too many of us girls anyway.”
“Oh, don’t let me keep you from it,” said Marley, and yet a joy was shining in his eyes. She turned away and blushed. ”

“ Lavinia was silent, and Marley had a fear that she might not accept Weston quite so readily.
“He has done me a world of good,” he went on. “He has taught me much, he has corrected my reckoning in more ways than one. He has taught me much about books; and he has taught me to look sanely on a life that isn’t, he says, always truthfully reflected in books. And besides all, if it hadn’t been for him, if he had not kept me at it and urged me on, I think I should have been doomed for ever to remain a poor newspaper man.” ”

“ The papers scattered over the table had an air of hopelessness, as though they had grown tired, like the clients they represented, in waiting for Powell’s attention. The half-open door at the back led into a room that had been, and possibly might yet be, used as a private office or consulting room, should any one care to brave its darkness and its dust; but as for Wade Powell, it was plain that he preferred to sit democratically in the outer office, where all might see him, and, what was of more importance to him, where he might see all. ”

“ He looked at everything that had been associated with his life, and everything called up some memory,—the little office where he had tried to study law, the Court House, and the blind goddess of justice holding aloft her scales, the familiar Square, the cloaked cavalryman on the monument, every tree, every fence, every brick in the sidewalk somehow called out to him—and he was leaving them all. He looked up and down Main Street, wide and ugly, littered with refuse, ragged with its graceless signs ”

“ Powell glanced at him, but said nothing. He knew human nature, this lawyer, and the fact made every one in the county tremble at the thought of his cross-examinations; sometimes he carried too far his love of laying souls bare, and as often hurt as helped his cause. He never had been able to turn his knowledge to much practical account; in a city he would have had numerous retainers as a trial lawyer, though few as a counselor. In Macochee he was out of place, and he chafed under a semi-consciousness of the fact. He waited, knowing that Marley would burst forth again. ”

“ Marley detected her regret, and was on the point of speaking, when Lavinia went on:
“I don’t see why you can’t go into literature as well as Mr. Weston.”
Marley laughed.
“The reason is that I haven’t his talent,” he said
“I don’t see why,” Lavinia argued with some resentment of his humility. “You haven’t enough confidence in your own powers; you let Mr. Weston dominate you too much.”
“Now, dearest,” he pleaded, “you mustn’t do Jim that injustice. He doesn’t dominate me; but he is so much wiser than I, he knows so much more. You will understand when you meet him.” ”

“ The porter doffed his white jacket and donned his blue, and waited now for the end of his labors, so near at hand. He made no pretense of brushing his passengers, for those in his charge were plainly not of the kind with tips to bestow.
As the train rushed over unknown streets, Marley caught visions of the crowds blockaded by the crossing gates, street-cars already filled with people, empty trucks going after the great loads under which they would groan all the day; and people, people, people, ready for the new day of toil that had come to the earth. ”

“ Marley, sitting apart on the stump of a small oak, could hear the burlesque orders Lawrence shouted at the girls. The girls were convulsed by his orders; at times they had to put their dishes down lest in their laughter they spill the food or break the china; just then Marley saw Mayme Carter double over suddenly, her mass of yellow hair lurching forward to her brow, while the woods rang with her laughter. The other men were off looking after the horses.
Lavinia moved quickly here and there, smiling joyously, her face flushed ”

“ But Marley whirled his chair around toward Powell.
“I am in love,” he said. “I’ve wanted to tell you, but I—you know who she is.”
“Lavinia Blair?”
“Yes. And that’s what’s troubling me,” Marley went on. “I want to get married, and I can’t. I can’t,” he repeated, “the law’s too slow; I’ve realized it for a long while, but I tried to keep the fact away, I tried not to see it. But now I have to face it. Why,” he said, rising to his feet, “it’ll take a thousand years to get a practice in this town, and I’m not even admitted yet.” ”

“ Marley,” the judge resumed, “that you are hardly in a position to ask for my daughter’s hand. Of course,” the judge allowed a smile to soften somewhat the fixity of his lips, “I appreciate your manliness in coming to me, and I do not want to be understood as making any reflections upon, or in the least questioning, your character, your worth, or the honor of your intentions. But in view of your youth and of Lavinia’s, and in view of your own, as yet, unsettled position in life, you must see how impossible it is that anything like an engagement should subsist between you. ”

“ Her excitement and that of Chad should have made any Christmas Eve merry, but it was not a merry Christmas Eve for Marley.
As Lavinia and he sat in the parlor they caught now and then, or imagined they caught, the strains of the orchestra that was playing for the dancers in the Odd Fellows’ Hall, and they were both conscious that life would be tolerable for them only when the music should cease and the ball take its place among the things of the past, incapable of further trouble in the earth. ”

“ Weston says that is all that reconciles him to the business; he says a man learns more there than he ever does in college. He considers the training invaluable; he says it will be of great help to him in literature, if he can ever get into literature—he isn’t sure yet that he can. He can tell better after his book is published. And he says a newspaper experience will help me in the law, too, that is,” Marley added, with a whimsical imitation of Weston’s despairing uncertainty, “if I can ever get into the law.”
“You think a great deal of Mr. Weston, don’t you?” said Lavinia. ”

“ Now, here in Gordon County, we have about everything a man needs; the spring comes and the summer, and the autumn and the winter; the rain falls and the winds blow and the sun shines, and I’ve noticed that Lighttown gets about as much rain as Main Street, and Gooseville about as much wind as Scioto Street; the sun seems to shine pretty much alike on the niggers loafing in Market Space and on old Selah Dudley and Judge Blair, bowing like Christians to each other in the Square. ”

“ The lake was in one of its most smiling and happy moods, though they were then at a point where storms easily lash its shallow depths into billows that might satisfy the rage of the North Atlantic. The lighthouse on the rocks at Marblehead had a fascination for Lavinia; it seemed waiting for her humor, and she watched it until the steamer had gone far on toward Kelly’s Island, and left the lighthouse behind, a white spot gleaming in the sun. ”

“ Mayme without turning replied “All right,” and when her mother had disappeared she said:
“It’s awful hot in here, let’s go outside.”
Marley found himself strolling in the yard with Lavinia Blair. The moon had not risen, but the girl’s throat and arms gleamed in the starlight; her white dress seemed to be a cloud of gauze; she floated, rather than walked, there by his side. They paused by the gate. About them were the voices of the summer night, the crickets, the katydids, far away the frogs, chirping musically. They stood a while in the silence, and then they turned, and were talking again. ”

“ Marley wrote to Lavinia a day or so later. “I have been making the rounds of the law offices; I have been to all the leading firms, but—here I am, still without a place. I thought I might get a place in one of them where I could finish my law studies, and make enough to live on, meanwhile; I had dreams of working into the firm in time, but they were only dreams, and all my hopes have gone glimmering. The men who are employed in the law offices are already admitted to the bar; most of them are young fellows, but some are old and gray-headed, and the sight of them gave me the blues. ”

“ Marley had a pang as he saw with what small seriousness Lawrence regarded his relation to the law; it reflected, doubtless, the common attitude of the community toward him and his efforts.
“I’ve got to hurry,” Lawrence went on; “I’ve got a rig waiting here; you can ride out with me.”
It was one of the incomparable afternoons that autumn brings to Ohio; the retreating sun was flashing in the high, blue sky; the air was fresh and Marley felt it full of energy and hope. ”

“ Marley’s gaze recalled Powell, and he glanced up with a smile.
“I reckon you’ve gathered from my remarks,” said Powell, “that I consider success chiefly from a monetary standpoint, but I don’t. The main business of life is living, and the trouble with the world is that it is too busy getting ready to live to find the time for life; it has tied itself up with a thousand chains of its own forging and it has had to postpone living from time to time until most people have put the beginning of life at the gateway of death ”