Gordon Keith - Thomas Nelson Page

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Had Gordon Keith known the terms on which he was invited to take a meal in the presence of Mrs. Yorke, he would have been incensed. He had been fuming about her condescension ever since he had met her; yet he no sooner received her polite note than he was in the best humor possible. He brushed up his well-worn clothes, treated himself to a new necktie, which he had been saving all the session, and just at the appointed hour presented himself with a face so alight with expectancy, and a manner which, while entirely modest, was so natural and easy, that Mrs. Yorke was astonished. She could scarcely credit the fact that this bright-eyed young man, with his fine nose, firm chin, and melodious voice, was the same with the dusty, hot-faced, dishevelled-looking country boy to whom she had thought of offering money for a kindness two days before.

      When Keith first entered the room Alice Yorke was seated in a reclining-chair, enveloped in soft white, from which she gave him a smiling greeting. For years afterwards, whenever Gordon Keith thought of beauty it was of a girl smiling up at him out of a cloud of white. It was a charming visit for him, and he reproached himself for his hard thoughts about Mrs. Yorke. He aired all of his knowledge, and made such a favorable impression on the good lady that she became very friendly with him. He did not know that Mrs. Yorke's kindness to him was condescension, and her cordiality inspired as much by curiosity as courtesy.

      "Dr. Balsam has been telling us about you, Mr. Keith," said Mrs. Yorke, with a bow which brought a pleased smile to the young man's face.

      "He has? The Doctor has always been good to me. I am afraid he has a higher opinion of me than I deserve," he said, with a boy's pretended modesty, whilst his eyes strongly belied his words.

      Mrs. Yorke assured him that such could not be the case.

      "Don't you want to know what he said?" asked Miss Alice, with a bell-like laugh.

      "Yes; what?" he smiled.

      "He said if you undertook to carry a bag of salt down a mountain, or up it either, you would never rest until you got there."

      Her eyes twinkled, and Gordon appeared half teased, though he was inwardly pleased.

      Mrs. Yorke looked shocked.

      "Oh, Alice, Dr. Balsam did not say that, for I heard him!" she exclaimed reprovingly. "Dr. Balsam was very complimentary to you, Mr. Keith," she explained seriously. "He said your people were among the best families about here." She meant to be gracious; but Gordon's face flushed in spite of himself. The condescension was too apparent.

      "Your father was a pre--a--a--clergyman?" said Mrs. Yorke, who had started to say "preacher," but substituted the other word as more complimentary.

      "My father a clergyman! No'm. He is good enough to be one; but he was a planter and a--a--soldier," said Gordon.

      Mrs. Yorke looked at her daughter in some mystification. Could this be the wrong man?

      "Why, he said he was a clergyman?" she insisted.

      Gordon gazed at the girl in bewilderment.

      "Yes; he said he was a minister," she replied to his unspoken inquiry.

      Gordon broke into a laugh.

      "Oh, he was a special envoy to England after he was wounded."

      The announcement had a distinct effect upon Mrs. Yorke, who instantly became much more cordial to Gordon. She took a closer look at him than she had given herself the trouble to take before, and discovered, under the sunburn and worn clothes, something more than she had formerly observed. The young man's expression had changed. A reference to his father always sobered him and kindled a light in his eyes. It was the first time Mrs. Yorke had taken in what her daughter meant by calling him handsome.

      "Why, he is quite distinguished-looking!" she thought to herself. And she reflected what a pity it was that so good-looking a young man should have been planted down there in that out-of-the-way pocket of the world, and thus lost to society. She did not know that the kindling eyes opposite her were burning with a resolve that not only Mrs. Yorke, but the world, should know him, and that she should recognize his superiority.

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      After this it was astonishing how many excuses Gordon could find for visiting the village. He was always wanting to consult a book in the Doctor's library, or get something, which, indeed, meant that he wanted to get a glimpse of a young girl with violet eyes and pink cheeks, stretched out in a lounging-chair, picturesquely reclining amid clouds of white pillows. Nearly always he carried with him a bunch of flowers from Mrs. Rawson's garden, which were to make patches of pink or red or yellow among Miss Alice's pillows, and bring a fresh light into her eyes. And sometimes he took a basket of cherries or strawberries for Mrs. Yorke. His friends, the Doctor and the Rawsons, began to rally him on his new interest in the Springs.

      "I see you are takin' a few nubbins for the old cow," said Squire Rawson, one afternoon as Gordon started off, at which Gordon blushed as red as the cherries he was carrying. It was just what he had been doing.

      "Well, that is the way to ketch the calf," said the old farmer, jovially; "but I 'low the mammy is used to pretty high feedin'." He had seen Mrs. Yorke driving along in much richer attire than usually dazzled the eyes of the Ridge neighborhood, and had gauged her with a shrewd eye.

      Miss Alice Yorke's sprain turned out to be less serious than had been expected. She herself had proved a much less refractory patient than her mother had ever known her.

      It does not take two young people of opposite sexes long to overcome the formalities which convention has fixed among their seniors, especially when one of them has brought the other down a mountain-side in his arms.

      Often, in a sheltered corner of the long verandah, Keith read to Alice on balmy afternoons, or in the moonlit evenings sauntered with her through the fields of their limited experience, and quoted snatches from his chosen favorites, poems that lived in his heart, and fancied her the "maid of the downward look and sidelong glance."

      Thus, by the time Alice Yorke was able to move about again, she and Keith had already reached a footing where they had told each other a good deal of their past, and were finding the present very pleasant, and one of them, at least, was beginning, when he turned his eyes to the future, to catch the glimmer of a very rosy light.

      It showed in his appearance, in his face, where a new expression of a more definite ambition and a higher resolution was beginning to take its place.

      Dr. Balsam noted it, and when he met Gordon he began to have a quizzical light in his deep-gray eyes. He had, too, a tender tone in his voice when he addressed the girl. Perhaps, a vision came to him at times of another country lad, well-born like this one, and, like this one, poor, wandering on the New England hills with another young girl, primmer, perhaps, and less sophisticated than this little maiden, who had come from the westward to spend a brief holiday on the banks of the Piscataqua, and had come into his life never to depart--of his dreams and his hopes; of his struggles to achieve the education which would make him worthy of her; and then of the overthrow of all: of darkness and exile and wanderings.

      When the Doctor sat on his porch of an evening, with his pipe, looking out over the sloping hills, sometimes his face grew almost melancholy. Had he not been intended for other things than this exile? Abigail Brooke had never married, he knew. What might have happened had he gone back? And when he next saw Alice Yorke there would be a softer tone in his voice, and he would talk a deeper and higher philosophy to her than she had ever heard, belittling the gaudy rewards of life, and instilling in her mind ideas of something loftier and better and finer than they. He even told her once something of the story of his life, and of the suffering

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