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Gordon Keith written by Thomas Nelson Page

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"There comes mamma now," said the girl, waving to the lady in it.

Mrs. Yorke sprang from the carriage as soon as it drew up. She was a
handsome woman of middle age and was richly dressed. She was now in a
panic of motherly solicitude.

"Oh, Alice, how you have frightened me!" she exclaimed. "You were due at
the hotel two hours ago, and when your horse came without you! You will
kill me!" She clapped her hands to her heart and panted. "You know my
heart is weak!"

Alice protested her sorrow, and Keith put in a word for her, declaring
that she had been dreadfully troubled lest the horse should
frighten her.

"And well she might be," exclaimed Mrs. Yorke, giving him a bare glance
and then turning back to her daughter. "Mrs. Nailor was the first who
heard your horse had come home. She ran and told me. And, oh, I was so
frightened! She was sure you were killed."

"You might be sure she would be the first to hear and tell you," said
the girl. "Why, mamma, one always sprains one's knee when one's horse
falls. That is part of the programme. This--gentleman happened to come
along, and helped me down to the road, and we were just discussing
whether I should go on farther when you came up. Mother, this is
Mr. Keith."

Keith bowed. He was for some reason pleased that she did not say
anything of the way in which he had brought her down the Ridge.

Mrs. Yorke turned and thanked him with graciousness, possibly with a
little condescension. He was conscious that she gave him a sweeping
glance, and was sorry his shoes were so old. But Mrs. Yorke took no
further notice of him.

"Oh, what will your father say! You know he wanted us to go to
California; but you would come South. After Mr. Wickersham told you of
his place, nothing else would satisfy you."

"Oh, papa! You know I can settle him," said the girl.

Mrs. Yorke began to lament the wretchedness of a region where there was
no doctor of reputation.

"There is a very fine surgeon in the village. Dr. Balsam is one of the
best surgeons anywhere," said Keith.

"Oh, I know that old man. No doubt, he is good enough for little common
ailments," said Mrs. Yorke, "but in a case like this! What does he know
about surgery?" She turned back to her daughter. "I shall telegraph your
father to send Dr. Pilbury down at once."

Keith flushed at her manner.

"A good many people have to trust their lives to him," he said coldly.
"And he has had about as much surgical practice as most men. He was in
the army."

The girl began again to belittle her injury.

It was nothing, absolutely nothing, she declared.

"And besides," she said, "I know the Doctor. I met him the other day. He
is a dear old man." She ended by addressing Keith.

"One of the best," said Keith, warmly.

"Well, we must get you into the vehicle and take you home immediately,"
said her mother. "Can you help put my daughter into the carriage?" Mrs.
Yorke looked at the driver, a stolid colored man, who was surly over
having had to drive his horses so hard.

Before the man could answer, Gordon stepped forward, and, stooping,
lifted the girl, and quietly put her up into the vehicle. She simply
smiled and said, "Thank you," quite as if she were accustomed to being
lifted into carriages by strange young men whom she had just met on
the roadside.

Mrs. Yorke's eyes opened wide.

"How strong you must be!" she exclaimed, with a woman's admiration for
physical strength.

Keith bowed, and, with a flush mounting to his cheeks, backed a little
away.

"Oh, he has often lifted sacks of salt," said the girl, half turning her
eyes on Keith with a gleam of satisfaction in them.

Mrs. Yorke looked at her in astonishment.

"Why, Alice!" she exclaimed reprovingly under her breath.

"He told me so himself," asserted the girl, defiantly.

"I may have to do so again," said Keith, dryly.

Mrs. Yorke's hand went toward the region of her pocket, but uncertainly;
for she was not quite sure what he was. His face and air belied his
shabby dress. A closer look than she had given him caused her to stop
with a start.

"Mr.--ah--?" After trying to recall the name, she gave it up. "I am very
much obliged to you for your kindness to my daughter," she began. "I do
not know how I can compensate you; but if you will come to the hotel
sometime to-morrow--any time--perhaps, there is something--? Can you
come to the hotel to-morrow?" Her tone was condescending.

"Thank you," said Keith, quietly. "I am afraid I cannot go to the
village to-morrow. I have already been more than compensated in being
able to render a service to a lady. I have a school, and I make it a
rule never to go anywhere except Friday evening or Saturday." He lifted
his hat and backed away.

As they drove away the girl said, "Thank you" and "Good-by," very
sweetly.

"Who is he, Alice? What is he?" asked her mother.

"I don't know. Mr. Keith. He is a gentleman."

As Gordon stood by the roadside and saw the carriage disappear in a haze
of dust, he was oppressed with a curious sense of loneliness. The
isolation of his position seemed to strike him all on a sudden. That
stout, full-voiced woman, with her rich clothes, had interposed between
him and the rest of his kind. She had treated him condescendingly. He
would show her some day who he was. But her daughter! He went off into
a revery.

He turned, and made his way slowly and musingly in the direction of his
home.

A new force had suddenly come into his life, a new land had opened
before him. One young girl had effected it. His school suddenly became a
prison. His field was the world.

As he passed along, scarcely conscious of where he was, he met the very
man of all others he would rather have met--Dr. Balsam. He instantly
informed the Doctor of the accident, and suggested that he had better
hurry on to the Springs.

"A pretty girl, with blue eyes and brown hair?" inquired the Doctor.

"Yes." The color stole into Gordon's cheeks.

"With a silly woman for a mother, who is always talking about her heart
and pats you on the back?"

"I don't know. Yes, I think so."

"I know her. Is the limb broken?" he asked with interest.

"No, I do not think it is; but badly sprained. She fainted from the
pain, I think."

"You say it occurred up on the Ridge?"

"Yes, near the big pines--at the summit."

"Why, how did she get down? There is no road." He was gazing up at the
pine-clad spur above them.

"I helped her down." A little color flushed into his face.

"Ah! You supported her? She can walk on it?"

"Ur--no. I brought her down. I had to bring her. She could not walk--not
a step."

"Oh! ah! I see. I'll hurry on and see how she is."

As he rode off he gave a grunt.

"Humph!" It might have meant any one of several things. Perhaps, what it
did mean was that "Youth is the same the world over, and here is a
chance for this boy to make a fool of himself and he will probably do
it, as I did." As the Doctor jogged on over the rocky road, his brow was
knit in deep reflection; but his thoughts were far away among other
pines on the Piscataqua. That boy's face had turned the dial back nearly
forty years.



CHAPTER VII

MRS. YORKE FINDS A GENTLEMAN

When Mrs. Yorke arrived at the hotel, Dr. Balsam was nowhere to be
found. She was just sending off a messenger to despatch a telegram to
the nearest city for a surgeon, when she saw the Doctor coming up the
hill toward the hotel at a rapid pace.

He tied his horse, and, with his saddle-pockets over his arm, came
striding up the walk. There was something reassuring in the quick, firm
step with which he came toward her. She had not given him credit for so
much energy.

Mrs. Yorke led the way toward her rooms, giving a somewhat highly
colored description of the accident, the Doctor following without a
word, taking off his gloves as he walked. They reached the door, and
Mrs. Yorke flung it open with a flurry.

"Here he is at last, my poor child!" she exclaimed.

The sight of Alice lying on a lounge quite effaced Mrs. Yorke from the
Doctor's mind. The next second he had taken the girl's hand, and holding
it with a touch that would not have crumpled a butterfly's wings, he was
taking a flitting gauge of her pulse. Mrs. Yorke continued to talk
volubly, but the Doctor took no heed of her.

"A little rest with fixation, madam, is all that is necessary," he said
quietly, at length, when he had made an examination. "But it must be
rest, entire rest of limb and body--and mind," he added after a pause.
"Will you ask Mrs. Gates to send me a kettle of hot water as soon as
possible?"

Mrs. Yorke had never been so completely ignored by any physician. She
tossed her head, but she went to get the water.

"So my young man Keith found you and brought you down the Ridge?" said
the Doctor presently to the girl.

"Yes; how do you know?" she asked, her blue eyes wide open with
surprise.

"Never mind; I may tell you next time I come, if you get well quickly,"
he said smiling.

"Who is he?" she asked.

"He is the teacher of the school over the Ridge--what is known as the
Ridge College," said the Doctor, with a smile.

Just at this moment Mrs. Yorke bustled in.

"Alice, I thought the Doctor said you were not to talk."

The Doctor's face wore an amused expression.

"Well, just one more question," said the girl to him. "How much does a
sack of salt weigh?"

"About two hundred pounds. To be accurate,--"

"No wonder he said I was light," laughed the girl.

"Who is a young man named Keith--a school-boy, who lives about here?"
inquired Mrs. Yorke, suddenly.

"The Keiths do not live about here," said the Doctor. "Gordon Keith, to
whom you doubtless refer, is the son of General Keith, who lives in an
adjoining county below the Ridge. His father was our minister during
the war--"

At this moment the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of
Mrs. Gates with the desired kettle of hot water, and the Doctor,
stopping in the midst of his sentence, devoted all of his attention to
his patient.

The confidence which he displayed and the deftness with which he worked
impressed Mrs. Yorke so much that when he was through she said: "Doctor,
I have been wondering how a man like you could be content to settle down
in this mountain wilderness. I know many fashionable physicians in
cities who could not have done for Alice a bit better than you have
done--indeed, nothing like so well--with such simple appliances."

Dr. Balsam's eyes rested on her gravely. "Well, madam, we could not all
be city doctors. These few sheep in the wilderness need a little
shepherding when they get sick. You must reflect also that if we all
went away there would be no one to look after the city people when they
come to our mountain wilderness; they, at least, need good attendance."

By the time Gordon awoke next morning he had determined that he would
see his new acquaintance again. He must see her; he would not allow her
to go out of his life so; she should, at least, know who he was, and
Mrs. Yorke should know, too.

That afternoon, impelled by some strange motive, he took the path over
the Ridge again. It had been a long day and a wearing one. He had tried
Hannibal once more; but his pupils cared less for Hannibal than for the
bumble-bees droning in the window-frame. For some reason the dull
routine of lessons had been duller than usual. The scholars had never
been so stupid. Again and again the face that he had seen rest on his
arm the day before came between him and his page, and when the eyes
opened they were as blue as forget-me-nots. He would rouse himself with
a start and plunge back bravely into the mysteries of physical geography
or of compound fractions, only to find himself, at the first quiet
moment, picking his way through the pines with that white face resting
against his shoulder.

When school was out he declined the invitation of the boys to walk with
them, and settled himself in his chair as though he meant to prepare the
lessons for the next day. After a quarter of an hour, spent mostly in
revery, he rose, put up his books, closed the door, and took the same
path he had followed the day before. As he neared the spot where he had
come on the girl, he almost expected to find her propped against the
rock as he had found her the afternoon before. He was conscious of a
distinct shock of loneliness that she was not there. The woods had never
appeared so empty; the soughing of the pines had never sounded
so dreary.

He threw himself down on the thick brown carpet. He had not felt so
lonely in years. What was he! And what chance did he have! He was alone
in the wilderness. He had been priding himself on being the superior of
those around him, and that strange woman had treated him with
condescension, when he had strained his heart out to get her daughter to
the road safely and without pain.

His eyes rested on the level, pale line of the horizon far below him.
Down there lay all he had ever known and loved. All was changed; his
home belonged to an alien. He turned his face away. On the other side,
the distant mountains lay a mighty rampart across the sky. He wondered
if the Alps could be higher or more beautiful. A line he had been
explaining the day before to his scholars recurred to him: "Beyond those
mountains lies Italy."

Gradually it came to him that he was duller than his scholars. Those who
were the true leaders of men surmounted difficulties. Others had crossed
the mountains to find the Italy of their ambition. Why should not he?
The thought strung him up sharply, and before he knew it he was standing
upright, his face lifted to the sky, his nerves tense, his pulses
beating, and his breath coming quickly. Beyond that blue rim lay the
world. He would conquer and achieve honors and fame, and win back his
old home, and build up again his fortune, and do honor to his name. He
seized his books, and, with one more look at the heights beyond, turned
and strode swiftly along the path.

It was, perhaps, fortunate that the day had been a dull one for both
Mrs. Yorke and Alice. Alice had been confined to her lounge, and after
the first anxiety was over Mrs. Yorke had been inclined to scold her for
her carelessness and the fright she had given her. They had not agreed
about a number of matters. Alice had been talking about her adventure
until Mrs. Yorke had begun to criticise her rescuer as "a spindling
country boy."

"He was strong enough to bring me down the mountain a mile in his arms,"
declared the girl. "He said it was half a mile, but I am sure it was
a mile."

Mrs. Yorke was shocked, and charged Alice with being susceptible enough
to like all men.

"All those who are strong and good-looking," protested Alice.

Their little difference had now been made up, and Alice, who had been
sitting silent, with a look of serious reflection on her face, said:

"Mamma, why don't you invite him over to dinner?"

Mrs. Yorke gave an exclamation of surprise.

"Why, Alice, we know nothing about him."

But the girl was insistent.

"Why, mamma, I am sure he is a gentleman. Dr. Balsam said he was one of
the best people about here, and his father was a clergyman. Besides, he
is very interesting. His father was in the war; I believe he was
a general."

Mrs. Yorke pondered a moment, her pen in the air. Her thoughts flew to
New York and her acquaintances there. Their view was her gauge.

"Well," she said doubtfully, "perhaps, later I will; there is no one
here whom we know except Mrs. Nailor. I have heard that the people are
very interesting if you can get at them. I'll invite him first to
luncheon Saturday, and see how he is."

It is, doubtless, just as well that none of us has the magic mirror
which we used to read of in our childhood, which showed what any one we
wished to know about was doing. It would, no doubt, cause many
perplexities from which, in our ignorance, we are happily free. 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.



CHAPTER VIII

MR. KEITH'S IDEALS

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 and sorrow that had been visited upon the victims of a foolish
pride and a selfish ambition. Though he did not confide to her that it
was of himself he spoke, the girl's instinct instantly told her that it
was his own experience that he related, and her interest was
deeply excited.

"Did she ever marry, Doctor?" she asked eagerly. "Oh, I hope she did
not. I might forgive her if she did not; but if she married I would
never forgive her!"

The Doctor's eyes, as they rested on her eager face, had a kindly
expression in them, and a look of amusement lurked there also.

"No; she never married," he said. "Nor did he."

"Oh, I am glad of that," she exclaimed; and then more softly added, "I
know he did not."

Dr. Balsam gazed at her calmly. He did not pursue the subject further.
He thought he had told his story in such a way as to convey the moral
without disclosing that he spoke of himself. Yet she had discovered it
instantly. He wondered if she had seen also the moral he intended
to convey.

Alice Yorke was able to walk now, and many an afternoon Gordon Keith
invited her to stroll with him on the mountain-side or up the Ridge,
drawing her farther and farther as her strength returned.

The Spring is a dangerous season for a young man and a pretty girl to be
thrown closely together for the first time, and the budding woods are a
perilous pasture for their browsing thoughts. It was not without some
insight that the ancient poets pictured dryads as inhabitants of the
woods, and made the tinkling springs and rippling streams the
abiding-places of their nymphs.