A Lost Lady

by Willa Cather

and he liked being ugly.

  He began telling the boys that it was too hot to hunt now, but

  later he meant to steal down to the marsh, where the ducks came at

  sundown, and bag a few. "I can make off across the corn fields

  before the old Cap sees me. He's not much on the run."

  "He'll complain to your father."

  "A whoop my father cares!" The speaker's restless eyes were

  looking up through the branches. "See that woodpecker tapping;

  don't mind us a bit. That's nerve!"

  "They are protected here, so they're not afraid," said precise

  George.

  "Hump! They'll spoil the old man's grove for him. That tree's

  full of holes already. Wouldn't he come down easy, now!"

  Niel and George Adams sat up. "Don't you dare shoot here, you'll

  get us all into trouble."

  "She'd come right down from the house," cried Ed Elliott.

  "Let her come, stuck-up piece! Who's talking about shooting,

  anyway? There's more ways of killing dogs than choking them with

  butter."

  At this effrontery the boys shot amazed glances at one another, and

  the brown Weaver twins broke simultaneously into giggles and rolled

  over on the turf.

  But Ivy seemed unaware that he was regarded as being especially

  resourceful where dogs were concerned. He drew from his pocket a

  metal sling-shot and some round bits of gravel. "I won't kill it.

  I'll just surprise it, so we can have a look at it."

  "Bet you won't hit it!"

  "Bet I will!" He fitted the stone to the leather, squinted, and

  let fly. Sure enough, the woodpecker dropped at his feet. He

  threw his heavy black felt hat over it. Ivy never wore a straw

  hat, even in the hottest weather. "Now wait. He'll come to.

  You'll hear him flutter in a minute."

  "It ain't a he, anyhow. It's a female. Anybody would know that,"

  said Niel contemptuously, annoyed that this unpopular boy should

  come along and spoil their afternoon. He held the fate of his

  uncle's spaniel against Ivy Peters.

  "All right, Miss Female," said Ivy carelessly, intent upon a

  project of his own. He took from his pocket a little red leather

  box, and when he opened it the boys saw that it contained curious

  little instruments: tiny sharp knife blades, hooks, curved needles,

  a saw, a blow-pipe, and scissors. "Some of these I got with a

  taxidermy outfit from the Youth's Companion, and some I made

  myself." He got stiffly down on his knees,--his joints seemed

  disinclined to bend at all,--and listened beside his hat. "She's

  as lively as a cricket," he announced. Thrusting his hand suddenly

  under the brim, he brought out the startled bird. It was not

  bleeding, and did not seem to be crippled.

  "Now, you watch, and I'll show you something," said Ivy. He held

  the woodpecker's head in a vice made of his thumb and forefinger,

  enclosing its panting body with his palm. Quick as a flash, as if

  it were a practised trick, with one of those tiny blades he slit

  both the eyes that glared in the bird's stupid little head, and

  instantly released it.

  The woodpecker rose in the air with a whirling, corkscrew motion,

  darted to the right, struck a tree-trunk,--to the left, and struck

  another. Up and down, backward and forward among the tangle of

  branches it flew, raking its feathers, falling and recovering

  itself. The boys stood watching it, indignant and uncomfortable,

  not knowing what to do. They were not especially sensitive; Thad

  was always on hand when there was anything doing at the slaughter

  house, and the Blum boys lived by killing things. They wouldn't

  have believed they could be so upset by a hurt woodpecker. There

  was something wild and desperate about the way the darkened

  creature beat its wings in the branches, whirling in the sunlight

  and never seeing it, always thrusting its head up and shaking it,

  as a bird does when it is drinking. Presently it managed to get

  its feet on the same limb where it had been struck, and seemed to

  recognize that perch. As if it had learned something by its

  bruises, it pecked and crept its way along the branch and

  disappeared into its own hole.

  "There," Niel Herbert exclaimed between his teeth, "if I can get it

  now, I can kill it and put it out of its misery. Let me on your

  back, Rhein."

  Rheinhold was the tallest, and he obediently bent his bony back.

  The trunk of a cottonwood tree is hard to climb; the bark is rough,

  and the branches begin a long way up. Niel tore his trousers and

  scratched his bare legs smartly before he got to the first fork.

  After recovering breath, he wound his way up toward the woodpecker's

  hole, which was inconveniently high. He was almost there, his

  companions below thought him quite safe, when he suddenly lost his

  balance, turned a somersault in the air, and bumped down on the

  grass at their feet. There he lay without moving.

  "Run for water!"

  "Run for Mrs. Forrester! Ask her for whiskey."

  "No," said George Adams, "let's carry him up to the house. She

  will know what to do."

  "That's sense," said Ivy Peters. As he was much bigger and

  stronger than any of the others, he lifted Niel's limp body and

  started up the hill. It had occurred to him that this would be a

  fine chance to get inside the Forresters' house and see what it was

  like, and this he had always wanted to do.

  Mary, the cook, saw them coming from the kitchen window, and ran

  for her mistress. Captain Forrester was in Kansas City that day.

  Mrs. Forrester came to the back door. "What's happened? It's

  Niel, too! Bring him in this way, please."

  Ivy Peters followed her, keeping his eyes open, and the rest

  trooped after him,--all but the Blum boys, who knew that their

  place was outside the kitchen door. Mrs. Forrester led the way

  through the butler's pantry, the dining-room, the back parlour, to

  her own bedroom. She threw down the white counterpane, and Ivy

  laid Niel upon the sheets. Mrs. Forrester was concerned, but not

  frightened.

  "Mary, will you bring the brandy from the sideboard. George,

  telephone Dr. Dennison to come over at once. Now you other boys

  run out on the front porch and wait quietly. There are too many of

  you in here." She knelt by the bed, putting brandy between Niel's

  white lips with a teaspoon. The little boys withdrew, only Ivy

  Peters remained standing in the back parlour, just outside the

  bedroom door, his arms folded across his chest, taking in his

  surroundings with bold, unblinking eyes.

  Mrs. Forrester glanced at him over her shoulder. "Will you wait on

  the porch, please? You are older than the others, and if anything

  is needed I can call on you."

  Ivy cursed himself, but he had to go. There was something final

  about her imperious courtesy,--high-and-mighty, he called it. He

  had intended to sit down in the biggest leather chair and cross his

  legs and make himself at home; but he found himself on the front

  porch, put out by that delicately modulated
voice as effectually as

  if he had been kicked out by the brawniest tough in town.

  Niel opened his eyes and looked wonderingly about the big, half-

  darkened room, full of heavy, old-fashioned walnut furniture. He

  was lying on a white bed with ruffled pillow shams, and Mrs.

  Forrester was kneeling beside him, bathing his forehead with

  cologne. Bohemian Mary stood behind her, with a basin of water.

  "Ouch, my arm!" he muttered, and the perspiration broke out on his

  face.

  "Yes, dear, I'm afraid it's broken. Don't move. Dr. Dennison will

  be here in a few minutes. It doesn't hurt very much, does it?"

  "No'm," he said faintly. He was in pain, but he felt weak and

  contented. The room was cool and dusky and quiet. At his house

  everything was horrid when one was sick. . . . What soft fingers

  Mrs. Forrester had, and what a lovely lady she was. Inside the

  lace ruffle of her dress he saw her white throat rising and falling

  so quickly. Suddenly she got up to take off her glittering rings,--

  she had not thought of them before,--shed them off her fingers

  with a quick motion as if she were washing her hands, and dropped

  them into Mary's broad palm. The little boy was thinking that he

  would probably never be in so nice a place again. The windows went

  almost down to the baseboard, like doors, and the closed green

  shutters let in streaks of sunlight that quivered on the polished

  floor and the silver things on the dresser. The heavy curtains

  were looped back with thick cords, like ropes. The marble-topped

  wash-stand was as big as a sideboard. The massive walnut furniture

  was all inlaid with pale-coloured woods. Niel had a scroll-saw,

  and this inlay interested him.

  "There, he looks better now, doesn't he, Mary?" Mrs. Forrester ran

  her fingers through his black hair and lightly kissed him on the

  forehead. Oh, how sweet, how sweet she smelled!

  "Wheels on the bridge; it's Doctor Dennison. Go and show him in,

  Mary."

  Dr. Dennison set Niel's arm and took him home in his buggy. Home

  was not a pleasant place to go to; a frail egg-shell house, set off

  on the edge of the prairie where people of no consequence lived.

  Except for the fact that he was Judge Pommeroy's nephew, Niel would

  have been one of the boys to whom Mrs. Forrester merely nodded

  brightly as she passed. His father was a widower. A poor relation,

  a spinster from Kentucky, kept house for them, and Niel thought she

  was probably the worst housekeeper in the world. Their house was

  usually full of washing in various stages of incompletion,--tubs

  sitting about with linen soaking,--and the beds were "aired" until

  any hour in the afternoon when Cousin Sadie happened to think of

  making them up. She liked to sit down after breakfast and read

  murder trials, or peruse a well-worn copy of "St. Elmo." Sadie was

  a good-natured thing and was always running off to help a neighbour,

  but Niel hated to have anyone come to see them. His father was at

  home very little, spent all his time at his office. He kept the

  county abstract books and made farm loans. Having lost his own

  property, he invested other people's money for them. He was a

  gentle, agreeable man, young, good-looking, with nice manners, but

  Niel felt there was an air of failure and defeat about his family.

  He clung to his maternal uncle, Judge Pommeroy, white-whiskered and

  portly, who was Captain Forrester's lawyer and a friend of all the

  great men who visited the Forresters. Niel was proud, like his

  mother; she died when he was five years old. She had hated the

  West, and used haughtily to tell her neighbours that she would never

  think of living anywhere but in Fayette county, Kentucky; that they

  had only come to Sweet Water to make investments and to "turn the

  crown into the pound." By that phrase she was still remembered,

  poor lady.

  THREE

  For the next few years Niel saw very little of Mrs. Forrester. She

  was an excitement that came and went with summer. She and her

  husband always spent the winter in Denver and Colorado Springs,--

  left Sweet Water soon after Thanksgiving and did not return until

  the first of May. He knew that Mrs. Forrester liked him, but she

  hadn't much time for growing boys. When she had friends staying

  with her, and gave a picnic supper for them, or a dance in the

  grove on a moonlit night, Niel was always invited. Coming and

  going along the road to the marsh with the Blum boys, he sometimes

  met the Captain driving visitors over in the democrat wagon, and he

  heard about these people from Black Tom, Judge Pommeroy's faithful

  negro servant, who went over to wait on the table for Mrs.

  Forrester when she had a dinner party.

  Then came the accident which cut short the Captain's career as a

  roadbuilder. After that fall with his horse, he lay ill at the

  Antlers, in Colorado Springs, all winter. In the summer, when Mrs.

  Forrester brought him home to Sweet Water, he still walked with a

  cane. He had grown much heavier, seemed encumbered by his own

  bulk, and never suggested taking a contract for the railroad again.

  He was able to work in his garden, trimmed his snowball bushes and

  lilac hedges, devoted a great deal of time to growing roses. He

  and his wife still went away for the winter, but each year the

  period of their absence grew shorter.

  All this while the town of Sweet Water was changing. Its future no

  longer looked bright. Successive crop failures had broken the

  spirit of the farmers. George Adams and his family had gone back

  to Massachusetts, disillusioned about the West. One by one the

  other gentlemen ranchers followed their example. The Forresters

  now had fewer visitors. The Burlington was "drawing in its horns,"

  as people said, and the railroad officials were not stopping off at

  Sweet Water so often,--were more inclined to hurry past a town

  where they had sunk money that would never come back.

  Niel Herbert's father was one of the first failures to be crowded

  to the wall. He closed his little house, sent his cousin Sadie

  back to Kentucky, and went to Denver to accept an office position.

  He left Niel behind to read law in the office with his uncle. Not

  that Niel had any taste for the law, but he liked being with Judge

  Pommeroy, and he might as well stay there as anywhere, for the

  present. The few thousand dollars his mother had left him would

  not be his until he was twenty-one.

  Niel fitted up a room for himself behind the suite which the Judge

  retained for his law offices, on the second floor of the most

  pretentious brick block in town. There he lived with monastic

  cleanliness and severity, glad to be rid of his cousin and her

  inconsequential housewifery, and resolved to remain a bachelor,

  like his uncle. He took care of the offices, which meant that he

  did the janitor work, and arranged them exactly to suit his taste,

  making the rooms so attractive that all the Judge's friends, and

  especially Captain Forrester, dropped i
n there to talk oftener than

  ever.

  The Judge was proud of his nephew. Niel was now nineteen, a tall,

  straight, deliberate boy. His features were clear-cut, his grey

  eyes, so dark that they looked black under his long lashes, were

  rather moody and challenging. The world did not seem over-bright

  to young people just then. His reserve, which did not come from

  embarrassment or vanity, but from a critical habit of mind, made

  him seem older than he was, and a little cold.

  One winter afternoon, only a few days before Christmas, Niel sat

  writing in the back office, at the long table where he usually

  worked or trifled, surrounded by the Judge's fine law library and

  solemn steel engravings of statesmen and jurists. His uncle was at

  his desk in the front office, engaged in a friendly consultation

  with one of his country clients. Niel, greatly bored with the

  notes he was copying, was trying to invent an excuse for getting

  out on the street, when he became aware of light footsteps coming

  rapidly down the outside corridor. The door of the front office

  opened, he heard his uncle rise quickly to his feet, and, at the

  same moment, heard a woman's laugh,--a soft, musical laugh which

  rose and descended like a suave scale. He turned in his screw

  chair so that he could look over his shoulder through the double

  doors into the front room. Mrs. Forrester stood there, shaking her

  muff at the Judge and the bewildered Swede farmer. Her quick eye

  lighted upon a bottle of Bourbon and two glasses on the desk among

  the papers.

  "Is that the way you prepare your cases, Judge? What an example

  for Niel!" She peeped through the door and nodded to the boy as he

  rose.

  He remained in the back room, however, watching her while she

  declined the chair the Judge pushed toward her and made a sign of

  refusal when he politely pointed to the Bourbon. She stood beside

  his desk in her long sealskin coat and cap, a crimson scarf showing

  above the collar, a little brown veil with spots tied over her

  eyes. The veil did not in the least obscure those beautiful eyes,

  dark and full of light, set under a low white forehead and arching

  eyebrows. The frosty air had brought no colour to her cheeks,--her

  skin had always the fragrant, crystalline whiteness of white

  lilacs. Mrs. Forrester looked at one, and one knew that she was

  bewitching. It was instantaneous, and it pierced the thickest

  hide. The Swede farmer was now grinning from ear to ear, and he,

  too, had shuffled to his feet. There could be no negative

  encounter, however slight, with Mrs. Forrester. If she merely

  bowed to you, merely looked at you, it constituted a personal

  relation. Something about her took hold of one in a flash; one

  became acutely conscious of her, of her fragility and grace, of her

  mouth which could say so much without words; of her eyes, lively,

  laughing, intimate, nearly always a little mocking.

  "Will you and Niel dine with us tomorrow evening, Judge? And will

  you lend me Tom? We've just had a wire. The Ogdens are stopping

  over with us. They've been East to bring the girl home from

  school,--she's had mumps or something. They want to get home for

  Christmas, but they will stop off for two days. Probably Frank

  Ellinger will come on from Denver."

  "No prospect can afford me such pleasure as that of dining with

  Mrs. Forrester," said the Judge ponderously.

  "Thank you!" she bowed playfully and turned toward the double

  doors. "Niel, could you leave your work long enough to drive me

  home? Mr. Forrester has been detained at the bank."

  Niel put on his wolfskin coat. Mrs. Forrester took him by his

  shaggy sleeve and went with him quickly down the long corridor and

  the narrow stairs to the street.

  At the hitch-bar stood her cutter, looking like a painted toy among

  the country sleds and wagons. Niel tucked the buffalo robes about