Jinnie went to the door.

"Go now," she said, with proudly lifted head, "and I hope I'll never see you again as long as I live."

Then Molly went away, and for a long time the girl stood, with her back to the door, weeping out the sorrow of a torn young soul. She had promised to give up Theodore completely. She had lost her love, her friend, her sweetheart. Once more she had surrendered to Bobbie Grandoken the best she had to give.

Later, when the cobbler and his wife were crooning over their little son, Jinnie, with breaking heart, decided she would leave Bellaire at once, as Molly had asked her. She must never think of Theodore again.

She'd renounced him, firmly believing he still loved her; she'd promised to depart without seeing him, but surely, oh, a little farewell note, with the a.s.surances of her grat.i.tude, would not be breaking that promise.

So, until Peggy carried the baby away to bed, the girl composed a letter to Theodore, pathetic in its terseness. She also wrote to Molly, telling her she had decided to go back to Mottville immediately.

When she had finished the letters, she took her usual place on the stool at the cobbler's feet.

"Lafe," she ventured, wearily, "some time I'm going to tell you everything that's happened since I last saw you, but not to-night!"

"Whenever you're ready, honey," acquiesced Lafe.

"And I've been thinking of something else, dear. I want to go to Mottville."

Lafe's face paled.

"I don't see how Peg an' me'll live without you, Jinnie."

Jinnie touched the hand smoothing her curls.

"I couldn't live without you either, Lafe, and I won't try----"

The cobbler bent and kissed her.

"I won't try, dear," she repeated. "You must all live with me, although I'll go first to arrange things a little. We'll never worry about money any more, dearest."

"And Mr. King," Lafe faltered, quite disturbed, "what about him?"

"I shan't ever see him again," Jinnie stated sadly. "I've just written him, and he'll understand."

Lafe knew by the finality of her tones that she did not care to discuss Theodore that night.

CHAPTER XLIX

BACK HOME

Late the next afternoon Jinnie left the train at Mottville station, her fiddle box in one hand, and a suitcase in the other. She stood a moment watching the train as it disappeared. It had carried her from the man she loved, brought her away from Bellaire, the city of her hopes. One bitter fact reared itself above all others. The world of which Theodore King had been the integral part was dead to her. What was she to do without him, without Bobbie to pet and love? But a feeling of thanksgiving pervaded her when she remembered she still had Lafe's smile, the baby to croon over, and dear, stoical Peggy. They would live with her in the old home. It was preferable to staying in Bellaire, where her heart would be tortured daily. Rather the brooding hills, the singing pines, and all the wildness of nature, which was akin to the struggle within her, and perhaps in the future she might gather up the broken threads of her life.

She shook as if attacked with ague as she came within sight of the gaunt farmhouse, and the broken windows and hanging doors gave her a sense of everlasting decay.

Below her in the valley lay the blue lake, a shining spread of water, quiet and silent, here and there upon it the shadow of a floating, fluffy cloud. She listened to the nagging chatter of the squirrels, mingled with the fluttering of the forest birds high above her head.

As she stood on the hill, the only human being in all the wilderness about, in fancy she seemed to be at the very top of the world.

She heard the old familiar voices of the mourning pines, and remembered their soothing magic, and a stinging reproach swept over her at the thought of her forgetfulness of them. They had been friends when no other friends were near. Along with the flood of memories came Matty's ghastly ghost stories and her past belief that her mother's spirit hovered near her.

She went through the lane leading to the house and paused under the trees. Presently she placed her violin box and suitcase on the gra.s.s and lay down beside them. In the eaves of the house a dove cooed his late afternoon love to his mate, and Jinnie, because she was very young and very much in love, brought Theodore before her with that lingering retrospection that takes possession in such sensuous moments. She could feel again the hot tremor of his hands as they clung to hers, and she bent her head in shame at the acute, electrifying sensations. He belonged to another woman; he no longer belonged to her. She must conquer her love for him, and at that moment every desire to study, every thought of work seemed insipid and useless. The whole majestic beauty of the scene, her sudden coming into a great deal of money, did not add to her happiness. She would gladly give it all up to be again with her loves of yesterday. But that could not be! The future lay in a hard, straight line before her.

She was striving against a ceaseless, resisting force,--the force of her whole pa.s.sionate nature.

With their usual reluctance, the things of night at length crept forth. Jinnie felt some of them as they touched her hands, her face, and moved on. One of the countless birds fluttered low, as if frightened at the advancing dark, brushed her cheek, then winged on and up and was lost in the tree above her. Somewhere deep in the gloom shrouding the little graveyard came the ghostly flutter of an owl.

Jinnie was flat on her back, and how long she lay thus she could never afterward remember, but it was until the stars appeared and the moon formed queer fantastic pictures, like frost upon a window pane. In solemn review pa.s.sed the days,--from that awful night when she had left her father dead upon the floor in the house nearby to the present moment. She glanced at the windows. They looked back at her like square, darkening eyes.

She wondered dully how that wee star away off there could blink so peacefully in its nightly course when just below it beat a heart that hurt like hers. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, long black fingers were drawing dark pictures across the sky. A drop of rain fell upon her face, but still she did not move. Then, like rows of soldiers, the low clouds drew slowly together, and the stars softly wept themselves out.

Suddenly, from the other side of the lake, the thunder rolled up, and with the distant boom came the thought of Lafe's infinite faith, and the memory fell upon Jinnie like a benediction from G.o.d's dark sky.

She arose from the gra.s.s, took the fiddle box and bag, and walked to the porch. She went in through the broken door. It was dark, too dark to see much, and from the leather case she took a box of matches and a candle. Memories crowded down upon her thick and fast. In the kitchen, which was bare, she could mark the place where Matty used to sit and where her own chair had been.

The long stairs that led from the bas.e.m.e.nt to the upper floor yawned black in the gloom. Candle and fiddle in hand, Jinnie mounted them and halted before the unopened door. Somehow it seemed as if she would find before the grate the long, thin body of her dead father, and she distinctly remembered the spindle fire-flames falling in golden yellow licks upon his face. In her imagination she could again see the flake-like ashes, thrown out from the smoldering fire, rise grey to the ceiling, then descend silently over him like a pale shroud.

After this hesitation, she slowly turned the handle of the door and walked in. The only things remaining in the room were a broken table and chair. She placed the violin on the floor and the candle on the table. Then with a shudder Jinnie drew from her blouse an unopened letter, studying it long in the flickering light. It had been written in this very room three years before, and within its sealed pages lay the whole secret which now none but the dead knew.

It took no effort on her part to bring back to her memory Jordan Morse's handsome face and his rock-grey eyes, eyes like Bobbie's. He and Bobbie had gone away together. She touched the corner of the envelope to the candle, watching it roll over in a brown curl as it burned.

"He's happy now," she murmured. "He's got his baby and Lafe's angels."

Then she gathered up the handful of ashes, opened the window, and threw them out. The hands of the night wind s.n.a.t.c.hed them as they fell and carried them swiftly away through the rain.

On her way to the attic stairs, she stood a minute before the window, awe-stricken. From the north the great storm was advancing, and from among the hills rolled the distant roar of thunder. It brought to her mind the night when Peggy had gone into the life-valley and brought back Lafe's baby; and she remembered, too, with a sob, Blind Bobbie, and how she missed him. Ah, it was a lonely, haunted little spirit that crept up the dark narrow stairs to the garret!

Only that the room seemed lower and more stuffy, it, too, was much the same as she had left it. She brushed aside some silvery cobwebs, raised the window, and sat down on a dilapidated trunk. On the floor at her feet, almost covered with dust, was the old fairy book about the famous kings. She picked it up mechanically. On the first page was the man in the red suit, with the overhanging nose and fat body,--he whom she at one time believed to be related to Theodore.

Again she was overwhelmed with her misery. Theodore belonged to another woman, and Jinnie, alone with her past and an uncertain future, sat staring dry-eyed into the stormy night.

CHAPTER L

"G.o.d MADE YOU MINE"

"I haven't seen any papers for three days, Molly. What's become of them all?"

Theodore and Molly were sitting in the waning sunshine, the many-colored autumn leaves drifting silently past them to form a varied carpet over the gra.s.s.

All fear had now left the woman. She had Jinnie's promise not to see Theodore, and he had apparently forgotten there ever was such a girl in the world.

"I'd really like to see the papers," repeated Theodore. "Dear me, how glad I am to be so well!"

"We're all glad," whispered Molly, with bright eyes.