The Mettle of the Pasture

The Mettle of the Pasture, by
James Lane Allen

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Lane Allen
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Title: The Mettle of the Pasture
Author: James Lane Allen
Release Date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #12482]
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
METTLE OF THE PASTURE***
E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE METTLE OF THE PASTURE
BY

JAMES LANE ALLEN
Author of "The Choir Invisible," "A Kentucky Cardinal," etc., etc.
New York, 1903

To My Sister

PART FIRST
I
She did not wish any supper and she sank forgetfully back into the
stately oak chair. One of her hands lay palm upward on her white lap;
in the other, which drooped over the arm of the chair, she clasped a
young rose dark red amid its leaves--an inverted torch of love.
Old-fashioned glass doors behind her reached from a high ceiling to the
floor; they had been thrown open and the curtains looped apart. Stone
steps outside led downward to the turf in the rear of the house. This turf
covered a lawn unroughened by plant or weed; but over it at majestic
intervals grew clumps of gray pines and dim-blue, ever wintry firs.
Beyond lawn and evergreens a flower garden bloomed; and beyond the
high fence enclosing this, tree-tops and house-tops of the town could be
seen; and beyond these--away in the west--the sky was naming now
with the falling sun.
A few bars of dusty gold hung poised across the darkening spaces of
the supper room. Ripples of the evening air, entering through the
windows, flowed over her, lifting the thick curling locks at the nape of
her neck, creeping forward over her shoulders and passing along her
round arms under the thin fabric of her sleeves.
They aroused her, these vanishing beams of the day, these arriving
breezes of the night; they became secret invitations to escape from the

house into the privacy of the garden, where she could be alone with
thoughts of her great happiness now fast approaching.
A servant entered noiselessly, bringing a silver bowl of frozen cream.
Beside this, at the head of the table before her grandmother, he placed
scarlet strawberries gathered that morning under white dews. She
availed herself of the slight interruption and rose with an apology; but
even when love bade her go, love also bade her linger; she could scarce
bear to be with them, but she could scarce bear to be alone. She paused
at her grandmother's chair to stroke the dry bronze puffs on her
temples--a unique impulse; she hesitated compassionately a moment
beside her aunt, who had never married; then, passing around to the
opposite side of the table, she took between her palms the sunburnt
cheeks of a youth, her cousin, and buried her own tingling cheek in his
hair. Instinct at that moment drew her most to him because he was
young as she was young, having life and love before him as she had;
only, for him love stayed far in the future; for her it came to-night.
When she had crossed the room and reached the hall, she paused and
glanced back, held by the tension of cords which she dreaded to break.
She felt that nothing would ever be the same again in the home of her
childhood. Until marriage she would remain under its dear honored
roof, and there would be no outward interruption of its familiar routine;
but for her all the bonds of life would have become loosened from old
ties and united in him alone whom this evening she was to choose as
her lot and destiny. Under the influence of that fresh fondness,
therefore, which wells up so strangely within us at the thought of
parting from home and home people, even though we may not greatly
care for them, she now stood gazing at the picture they formed as
though she were already calling it back through the distances of
memory and the changes of future years.
They, too, had shifted their positions and were looking at her with one
undisguised expression of pride and love; and they smiled as she
smiled radiantly back at them, waving a last adieu with her spray of
rose and turning quickly in a dread of foolish tears.
"Isabel."

It was the youthful voice of her grandmother. She faced them again
with a little frown of feigned impatience.
"If you are going into the garden, throw something around your
shoulders."
"Thank you,