CHAPTER V.
Sally, the small bondmaiden of Mrs. Didymus, stood at the garden gate of the parsonage.
No smoke curled up from the parsonage chimney, for the kitchen fire was out, Sally being much too occupied with other affairs to attend to her work that day. Work, in Sally’s estimation, was the one superfluous thing in the world, and that she should be harassed with sweeping, and tormented with dish-washing, seemed to her an extraordinary and unjust dispensation. Sally had passed the first twelve years of her life in the slums, and her unregenerate soul yearned to return to the delights of dirt and idleness.
“Wouldn’t I just love t’ go back t’ Blueberry Alley!” she said to Mrs. Didymus. “Wouldn’t I just! My! I’d preach t’ ’em!”
Mrs. Didymus’ regret over Sally’s first aspiration was quite lost sight of in her delight at the latter idea. She thought of “the little maid of Samaria,” and smiled benignly upon Sally.
“That is well said,” she answered; “some day, perhaps, you may carry the tidings. Little childrenhave before now worked miracles. But over-confidence is a dangerous thing. You must not be too hasty, Sally; do you feel prepared?”
“Do I? Don’t I jest? Sakes, I could tell ’em more about Hellfire and Damnation than ever they’ve heard of in all their born days.Do I feel prepared?Ruther! I’d just like old Lank Smith t’ step up t’ me, and begin aswearin’, I’d let him hear a word or two that’d astonish him. He thinks he can swear!”
“Sally,” said poor gentle Mrs. Didymus, hardly able to believe her ears, “Sally! Never let me hear you talk so again. The gospel is a Gospel of Peace.”
“Gorspel o’ Peace,” said Sally, looking at Mrs. Didymus pityingly, “Gorspel o’ Peace! Laws, mum, you are green! What chance d’ye think a Gorspel o’ Peace ’ud have in Blueberry Alley? It’s night sticks they needs there. Why, when I was a kid” (Sally had turned thirteen, but talked as if she was fifty) “there was missionars out o’ count came to Blueberry Alley, but they mostly left a sight quicker than they came. There was a young priest came there, though, and the first day he went through the Alley the boys started t’ have fun with him. Scrappin’ Johnstone picked up a handful of dirt and hit him in the ear with it, and the priest got very pale, and he sez, ‘It sez in the Scripter t’ turn the other cheek t’ the smiter,’ and with that he turnedhisself round, and Scrappin’ Johnstone, thinking he had got a snap, let him have some soft mud on the other side. The whole Alley was on hand by that time. I was there. I mind I had a row myself a minnet after; but, anyhow, after Johnstone throwed the second handful he stood grinning in the priest’s face, and the priest he got sickly white, and sez very quiet like, ‘the Scripter sez t’ turn the other cheek t’ the smiter, and I’ve done that,’ sez he, ‘but,’ sez he, ‘it don’t say nothin’ as to what you’re t’ do after that,’ and with that he pitched into Scrappin’ Johnstone. He batted him over the head, and clipped him on the jaw, and biffed him back of the ear, and knocked him down, and stood him up and knocked him down again, then he laid him in the gutter, and stood over him, and told him he should behave hisself more gentle t’ folks, and that fightin’ was a sin, and that he shouldn’t take advantage of strangers, and then he gave Johnstone and the Alley an invite t’ come round and hear him preach in the chapel. The whole Alley’s Catholic now. Gorspel o’ Peace! That ain’t the sort o’ pursuasion Blueberry Alley needs.”
Mrs. Didymus groaned in spirit, and held her peace, absolutely afraid of Sally’s reminiscences. Sally and her ways were a terrible trial to the parsonage household, but good Mrs. Didymus could not contemplate the idea of permitting Sally to return to such an evil place as Blueberry Alley.
Sally was not well regarded in Dole, at least by the elect.
“One man can take a horse to the water, but twenty can’t make him drink,” was a saying frequently applied to Sally. This, being interpreted, meant that Mrs. Didymus could bring Sally to church, but that her authority, reinforced by the Dole frowns in the aggregate, could not make her behave herself whilst there.
“Sally,” Mrs. Didymus would say, striving to temper severity with persuasive gentleness, “Sally! why do you behave so?”
“I dunno, mum,” Sally would reply reflectively.
“But why don’t you try to do better? Mrs. Ranger was terribly shocked by you to-day; she never took her eyes off our pew. What were you doing?”
“Nuthin’; she stared at me, so I stared at her, and now and then I’d cross my eyes at her for variety. Laws! I had the greatest mind in the world t’ get up and turn round so’s she could see my back. She seemed anxious t’ look clean through me. Mrs. Ranger! Who’s she I’d like t’ know? I’d rather be a door-keeper in thy house, than eat fresh doughnuts with Mrs. Ranger,” concluded Sally, piously loyal.
“Sally,” said Mrs. Didymus, forgetting the main issue in the magnitude of the new offence, “that sounds terribly profane. I know you don’t mean to be so, but don’t use Scripture words like that.”
“You’re tired, mum, go and lie down, and I’ll cover you up,” said Sally, imperturbably.
“But, Sally, I’m very serious about this.”
“Yes, I know, mum. Your head’s real bad, ain’t it? Lie down and I’ll make you a cup of tea. Would you like a hot soapstone to your feet?”
Mrs. Didymus desired Sally’s sanctification—she was offered hot soapstone for her feet.
Sally’s assumption that rebuke sprang from illness was a very baffling thing to contend with, and Mrs. Didymus usually retired from the discussion beaten, to torment herself by wondering miserably if she was doing her duty by Sally.
If that worthy was not high in the estimation of the elders in Dole, she at least reigned supreme over the children. The bad ones she fought with and overcame, and the good ones she demoralized.
When Ted Ranger endeavoured to amuse himself by pulling Sally’s tow-coloured hair, he received such a scratching that he never forgot it, nor did the village for some time to come, for he bore Sally’s sign-manual upon his cheeks for weeks. When Mary Shinar’s fifteen-year-old brother heard of this, and deigned to consider Sally a foe worthy of his prowess, the whole school gathered to watch the combat which ensued promptly when Jed Shinar called her a “Charity Orphan.”
Sally precipitated herself upon him with such fury that he nearly fled from the first onslaught, and wasextremely glad when the appearance of Mr. Didymus put a stop to the proceedings.
Jed’s nose was bleeding, and mentally he was considerably flustered. Sally’s hair was on end and her clothes were torn, but her self-possession was intact.
She retreated, led by the scandalized Mr. Didymus, but her fighting blood was up, and she called out opprobrious epithets to Jed till she was out of hearing—compliments which Jed’s inherent and cultivated respect for the preacher forbade his returning in kind.
“He called me a Charity Orphing,” she vouchsafed in explanation, when haled before Mrs. Didymus. “Now I know I’m a orphing, and I’m glad of it. Fathers and motherses mostly whacks the life out of you. But I won’t have no freckle-faced kid calling me a ‘Charity Orphing!’ Not if I’m well.”
Mr. and Mrs. Didymus remembered the gruesome stories of demoniac possession, and breathed more freely when Sally left the room.
Upon the day of poor Len Simpson’s funeral, Sally swung in luxurious idleness on the parsonage gate. Mrs. Didymus had gone early to the house of mourning.
Sally’s tow-coloured hair, which was kept cropped to within five inches of her head, stood out like quills upon the fretful porcupine. Ever since Sally had seen a stray circus poster, with the picture of the beautiful Albino lady, with her outstanding locks, she had determined to arrange her own coiffure inlike manner, upon the first favourable opportunity. So this morning she had rubbed her hair well with yellow soap, and combed it straight out, with a result which surpassed her anticipations.
About her waist there was a line of more or less white material. This marked the hiatus between her skirt and its bodice—a peculiarity of Sally’sensemble. When she stooped over, this white strip widened, giving one a horrible premonition that she was about to break asunder. When she stood erect, it frilled out around her like a misplaced ruff. Sally had bandied words amiably with every one who passed to the funeral, and when Sidney Martin almost stood still in his astonishment at her appearance, she was ready to greet him affably and volubly.
“Hello!” she said. “You’re the Boston chap that prayed the rain down, aren’t you?”
Sidney coloured quickly. The sting of his thoughts pressed home by thegamine’simpertinent speech.
“Oh, don’t be bashful,” said Sally; “Mrs. Didymus says it was a powerful effort!” She uttered the last two words with impish precision.
“And who are you?” asked Sidney, feeling he must carry the war into the other camp.
“Me—well, you ain’t been long in Dole, or you’d know me. I’m the maid of all works at the parson’s.” Then she harked back to the old theme. “So you really prayed in the church. My! You don’t look as if you used bad words. Say, I thought there wassome acters comin’ t’ the funeral? That’s what I fixed myself up for. Say, how d’ye like my hair?” Sidney, despite his sad thoughts, could not forbear laughing as he replied:
“It’s great, it’s really great!”
“So I thought myself,” said Sally complacently; then she added confidentially, “It’s great for style, but ’taint much for comfort. I wonder when the acters ’ll come. How d’ye s’pose they’ll be dressed? When I was a kid in Blueberry Alley, I once went t’ see Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It was fine when Elizer went across the ice. My! it did jiggle. If you had been there, I s’pose you could have prayed it solid?”
An intolerable pang, absurdly disproportionate to its genesis, pierced Sidney’s soul. His supra-sensitive nature was keyed to its highest pitch. The lightest touch upon the tense strings of his emotions nigh rent his being.
He turned swiftly away from the grotesque little figure, from the village street, from the house about which the vehicles were gathered thickly. An open road lay ready to his feet, and he took it, unconscious of its direction.
“There!” called Sally after him, “I’ve made you mad and I didn’t mean to a bit. That’s always the way with you religious people! You can’t take a joke. It’s maybe good for the soul, but it’s mighty bad on the temper, religion is! And sakes! You mustn’t mind me. I can’t help being cheeky, ‘’tismy nature to.’” She finished with irate mockery, as the distance widened between them, and he did not reply. She was still looking after him, as he reached the abrupt bend in the road, and there he turned and bade her farewell in a gesture of unmistakable kindliness.
“Well!” said Sally, arresting her nonchalant swinging, with a jerk, “well, he ain’t cross-grained, that’s serting—Laws, I wish I had a civil tongue, but I hain’t, soSigh no more, my honey,” with which she broke into a darkey song.
Sidney Martin went blindly along the path which chance had chosen for him, led by no other instinct save the old pathetic one, which prompts wounded creatures to crawl away to suffer unseen. Long ago, the human was equally sensitive, equally reticent; we are so no longer, but lay bare the plague spots on our soul with shameless candour.
But the nearer we are to God and Nature, the more prone we are to flee away into the bosom of the stillness, there to agonize alone; and not in vain do we put our trust in its tender sublimity. Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.
When Sidney paused, arrested more by an increasing sense of physical effort, which encroached upon his bitter self-communings, than by any conscious volition, he found himself upon a little wooded hill high above Dole.
Behind him stretched the whispering galleries ofthe wood, before him lay Dole, all its insignificance revealed.
The bird in the air is but a speck to our eyes; but how completely the position is reversed when from its airy altitude it deigns to stay its soaring wings and look beneath!
The greatest cities upon earth become but inconsequent masses when viewed from above. To Sidney’s eyes, Dole looked scarce big enough to hold a heartache, yet how keenly its atoms felt!
And how little it disturbed the quiet heavens, the serene hills, all the suffering in the valley! This thought which, in one less in love with nature, might have unsealed fresh founts of bitterness, brought to Sidney’s soul a beneficent sense of ultimate peace and strength. To him, one of Nature’s own children, the mother tongue was very eloquent. And even in this hour of tense personal perplexity, he was able to gather some measure of consolation from the thought that in the end the jarring discordances of individual life would be absorbed into the grand symphonic song of Nature.
Nature is often impiously charged with unsympathetic indifference, by those who would wish to see all the heaven clouded over by their sorrow, a new deluge upon the earth because of their tears. But Sidney regarded his mother with reverent eyes, seeing in her seeming impassivity to his pain but a manifestation of the strenuous patience with which she waitedto be renewed, looking towards that day when once again she would shine forth in all her pristine beauty, as she had been when first she was the bride of the sun.
“Scarred, and torn, and pierced, denied, disfigured and defaced by human hands, she yet smiles, and waits.” So he said to himself. Truly Nature is justified of her children.
Flinging himself down upon the grass Sidney strove to find some gateway of escape from the awkwardness of his position, and gradually the accumulated nervousness of the last few days died away.
Nature’s beautiful breast seemed to pulsate visibly and audibly beneath him, and he grew calm.
And so he lay for some time, and then slowly but imperatively other thoughts grew and gathered in his heart. The great primitive Want—spontaneous as it flamed up in the heart of the first man, resistless as its co-equal, Time, pinioned with the impulses of ages, sped by the impetus of æons—rose within him, knitting together all his strengths, all his weaknesses, into one desire.
He rose to his feet; surely his very bodily stature was greater?
He looked about upon the hills with brotherly eyes; deep in their bosoms beneath the grass the old elemental fires still slept. They could sympathize with him.
“Vashti—Vashti,” he murmured. Out of hiswildered musings there had grown the dream of the woman he loved, as the phœnix draws from out the ashes.
He looked again upon the village. Slowly, slowly winding along its ways, he saw a black stream of people and slow-stepping horses—Len Simpson’s last journey through the familiar little streets. A chill shuddered through Sidney’s veins. He had looked athwart the smiling champaigns of Love’s country, and sullying its fairness he saw the black lake of mourners from which the sombre stream was flowing to the churchyard—saw it slowly gather there as the waters of a lake in a new basin. Here and there it had left stains along its course, as incurious or hurried units in the procession deflected towards their homes without waiting for the final solemnities.
It wrung Sidney’s heart to thinkshewas there in the gloom, whilst he, absorbed in selfish introspection, was aloof in the glory of the Sun. He must go down to her at once.
How little his generous soul dreamed that there was painful symbolism in that descent of his! That he poised upon the pinnacles, whilst she grovelled in the dust of her own desires, he never imagined. Indeed throughout all his life a merciful veil hung between these two, and hid the real Vashti from his loving eyes.
“Why didn’t you come to the funeral?” asked Vashti, as he came upon them at the church gate.
“I went for an hour’s quiet thought upon the hill,” he said. “I had need of it.”
“Wouldn’t you like to see the grave?” she asked.
The latest grave was always “the” grave in Dole.
“Yes,” he said, half dreamily. She led the way through the groups of men and women, who let the words die upon their lips as their glances followed the pair. There was little comment made, for Dole people were not prone to commit themselves, but they looked after Vashti and Sidney, and then into each other’s eyes, and resumed their interrupted conversations—feeling all had been said which required to be said, when a young man and woman deliberately singled themselves out from the others. Vashti Lansing was most contemptuous of the trivial usages of the people among whom she had been born and bred; but she estimated very correctly their weight in the social system in which she had a place. And in this respect she showed wisdom.
She threaded her way swiftly among the graves, but in her abrupt avoidance of the mounds there was more indication of impatience at the obstacles presented than of tenderness towards the sleepers, whose coverlets, though heaped so high, could not keep them warm.
And presently they reached the corner, where, like a wan finger pointing reproachfully at the sky, shone the white obelisk above Martha Didymus’ brown head.
The white shaft cast a slender shadow athwart a new-made grave at its side.
The red earth of the newly heaped grave was all but hidden with flowers, and a huge wreath had been hung upon the white stone; it had slipped down beneath the name of the dead girl, and hiding the rest of the inscription showed the one word “Martha” garlanded with flowers. Might one not dream that in the meadows of Elysium the young girl bedecked herself with fadeless flowers against the coming of her lover? Beside the two graves stood a group of clean-shaved, well-dressed men. Accustomed to mime in all guises, real grief found them awkward but sincere.
As Sidney and Vashti drew near they looked at the pair with interest. Vashti’s striking personality had been singled out immediately from the throng of villagers at the funeral, but the eyes, accustomed to scan audiences, knew that Sidney had not been present.
“A friend of his?” asked a pale, handsome-faced man, with iron grey hair.
“No—but I have heard his story,” said Sidney, in his soft, gentle voice.
“Well—he only asked for one thing—to be buried beside her,” said the actor; then looking at the others he took off his hat, and in a voice, remembered yet for its melody in two continents, he repeated the matchless dirge,
“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,Nor the furious winter rages.”
“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,Nor the furious winter rages.”
“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,Nor the furious winter rages.”
“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter rages.”
Slowly, solemnly the beautiful words were uttered.
Their music mingled with the melody of his perfect voice, making them more than eloquent.
“Fear not slander, censure rash,Thou hast finished joy and moan.”
“Fear not slander, censure rash,Thou hast finished joy and moan.”
“Fear not slander, censure rash,Thou hast finished joy and moan.”
“Fear not slander, censure rash,
Thou hast finished joy and moan.”
The words seemed almost personal in their application. The last word was voiced; slowly the little group turned away, following the man whose own life was clouded by so terrible a tragedy. Sidney stood bareheaded by Vashti, beside the two dead lovers, thinking that Len Simpson had been indeed honoured. To have Shakespeare’s words syllabled above his grave is surely to the actor what the salute of the guns is to the soldier.
“Come,” said Vashti softly. She was too politic to stay longer. No wise woman scandalizes the community in which she dwells. They advanced towards the others again, to find the tongues buzzing. There was a commotion amid the groups of women, which indicated that something out of the common order had occurred, which was indeed the case. For Mabella Lansing, unnoticed by the throng which was watching the actors openly and Vashti and Sidney furtively, had driven away with Lanty in his top buggy.
Here was daring with a vengeance!
Even Temperance Tribbey looked rather more grim than usual as she stood with Vashti waiting for the democrat to be brought round.
Fat little Mrs. Wither came gushing and bubbling up to Temperance with an affectation of confidential sympathy.
“My! I hope Mr. Lansing won’t be long bringing the horses.”
“Do you want a ride?” politely asked Miss Tribbey, as if oblivious of the fact that Mrs. Wither was that day driving her new buggy for the first time, and that her destination was diametrically opposed to the way the Lansings would take.
“Want a ride! Sakes, no,” said Mrs. Wither, tossing her head. “But ain’t you terrible anxious? I kin feel for you.”
“Anxious about what?” asked Miss Tribbey coldly, eyeing Mrs. Wither steadily.
Mrs. Wither faded back into the crowd, giggling nervously.
“That Temperance Tribbey is the queerest woman!” she said to Mrs. Ranger as she passed.
Meanwhile, Vashti had been engaged upon the other hand by Mrs. Smilie, who was large, motherly looking, but dangerous. She had a way of enveloping her victims in a conversational embrace, and when she released them they were usually limp. Any information they had possessed prior to the meeting having been passed on to Mrs. Smilie.
But Vashti had refused the combat; having done so, however, with such a sorrowfully resigned expression that Mrs. Smilie felt her to be void of offence, and said afterwards:
“I was real sorry for Vashti Lansing. She was real humiliated. To think Mabella ’ud act up that way. Vashti looked really concerned; she’s got a lot of sense, Vashti Lansing has! My heart jest ached fer her.”
Mrs. Smilie’s heart was always aching for somebody, but it did not tell much upon her general health.
As Nathan Peck, a sufficiently ridiculous figure in his suit of black diagonal, with the muffler superimposed, helped Temperance into the democrat, he squeezed her hand awkwardly, but avoided meeting her eyes; and she studiously looked over his head. Thus they acknowledged their mutual regret over Mabella’s action.
Old Mr. Lansing was furious.
“Why couldn’t you stay with your cousin?” he demanded of Vashti. “Going off buggy-riding from a funeral!! A fine speculation she’s made of herself.”
“I haven’t seen Mabella since we left home,” said Vashti softly, then she added deprecatingly:
“It’s Mabella’s way.”
“Then it’s a d——d bad way,” said old Lansing, and then nearly choked with rage to think he had sworn in his Sunday black, which was so eloquenta reminder of his deaconship. He cut the fat bays across the haunches in a way that surprised them.
“Just wait till I see Lanty! And let her keep out of my sight!”
Sudden tears filled Vashti’s eyes. She was sick at the heart with jealous pain. Sidney caught the glimmer of the tear, and felt a great throb of pity for this stately creature, who, fixed in her rectitude and dignity, could yet weep over thoughtless Mabella’s little escapade. Needless to say Sidney saw nothing very dreadful in the two lovers driving home together; indeed, from the glimpse he had had of Lanty’s face, he had no doubt but that after the burial of his friend, Lanty was in sore need of his sweetheart’s consolation.
“Dear!” said Vashti, “I do hope Mabella will go straight home.”
“I guess you hope more’n you expect, then,” said her father irately.
Vashti sighed.
Miss Tribbey sniffed. The sniff expressed scorn, but it was wrongly applied by at least two of her hearers.
Miss Tribbey had no delusions about Vashti, and she knew the girl was doing all she could to irritate her father against her cousin.
“M’bella’s young and foolish,” said Temperance grimly, but with apologetic intent in her voice.
Vashti gave her a venomous side glance and sighed again.
“It’s the French grandmother coming out in her. Gee! It takes ages to kill a taint, and then every now and then it crops out,” said old Lansing.
“Yes,” said Vashti, “that’s what Mrs. Smilie said. ‘It’s the French in her,’ she said.” The moment Vashti uttered this she bit her lips angrily, for a swift change passed over her father’s face, and she knew she had made a mistake.
“She did, did she?” roared old Lansing, purpling with rage. “She did? The idea of these mongrel Smilies setting up their tongues about the Lansings. Lord! I mind well her father drove about the country collecting ashes for a soap factory. She ain’t fit to black Mabella’s shoes—that woman. What did she do when she quarrelled with Mrs. Parr? Went and threw kittens down her well, and they most all died before they found out ’twas the water. She’ll talk about the Lansings, will she——”
Old Lansing rarely began to gossip, but, when once fairly started, the revelations he made were rather startling. He continued until they reached home.
Lanty and Mabella walked side by side up and down the wide sandy path from the front door to the garden gate. A look of deep and grave happiness shone upon their faces; both were looking at their future from the same standpoint. There was ahint of timorousness upon the girl’s face, an occasional tremor of her sweet mouth, which told that all terrors were not banished from the Unknown, into whose realms the man at her side was to lead her; but hallowing her face there was that divine trust which transfigured the Maid Mary into the Madonna.
“I am going to speak to uncle now,” said Lanty, “and if he is pleased we will go for a drive after supper to-night.”
“Yes,” she said; then “Lanty.” He looked at her; she uttered no other word; her eyes slowly filled with tears.
“Mabella, you trust me?”
“Absolutely,” she said, and the tears, brimmed over by a tender smile, glistened upon her cheeks.
“My angel,” he said, and gave her a look of adoration, then turned away, and went striding round to the side of the house where the others were alighting from the democrat waggon. Old Lansing looked up sharply as Lanty drew near. Something in the young man’s face held him silent an instant.
“I’m coming round to the barn with you,” said Lanty; “I want to speak to you.”
Sidney turning away heard the last words. He could not forbear a look of sympathetic comprehension. Lanty flushed to the eyes, and from that moment was a staunch and faithful ally to Sidney.
“She’s up on the landing,” said Temperance, as, a few minutes after, Lanty, pale and eager, entered the kitchen. Lanty had not spoken—nor did he now, but he went up to Temperance, put his hand upon her shoulder, and gave her a hearty kiss. Then he turned and went up the back stairs three at a time. Through the back hall to the great dusky silent landing, and there a little figure waited trembling.
“What——” she began, and then her quivering lips were silent.
“It’s all right,” said Lanty, in a voice he hardly recognised as his own. “You are mine—mine.”
She laid her face against his breast and there was silence between them. And whilst they supped of Beatitude, proud Vashti Lansing, pale as old ivory, was walking up and down the path their happy feet had trodden such a short while before, tasting the very bitterness of Marah, but compelling her proud lips to tell Sidney Martin the story of their French ancestress.
Vashti Lansing had more than one heritage from the murdered witch wife. The courage which had kept the old Vashti calm and contemptuous before the fagots, upheld the modern Vashti in her time of torture. It is the fashion to sneer at grandfathers—among those who have none. Nevertheless, the fact remains that there are very few Esaus, although there are always plenty of Jacobs, ready to buy birth-rights if money will do it.
It is a good sign if a family guards its traditionscarefully. The types presented in these oral picture galleries are sometimes not the best types, but they at least shine forth distinctly from their background, and be their light clear or lurid it is by these beacons that we are guided back to the beginnings of character. How much more eloquent and rich a language is in its meaning to us when we know its root words! that we are guided back to the beginnings of character when we can comprehend its genesis, and trace the subtle transmutation of one characteristic into another; the change of physical courage into moral strength, or perchance—the retrogression of simple tastes to penuriousness, or the substitution of intellectual enthusiasm for the fires of ardent passions. Family tradition is the alphabet of all history! What contrasts are presented amid the pictures thus preserved! And surely there was never greater difference between two ancestors of one house than existed between old Abel Lansing, the donor of the Lansing legacy, and beautiful Germaine Lansing, the wife of pious Jason Lansing. Jason Lansing had wooed and won and wedded his wife whilst he was in England doing the errands of the little colony of wanderers beyond the sea. How his choice fell upon frivolous Germaine, why she accepted her grim lover, none can guess; but certain it is they were an ill-matched pair. Our sympathies are inclined towards the gay little Frenchwoman who sang her chansons of love and ladies’ lattices in the very ears of the elders,and rustled her brocades beneath the disdainful noses of their winsey-clad wives; but the community in which she lived regarded her advent in their midst as a “dispensation” of a peculiar and trying type. Jason Lansing could only sustain his good opinion of himself by remembering that even the patriarchs had not displayed entire good judgment in the bestowal of their affections. Her memory still survived among the Lansings—a frail ghost hung with scornful garlands of forbidden frivolity, and when any of the name outraged the traditional proprieties, it was said that the cloven hoof of French levity was showing itself once more. And with such tales as these, Vashti Lansing beguiled the dewy twilight hours for Sidney Martin, and stole his heart away, whilst her own burned and yearned for a love denied it.