The Poppies Claim Their Own
It was dusk, and Anthony Dexter sat in the library. Through the day, he had wearied himself to the point of exhaustion, but his phantom pursuer had not tired. The veiled figure of Evelina had kept pace easily with his quick, nervous stride. At the point on the river road, where he had met her for the first time, she had, indeed, seemed to go ahead of him and wait for him there.
Night brought no relief. By a singular fatality, he could see her in darkness as plainly as in sunshine, and even when his eyes were closed, she hovered persistently before him. Throughout his drugged sleep she moved continuously; he never dreamed save of her.
In days gone by, he had been certain that he was the victim of an hallucination, but now, he was not so sure. He would not have sworn that the living Evelina was not eternally in his sight. Time and time again he had darted forward quickly to catch her, but she swiftly eluded him. "If," he thought, gritting his teeth, "I could once get my hands upon her——"
His fists dosed tightly, then, by a supreme effort of will, he put the maddening thought away. "I will not add murder to my sins," he muttered; "no, by Heaven, I will not!"
By a whimsical change of his thought, he conceived himself dead and in his coffin. Would Evelina pace ceaselessly before him then? When he was in his grave, would she wait eternally at the foot of it, and would those burning eyes pierce the shielding sod that parted them? Life had not served to separate them—could he hope that Death would prove potent where Life had failed?
Ralph came in, tired, having done his father's work for the day. The room was wholly dark, but he paused upon the threshold, conscious that some one was there.
"Alone, father?" he called, cheerily.
"No," returned Anthony Dexter, grimly.
"Who's here?" asked Ralph, stumbling into the room. "It's so dark, I can't see."
Fumbling for a match, he lighted a wax candle which stood in an antique candlestick on the library table. The face of his father materialised suddenly out of the darkness, wearing an expression which made Ralph uneasy.
"I thought," he said, troubled, "that some one was with you."
"Aren't you here?" asked Anthony Dexter, trying to make his voice even.
"Oh," returned Ralph. "I see."
With the candle flickering uncertainly between them, the two men faced each other. Sharp shadows lay on the floor and Anthony Dexter's profile was silhouetted upon the opposite wall. He noted that the figure of Evelina, pacing to and fro, cast no shadow. It seemed strange.
In the endeavour to find some interesting subject upon which to talk, Ralph chanced upon the fatal one. "Father," he began, "you know that this morning we were speaking of Miss Evelina?"
The tone was inquiring, but there was no audible answer.
"Well," continued Ralph, "I saw her again to-day. And I saw her face." He had forgotten that his father had seen it, also, and had told him only yesterday.
Anthony Dexter almost leaped from his chair—toward the veiled figure now approaching him. "Did—did she show you her face?" he asked with difficulty.
"No. It was an accident. She often left the front door open for me when I was attending—Araminta—and so, to-day, when I found it open, I went in. She was asleep, on the couch in the parlour, and she wore no veil."
At once, the phantom Evelina changed her tactics. Hitherto, she had walked back and forth from side to side of his vision. Now she advanced slowly toward him and as slowly retreated. Her face was no longer averted; she walked backward cautiously, then advanced. From behind her veil, he could feel her burning, accusing eyes.
"Father," said Ralph, "she is beautiful. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in all my life. Her face is as exquisite as if chiselled in marble, and you never saw such eyes. And she wears that veil all the time."
Anthony Dexter's cold fingers were forced to drum on the table with apparent carelessness. Yes, he knew she was beautiful. He had not forgotten it for an instant since she had thrown back her veil and faced him. "Did—did she tell you why?" he asked.
"Yes," answered Ralph. "She told me why."
A sword, suspended by a single hair, seemed swaying uncertainly over Anthony Dexter's head—a two-edged sword, sure to strike mercilessly if it fell. Ralph's eyes were upon him, but not in contempt. God, in His infinite pity, had made them kind.
"Father," said Ralph, again, "she would not tell the name of the man, though I begged her to." Anthony Dexter's heart began to beat again, slowly at first, then with a sudden and unbearable swiftness. The blood thundered in his ears like the roar of a cataract. He could hardly hear what Ralph was saying.
"It was in a laboratory," the boy continued, though the words were almost lost. "She was there with the man she loved and whom she was pledged to marry. He was trying a new experiment, and she was watching. While he was leaning over the retort to put in another chemical, she heard the mass seethe, and pushed him away, just in time to save him.
"There was an explosion, and she was terribly burned. He was not touched, mind you—she had saved him. They took her to the hospital, and wrapped her in bandages. He went there only once. There was another girl there, named Evelyn Grey, who was so badly burned that every feature was destroyed. The two names became confused, and a mistake was made. They told him she would be disfigured for life, and so he went away."
The walls of the room swayed as though they were of fabric. The floor undulated; his chair rocked dizzily. Out of the accusing silence, Thorpe's words leaped to mock him:
The honour of the spoken word still holds him. He asked her to marry him and she consented . . . he was never released from his promise . . . did not even ask for it. He slunk away like a cur . . . sometimes I think there is no sin but shirking. . . I can excuse a liar . . . I can pardon a thief . . . I can pity a murderer . . . but a shirk, no.
"Father," Ralph was saying, "you do not seem to understand. I suppose it is difficult for you to comprehend such cowardice—you have always done the square thing." The man winced, but the boy did not see it.
"Try to think of a brute like that, Father, and be glad that our name means 'right.' She saved him from terrible disfigurement if not from death. Having instinctively thrown up her right arm, she got the worst of it there, and on her shoulder. Her face was badly burned, but not so deeply as to be scarred. She showed me her shoulder—it is awful. I never had seen anything like it. She said her arm was worse, but she did not show me that."
"He never knew?" asked Anthony Dexter, huskily. Ralph seemed to be demanding something of him, and the veiled figure, steadily advancing and retreating, demanded more still.
"No," answered Ralph, "he never knew. He went to the hospital only once. He had told her that very day that he loved her for the beautiful soul she had, and at the test, his love failed. He never saw her again. He went away, and married, and he has a son. Think of the son, Father, only think of the son! Suppose he knew it! How could he ever bear a disgrace like that!"
"I do not know," muttered Anthony Dexter. His lips were cold and stiff and he did not recognise his own voice.
"When she understood what had happened," Ralph continued, "and how he had deserted her for ever, after taking his cowardly life from her as a gift, her hair turned white. She has wonderful hair. Father—it's heavy and white and dull—it does not shine. She wore the veil at first because she had to, because her face was healing, and before it had wholly healed she had become accustomed to the shelter of it. Then, too, as she said, it kept people away from her—she could not be tempted to love or trust again."
There was an interval of silence, though the very walls seemed to be crying out: "Tell him! Tell him! Confess, and purge your guilty soul!" The clock ticked loudly, the blood roared in his ears. His hands were cold and almost lifeless; his body seemed paralysed, but he heard, so acutely that it was agony.
"Miss Evelina said," resumed Ralph, "that she did not think he had told his son. Do you know what I was thinking, Father, while she was talking? I was thinking of you, and how you had always done the square thing."
It seemed to Anthony Dexter that all the tortures of his laboratory had been chemically concentrated and were being poured out upon his head. "Our name means 'right,'" said the boy, proudly, and the man writhed in his chair.
For a moment, the ghostly Evelina went to Ralph, her hands outstretched in disapproval. Immediately she returned to her former position, advancing, retreating, advancing, retreating, with the regularity of the tide.
"I begged her," continued Ralph, "to tell me the man's name, but she would not. He still lives, she said, he is happy and prosperous and he has not suffered at all. For the honour of men, I want to punish that brute. Father, do you know that when I think of a cur like that, I believe I could rend him with my own hands?"
Anthony Dexter got to his feet unsteadily. The mists about him cleared and the veiled figure whisked suddenly out of his sight. He went up to Ralph as he might walk to the scaffold, but his head was held high. All the anguish of his soul crystallised itself into one passionate word:
"Strike!"
For an instant the boy faced him, unbelieving. Then he remembered that his father had seen Miss Evelina's face, that he must have known she was beautiful—and why she wore the veil. "Father!" he cried, shrilly. "Oh, never you!"
Anthony Dexter looked into the eyes of his son until he could bear to look no more. The veiled figure no longer stood between them, but something else was there, infinitely more terrible. As he had watched the beating of the dog's bared heart, the man watched the boy's face. Incredulity, amazement, wonder, and fear resolved themselves gradually into conviction. Then came contempt, so deep and profound and permanent that from it there could never be appeal. With all the strength of his young and knightly soul, Ralph despised his father—and Anthony Dexter knew it.
"Father," whispered the boy, hoarsely, "it was never you! Tell me it isn't true! Just a word, and I'll believe you! For the sake of our manhood, Father, tell me it isn't true!"
Anthony Dexter's head drooped, his eyes lowered before his son's. The cold sweat dripped from his face; his hands groped pitifully, like those of a blind man, feeling his way in a strange place.
His hands fumbled helplessly toward Ralph's and the boy shrank back as though from the touch of a snake. With a deep-drawn breath of agony, the man flung himself, unseeing, out of the room. Ralph reeled like a drunken man against his chair. He sank into it helplessly and his head fell forward on the table, his shoulders shaking with that awful grief which knows no tears.
"Father!" he breathed. "Father! Father!"
Upstairs, Anthony Dexter walked through the hall, followed, or occasionally preceded, by the ghostly figure of Evelina. Her veil was thrown back now, and seemed a part of the mist which surrounded her. Sometimes he had told a patient that there was never a point beyond which human endurance could not be made to go. He knew now that he had lied.
Ralph's unspoken condemnation had hurt him cruelly. He could have borne words, he thought, better than that look on his son's face. For the first time, he realised how much he had cared for Ralph; how much—God help him!—he cared for him still.
Yet above it all, dominant, compelling, was man's supreme passion—that for his mate. As Evelina moved before him in her unveiled beauty, his hungry soul leaped to meet hers. Now, strangely, he loved her as he had loved her in the long ago, yet with an added grace. There was an element in his love that had never been there before—the mysterious bond which welds more firmly into one, two who have suffered together.
He hungered for Ralph—for the strong young arm thrown about his shoulders in friendly fashion, for the eager, boyish laugh, the hearty word. He hungered for Evelina, radiant with a beauty no woman had ever worn before. Far past the promise of her girlhood, the noble, transfigured face, with its glory of lustreless white hair, set his pulses to throbbing wildly. And subtly, unconsciously, but not the less surely, he hungered for death.
Anthony Dexter had cherished no sentiment about the end of life; to him it had seemed much the same as the stopping of a clock, and of as little moment. He had failed to see why such a fuss was made about the inevitable, though he had at times been scientifically interested in the hysterical effect he had produced in a household by announcing that within an hour or so a particular human clock might be expected to stop. It had never occurred to him, either, that a man had not a well-defined right to stop the clock of his own being whenever it seemed desirable or expedient.
Now he thought of death as the final, beautiful solution of all mundane problems. If he were dead, Ralph could not look at him with contempt; the veiled—or unveiled—Evelina could not haunt him as she had, remorselessly, for months. Yes, death was beautiful, and he well knew how to make it sure.
By an incredibly swift transition, his pain passed into an exquisite pleasure. The woman he loved was walking in the hall before him; the son he loved was downstairs. What man could have more?
"For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,The black minute's at end,And the elements' rage, the fiend voices that rave,Shall dwindle, shall blend,Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,Then a light, then thy breast—Oh thou soul of my soul, I shall clasp thee again,And with God be the rest!"
The wonderful words sang themselves over in his consciousness. He smiled and the unveiled Evelina smiled back at him, with infinite tenderness, infinite love. To-night he would sleep as he had not slept before—in the sleep that knows no waking.
He had the tiny white tablets, plenty of them, but the fancy seized him to taste this last bitterness to the full. He took a wine glass from his chiffonier—those white, blunt fingers had never been more steady than now. He lifted the vial on high and poured out the laudanum, faltering no more than when he had guided the knife in an operation that made him famous throughout the State.
"Evelina," he said, his voice curiously soft, "I pledge you now, in a bond that cannot break!" Was it fancy, or did the violet eyes soften with tears, even though the scarlet lips smiled?
He drank. The silken petals of the poppies, crushed into the peace that passeth all understanding, began their gentle ministry. He made his way to his bed, put out his candle, and lay down. The Spirit of the Poppies stood before him—a woman with a face like Evelina's, but her garments were scarlet, and Evelina always wore black.
In the darkness, he could not distinguish clearly. "Evelina," he called, aloud, "come! Come to me, and put your hand in mine!"
At once she seemed to answer him, wholly tender, wholly kind. Was he dreaming, or did Evelina come and kneel beside him? He groped for her hand, but it eluded him.
"Evelina," he said, again, "dear heart! Come! Forgive," he breathed, drowsily. "Ah, only forgive!"
Then, as if by a miracle, her hand slipped into his and he felt his head drawn tenderly to man's first and last resting place—a woman's breast.
And so, after a little, Anthony Dexter slept. The Spirit of thePoppies had claimed her own at last.
Forgiveness
Haggard and worn, after a sleepless night, Ralph went down-stairs. Heavily upon his young shoulders, he bore the burden of his father's disgrace. Through their kinship, the cowardice and the shirking became a part of his heritage.
There was nothing to be done, for he could not raise his hand in anger against his own father. They must continue to live together, and keep an unbroken front to the world, even though the bond between them had come to be the merest pretence. He despised his father, but no one must ever know it—not even the father whom he despised. Ralph did not guess that his father had read his face.
He saw, now, why Miss Evelina had refused to tell him the man's name, and he honoured her for her reticence. He perceived, too, the hideous temptation with which she was grappling when she begged him to leave her. She had feared that she would tell him, and he must never let her suspect that he knew.
The mighty, unseen forces that lie beneath our daily living were surging through Ralph's troubled soul. Love, hatred, shame, remorse, anger, despair—the words are but symbols of things that work devastation within.
Behold a man, in all outward seeming a gentleman. Observe his courtesy, refinement, and consideration, his perfect self-control. Note his mastery of the lower nature, and see the mind in complete triumph over the beast. Remark his education, the luxury of his surroundings, and the fine quality of his thought. Wonder at the high levels whereon his life is laid, and marvel at the perfect adjustment between him and his circumstances. Subject this man to the onslaught of some vast, cyclonic passion, and see the barriers crumble, then fall. See all the artifice of civilisation swept away at one fell stroke, and behold your gentleman, transformed in an instant into a beast, with all a beast's primeval qualities.
Under stress like this Ralph was fighting to regain his self mastery. He knew that he must force himself to sit opposite his father at the table, and exchange the daily, commonplace talk. No one must ever suspect that anything was amiss—it is this demand of Society which keeps the structure in place and draws the line between civilisation and barbarism. He knew that he never again could look his father straight in the face, that he must always avoid his eyes. It would be hard at first, but Ralph had never given up anything simply because it was difficult.
It was a relief to find that he was downstairs first. Hearing his father's step upon the stair, he thought, would enable him to steel himself more surely to the inevitable meeting. After they had once spoken together, it would be easier. At length they might even become accustomed to the ghastly thing that lay between them and veil it, as it were, with commonplaces.
Ralph took up the morning paper and pretended to read, though the words danced all over the page. The old housekeeper brought in his breakfast, and, likewise, he affected to eat. An hour went by, and still the dreaded step did not sound upon the stair. At length the old housekeeper said, with a certain timid deference:
"Your father's very late this morning, Doctor Ralph. He has never been so late before."
"He'll be down, presently. He's probably overslept."
"It's not your father's way to oversleep. Hadn't you better go up and see?"
Thus forced, Ralph went leisurely up-stairs, intending only to rap upon the door, which was always closed. Perhaps, with the closed door between them, the first speech might be easier.
He rapped once, with hesitation, then again, more definitely. There was no answer. Wholly without suspicion, Ralph opened the door, and went in.
Anthony Dexter lay upon his bed, fully dressed. On his face was a smile of ineffable peace. Ralph went to him quickly, shook him, and felt his pulse, but vainly. The heart of the man made no answer to the questioning fingers of his son. The eyes were closed and, his hands trembling now, Ralph forced them open. The contracted pupils gave him all the information he needed. He found the wineglass, which still smelled of laudanum. He washed it carefully, put it away, then went down-stairs.
His first sensation was entirely relief. Anthony Dexter had chosen the one sure way out. Ralph had a distinct sense of gratitude until he remembered that death did not end disgrace. Never again need he look in his father's eyes; there was no imperative demand that he should conceal his contempt. With the hiding of Anthony Dexter's body beneath the shriving sod, all would be over save memory. Could he put by this memory as his father had his? Ralph did not know.
The sorrowful preliminaries were all over before Ralph's feeling was in any way changed. Then the pity of it all overwhelmed him in a blinding flood.
Searching for something or some one to lean upon, his thought turned to Miss Evelina. Surely, now, he might go to her. If comfort was to be had, of any sort, he could find it there. At any rate, they were bound, much as his father had been bound to her before, by the logic of events.
He went uphill, scarcely knowing how he made his way. Miss Evelina, veiled, as usual, opened the door for him. Ralph stumbled across the threshold, crying out:
"My father is dead! He died by his own hand!"
"Yes," returned Miss Evelina, quietly. "I have heard. I am sorry—for you."
"You need not be," flashed Ralph, quickly. "It is for us, my father and I, to be sorry for you—to make amends, if any amends can be made by the living or the dead."
Miss Evelina started. He knew, then? And it had not been necessary for her to draw out the sheathed dagger which only yesterday she had held in her hand. The glittering vengeance had gone home, through no direct agency of hers.
"Miss Evelina!" cried the boy. "I have come to ask you to forgive my father!"
A silence fell between them, as cold and forbidding as Death itself.After an interval which seemed an hour, Miss Evelina spoke.
"He never asked," she said. Her tone was icy, repellent.
"I know," answered Ralph, despairingly, "but I, his son, ask it. Anthony Dexter's son asks you to forgive Anthony Dexter—not to let him go to his grave unforgiven."
"He never asked," said Miss Evelina again, stubbornly.
"His need is all the greater for that," pleaded the boy, "and mine. Have you thought of my need of it? My name meant 'right' until my father changed its meaning. Don't you see that unless you forgive my father, I can never hold up my head again?"
What the Piper had said to Evelina came back to her now, eloquent with appeal;
The word is not made right. I'm thinking 't is wrong end to, as many things in this world are until we move and look at them from another way. It's giving for, that's all. When you have put self so wholly aside that you can he sorry for him because he has wronged you, why, then you have forgiven.
She moved about restlessly. It seemed to her that she could never be sorry for Anthony Dexter because he had wronged her; that she could never grow out of the hurt of her own wrong.
"Come with me," said Ralph, choking. "I know it's a hard thing I ask of you. God knows I haven't forgiven him myself, but I know I've got to, and you'll have to, too. Miss Evelina, you've got to forgive him, or I never can bear my disgrace."
She let him lead her out of the house. On the long way to Anthony Dexter's, no word passed between them. Only the sound of their footfalls, and Ralph's long, choking breaths, half sobs, broke the silence.
At the gate, the usual knot of curious people had gathered. They were wondering, in undertones, how one so skilful as Doctor Dexter had happened to take an overdose of laudanum, but they stood by, respectfully, to make way for Ralph and the mysterious, veiled woman in black. The audible whispers followed them up to the very door: "Who is she? What had she to do with him?"
As yet, Anthony Dexter's body lay in his own room. Ralph led Miss Evelina in, and closed the door. "Here he is," sobbed the boy. "He has gone and left the shame for me. Forgive him, Miss Evelina! For the love of God, forgive him!"
Evelina sighed. She was standing close to Anthony Dexter now without fear. She had no wish to torture him, as she once had, with the sight of her unveiled face. It was the man she had loved, now—the emotion which had made him hideous to her was past and gone. To her, as to him the night before, death seemed the solution of all problems, the supreme answer to all perplexing questions.
Ralph crept out of the room and closed the door so softly that she did not hear. She was alone, as every woman some day is; alone with her dead.
She threw back her veil. The morning sun lay strong upon Anthony Dexter's face, revealing every line. Death had been kind to him at last, had closed the tortured eyes, blotted out the lines of cruelty around his mouth, and changed the mask-like expression to a tender calm.
A hint of the old, loving smile was there; once again he was the man she had loved, but the love itself had burned out of her heart long ago. He was naught to her, nor she to him.
The door knob turned, and, quickly, she lowered her veil. Piper Tom came in, with a soft, slow step. He did not seem to see Miss Evelina; one would have said he did not know she was in the room. He went straight to Anthony Dexter, and laid his warm hand upon the cold one.
"Man," he said, "I've come to say I forgive you for hurting Laddie.I'm not thinking, now, that you would have done it if you had known.I'm sorry for you because you could do it. I've forgiven you as I hopeGod will forgive you for that and for everything else."
Then he turned to Evelina, and whispered, as though to keep the dead from hearing: "'T was hard, but I've done it. 'T is easier, I'm thinking, to forgive the dead than the living." He went out again, as silently as he had come, and closed the door.
Was it, in truth, easier to forgive the dead? In her inmost soul, Evelina knew that she could not have cherished lifelong resentment against any other person in the world. To those we love most, we are invariably most cruel, but she did not love him now. The man she had loved was no more than a stranger—and from a stranger can come no intentional wrong.
"O God," prayed Evelina, for the first time, "help me to forgive!"
She threw back her veil once more. They were face to face at last, with only a prayer between. His mute helplessness pleaded with her and Ralph's despairing cry rang in her ears. The estranging mists cleared, and, in truth, she put self aside.
Intuitively, she saw how he had suffered since the night he came to her to make it right, if he could. He must have suffered, unless he were more than human. "Dear God," she prayed, again, "oh, help me forgive!"
All at once there was a change. The light seemed thrown into the uttermost places of her darkened soul. She illumined, and a wave of infinite pity swept her from head to foot. She leaned forward, her hands seeking his, and upon Anthony Dexter's dead face there fell the forgiving baptism of her tears.
In the hall, as she went out, she encountered Miss Mehitable. That face, too, was changed. She had not come, as comes that ghoulish procession of merest acquaintances, to gloat, living, over the helpless dead.
At the sight of Evelina, she retreated. "I'll go back," murmured MissMehitable, enigmatically. "You had the best right."
Evelina went down-stairs and home again, but Miss Mehitable did not enter that silent room.
The third day came, and there was no resurrection. Since the miracle of Easter, the world has waited its three days for the dead to rise again. Ralph sat in the upper hall, just beyond the turn of the stair, and beside him, unveiled, was Miss Evelina.
"It's you and I," he had pleaded, "don't you see that? Have you never thought that you should have been my mother?"
From below, in Thorpe's deep voice, came the words of the burial service: "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."
For a few moments, Thorpe spoke of death as the inevitable end of life, and our ignorance of what lies beyond. He spoke of that mystic veil which never parts save for a passage, and from behind which no word ever comes. He said that life was a rainbow spanning brilliantly the two silences, that man's ceasing was no more strange than his beginning, and that the God who ordained the beginning had also ordained the end. He said, too, that the love which gave life might safely be trusted with that same life, at its mysterious conclusion. At length, he struck the personal note.
"It is hard for me," Thorpe went on, "to perform this last service for my friend. All of you are my friends, but the one who lies here was especially dear. He was a man of few friendships, and I was privileged to come close, to know him as he was.
"His life was clean, and upon his record there rests no shadow of disgrace." At this Ralph, in the upper hall, buried his face in his hands. Miss Evelina sat quietly, to all intents and purposes unmoved.
"He was a brave man," Thorpe was saying; "a valiant soldier on the great battlefield of the world. He met his temptations face to face, and conquered them. For him, there was no such thing as cowardice—he never shirked. He met every responsibility like a man, and never swerved aside. He took his share, and more, of the world's work, and did it nobly, as a man should do.
"His brusque manner concealed a great heart. I fear that, at times, some of you may have misunderstood him. There was no man in our community more deeply and lovingly the friend of us all, and there is no man among us more noble in thought and act than he.
"We who have known him cannot but be the better for the knowing. It would be a beautiful world, indeed, if we were all as good as he. We cannot fail to be inspired by his example. Through knowing him, each of us is better fitted for life. We can conquer cowardice more easily, meet our temptations more valiantly, and more surely keep from the sin of shirking, because Anthony Dexter has lived.
"To me," said Thorpe, his voice breaking, "it is the greatest loss, save one, that I have ever known. But it is only through our own sorrow that we come to understand the sorrow of others, only through our own weaknesses that we learn to pity the weakness of others, and only through our own love and forgiveness that we can ever comprehend the infinite love and forgiveness of God. If any of you have ever thought he wronged you, in some small, insignificant way, I give you my word that it was entirely unintentional, and I bespeak for him your pardon.
"He goes to his grave to-day, to wait, in the great silence, for the final solution of God's infinite mysteries, and, as you and I believe, for God's sure reward. He goes with the love of us all, with the forgiveness of us all, and with the hope of us all that when we come to die, we may be as certain of Heaven as he."
Perceiving that his grief was overmastering him, Thorpe proceeded quickly to the benediction. In the pause that followed, Ralph leaned toward the woman who sat beside him.
"Have you," he breathed, "forgiven him—and me?"
Miss Evelina nodded, her beautiful eyes shining with tears.
"Mother!" said Ralph, thickly. Like a hurt child, he went to her, and sobbed his heart out, in the shelter of her arms.
Undine Finds Her Soul
The year was at its noon. Every rose-bush was glorious with bloom, and even the old climbing rose which clung, in its decay, to Miss Mehitable's porch railing had put forth a few fragrant blossoms.
Soon after Araminta had been carried back home, she discovered that she had changed since she went away. Aunt Hitty no longer seemed infallible. Indeed, Araminta had admitted to herself, though with the pangs of a guilty conscience, that it was possible for Aunt Hitty to be mistaken. It was probable that the entire knowledge of the world was not concentrated in Aunt Hitty.
Outwardly, things went on as usual. Miss Mehitable issued orders to Araminta as the commander in chief of an army issues instructions to his subordinates, and Araminta obeyed as faithfully as before, yet with a distinct difference. She did what she was told to do out of gratitude for lifelong care, and not because she felt that she had to.
She went, frequently, to see Miss Evelina, having disposed of objections by the evident fact that she could not neglect any one who had been so kind to her as Miss Evelina had. Usually, however, the faithful guardian went along, and the three sat in the garden, Evelina with her frail hands listlessly folded, and the others stitching away at the endless and monotonous patchwork.
Miss Mehitable had a secret fear that the bloom had been brushed from her rose. Until the accident, Araminta had scarcely been out of her sight since she brought her home, a toddling infant. Miss Mehitable's mind had unerringly controlled two bodies until Araminta fell off the ladder. Now, the other mind began to show distressing signs of activity.
By dint of extra work, Araminta's eighth patchwork quilt was made for quilting, and the Ladies' Aid Society was invited to Miss Mehitable's for the usual Summer revelry of quilting and gossip. Miss Evelina was invited, but refused to go.
After the festivity was over, Miss Mehitable made a fruitful excavation into a huge chest in the attic, and emerged, flushed but happy, with enough scraps for three quilts.
"This here next quilt, Minty," she said, with the air of one announcing a pleasant surprise, "will be the Risin' Sun and Star pattern. It's harder 'n the others, and that's why I've kep' it until now. You've done all them other quilts real good," she added, grudgingly.
Araminta had her own surprise ready, but it was not of a pleasant nature. "Thank you, Aunt Hitty," she replied, "but I'm not going to make any more quilts, for a while, at any rate."
Miss Mehitable's lower jaw dropped in amazement. Never before had Araminta failed to obey her suggestions. "Minty," she said, anxiously, "don't you feel right? It was hot yesterday, and the excitement, and all—I dunno but you may have had a stroke."
Araminta smiled—a lovable, winning smile. "No, I haven't had any 'stroke,' but I've made all the quilts I'm going to until I get to be an old woman, and have nothing else to do."
"What are you layin' out to do, Minty?" demanded Miss Mehitable.
"I'm going to be outdoors all I want to, and I'm going up to Miss Evelina's and play with my kitten, and help you with the housework, or do anything else you want me to do, but—no more quilts," concluded the girl, firmly.
"Araminta Lee!" cried Miss Mehitable, speech having returned. "If I ain't ashamed of you! Here's your poor old aunt that's worked her fingers to the bone, slaving for you almost ever since the day you was born, and payin' a doctor's outrageous bill of four dollars and a half—or goin' to pay," she corrected, her conscience reproaching her, "and you refusin' to mind!
"Haven't I took good care of you all these eighteen years? Haven't I set up with you when you was sick and never let you out of my sight for a minute, and taught you to be as good a housekeeper as any in Rushton, and made you into a first-class seamstress, and educated you myself, and looked after your religious training, and made your clothes? Ain't I been father and mother and sister and brother and teacher and grandparents all rolled into one? And now you're refusin' to make quilts!"
Araminta's heart reproached her, but the blood of some fighting ancestor was in her pulses now. "I know, Aunt Hitty," she said, kindly, "you've done all that and more, and I'm not in the least ungrateful, though you may think so. But I'm not going to make any more quilts!"
"Araminta Lee," said Miss Mehitable, warningly, "look careful where you're steppin'. Hell is yawning in front of you this very minute!"
Araminta smiled sweetly. Since the day the minister had gone to see her, she had had no fear of hell. "I don't see it, Aunt Hitty," she said, "but if everybody who hasn't pieced more than eight quilts by hand is in there, it must be pretty crowded."
"Araminta Lee," cried Miss Mehitable, "you're your mother all over again. She got just as high-steppin' as you before her downfall, and see where she ended at. She was married," concluded the accuser, scornfully, "yes, actually married!"
"Aunt Hitty," said Araminta, her sweet mouth quivering ever so little, "your mother was married, too, wasn't she?" With this parting shaft, the girl went out of the room, her head held high.
Miss Mehitable stared after her, uncomprehending. Slowly it dawned upon her that some one had been telling tales and undoing her careful work. "Minty! Minty!" she cried, "how can you talk to me so!"
But 'Minty' was outdoors and on her way to Miss Evelina's, bareheaded, this being strictly forbidden, so she did not hear. She was hoping against hope that some day, at Miss Evelina's, she might meet Doctor Ralph again and tell him she was sorry she had broken his heart.
Since the day he went away from her, Araminta had not had even a glimpse of him. She had gone to his father's funeral, as everyone else in the village did, and had wondered that he was not in the front seat, where, in her brief experience of funerals, mourners usually sat.
She admitted, to herself, that she had gone to the funeral solely for the sake of seeing Doctor Ralph. Araminta was wholly destitute of curiosity regarding the dead, and she had not joined the interested procession which wound itself around Anthony Dexter's coffin before passing out, regretfully, at the front door. Neither had Miss Mehitable. At the time, Araminta had thought it strange, for at all previous occasions of the kind, within her remembrance. Aunt Hitty had been well up among the mourners and had usually gone around the casket twice.
At Miss Evelina's, she knocked in vain. There was white chiffon upon the line, but all the doors were locked. Doctor Ralph was not there, either, and even the kitten was not in sight, so, regretfully, Araminta went home again.
Throughout the day, Miss Mehitable did not speak to her erring niece, but Araminta felt it to be a relief, rather than a punishment. In the afternoon, the emancipated young woman put on her best gown—a white, cross-barred muslin which she had made herself. It was not Sunday, and Araminta was forbidden to wear the glorified raiment save on occasions of high state.
She added further to her sins by picking a pink rose—Miss Mehitable did not think flowers were made to pick—and fastening it coquettishly in her brown hair. Moreover, Araminta had put her hair up loosely, instead of in the neat, tight wad which Miss Mehitable had forced upon her the day she donned long skirts. When Miss Mehitable beheld her transformed charge she would have broken her vow of silence had not the words mercifully failed. Aunt Hitty's vocabulary was limited, and she had no language in which to express her full opinion of the wayward one, so she assumed, instead, the pose of a suffering martyr.
The atmosphere at the table, during supper, was icy, even though it was the middle of June. Thorpe noticed it and endeavoured to talk, but was not successful. Miss Mehitable's few words, which were invariably addressed to him, were so acrid in quality that they made him nervous. The Reverend Austin Thorpe, innocent as he was of all intentional wrong, was made to feel like a criminal haled to the bar of justice.
But Araminta glowed and dimpled and smiled. Her eyes danced with mischief, and the colour came and went upon her velvety cheeks. She took pains to ask Aunt Hitty for the salt or the bread, and kept up a continuous flow of high-spirited talk. Had it not been for Araminta, the situation would have become openly strained.
Afterward, she began to clear up the dishes as usual, but Miss Mehitable pushed her out of the room with a violence indicative of suppressed passion. So, humming a hymn at an irreverent tempo, Araminta went out and sat down on the front porch, spreading down the best rug in the house that she might not soil her gown. This, also, was forbidden.
When the dishes were washed and put away, Miss Mehitable came out, clad in her rustling black silk and her best bonnet. "Miss Lee," she said very coldly, "I am going out."
"All right, Aunt Hitty" returned Araminta, cheerfully. "As it happens,I'm not."
Miss Mehitable repressed an exclamation of horror. Seemingly, then, it had occurred to Araminta to go out in the evening—alone!
Miss Mehitable's feet moved swiftly away from the house. She was going to the residence of the oldest and most orthodox deacon in Thorpe's church, to ask for guidance in dealing with her wayward charge, but Araminta never dreamed of this.
Dusk came, the sweet, June dusk, starred with fireflies and clouded with great white moths. The roses and mignonette and honeysuckle made the air delicately fragrant. To the emancipated one, it was, indeed, a beautiful world.
Austin Thorpe came out, having found his room unbearably close. As the near-sighted sometimes do, he saw more clearly at twilight than at other times.
"You here, child?" he asked.
"Yes, I'm here," replied Araminta, happily. "Sit down, won't you?" Having taken the first step, she found the others comparatively easy, and was rejoicing in her new freedom. She felt sure, too, that some day she should see Doctor Ralph once more and all would be made right between them.
The minister sat down gladly, his old heart yearning toward Araminta as toward a loved and only child. "Where is your aunt?" he asked, timidly.
"Goodness knows," laughed Araminta, irreverently. "She's gone out, in all her best clothes. She didn't say whether she was coming back or not."
Thorpe was startled, for he had never heard speech like this from Araminta. He knew her only as a docile, timid child. Now, she seemed suddenly to have grown up.
For her part, Araminta remembered how the minister had once helped her out of a difficulty, and taken away from her forever the terrible, haunting fear of hell. Here was a dazzling opportunity to acquire new knowledge.
"Mr. Thorpe," she demanded, eagerly, "what is it to be married?"
"To be married," repeated Austin Thorpe, dreamily, his eyes fixed upon a firefly that flitted, star-tike, near the rose, "is, I think, the nearest this world can come to Heaven."
"Oh!" cried Araminta, in astonishment. "What does it mean?"
"It means," answered Thorpe, softly, "that a man and a woman whom God meant to be mated have found each other at last. It means there is nothing in the world that you have to face alone, that all your joys are doubled and all your sorrows shared. It means that there is no depth into which you can go alone, that one other hand is always in yours; trusting, clinging, tender, to help you bear whatever comes.
"It means that the infinite love has been given, in part, to you, for daily strength and comfort. It is a balm for every wound, a spur for every lagging, a sure dependence in every weakness, a belief in every doubt. The perfect being is neither man nor woman, but a merging of dual natures into a united whole. To be married gives a man a woman's tenderness; a woman, a man's courage. The long years stretch before them, and what lies beyond no one can say, but they face it, smiling and serene, because they are together."
"My mother was married," said Araminta, softly. All at once, the stain of disgrace was wiped out.
"Yes, dear child, and, I hope, to the man she loved, as I hope that some day you will be married to the man who loves you."
Araminta's whole heart yearned toward Ralph—yearned unspeakably. In something else, surely, Aunt Hitty was wrong.
"Araminta," said Thorpe, his voice shaking; "dear child, come here."
She followed him into the house. His trembling old hands lighted a candle and she saw that his eyes were full of tears. From an inner pocket, he drew out a small case, wrapped in many thicknesses of worn paper. He unwound it reverently, his face alight with a look she had never seen there before.
"See!" he said. He opened the ornate case and showed her an old daguerreotype. A sweet, girlish face looked out at her, a woman with trusting, loving eyes, a sweet mouth, and dark, softly parted hair.
"Oh," whispered Araminta. "Were you married—to her?"
"No," answered Thorpe, hoarsely, shutting the case with a snap and beginning to wrap it again in the many folds of paper. "I was to have been married to her." His voice lingered with inexpressible fondness upon the words. "She died," he said, his lips quivering.
"Oh," cried the girl, "I'm sorry!" A sharp pang pierced her through and through.
"Child," said Thorpe, his wrinkled hand closing on hers, "to those who love, there is no such thing as Death. Do you think that just because she is dead, I have ceased to care? Death has made her mine as Life could never do. She walks beside me daily, as though we were hand in hand. Her tenderness makes me tender, her courage gives me strength, her great charity makes me kind. Her belief has made my own faith more sure, her steadfastness keeps me from faltering, and her patience enables me to wait until the end, when I go, into the Unknown, to meet her. Child, I do not know if there be a Heaven, but if God gives me her, and her love, as I knew it once, I shall not ask for more."
Unable to say more, for the tears, Thorpe stumbled out of the room.Araminta's own eyes were wet and her heart was strangely tender to allthe world. Miss Evelina, the kitten, Mr. Thorpe, Doctor Ralph—evenAunt Hitty—were all included in a wave of unspeakable tenderness.
Never stopping to question, Araminta sped out of the house, her feet following where her heart led. Past the crossroads, to the right, down into the village, across the tracks, then sharply to the left, up to Doctor Dexter's, where, only a few weeks before, she had gone in the hope of seeing Doctor Ralph, Araminta ran like some young Atalanta, across whose path no golden apples were thrown.
The door was open, and she rushed in, unthinking, turning by instinct into the library, where Ralph sat alone, leaning his head upon his hand.
"Doctor Ralph!" she cried, "I've come!"
He looked up, then started forward. One look into her glorified face told him all that he needed to know. "Undine," he said, huskily, "have you found your soul?"
"I don't know what I've found," sobbed Araminta, from the shelter of his arms, "but I've come, to stay with you always, if you'll let me!"
"If I'll let you," murmured Ralph, kissing away her happy tears. "You little saint, it's what I want as I want nothing else in the world."
"I know what it is to be married," said Araminta, after a little, her grave, sweet eyes on his. "I asked Mr. Thorpe to-night and he told me. It's to be always with the one you love, and never to mind what anybody else says or does. It's to help each other bear everything and be twice as happy because you're together. It means that somebody will always help you when things go wrong, and there'll always be something you can lean on. You'll never be afraid of anything, because you're together. My mother was married, your mother was married, and I've found out that Aunt Hitty's mother was married, too.
"And Mr. Thorpe—he would have been married, but she died. He told me and he showed me her picture, and he says that it doesn't make any difference to be dead, when you love anybody, and that Heaven, for him, will be where she waits for him and puts her hand in his again. He was crying, and so was I, but it's because he has her and I have you!"
"Sweetheart! Darling!" cried Ralph, crushing her into his close embrace. "It's God Himself who brought you to me now!"
"No," returned Araminta, missing the point, "I came all by myself. AndI ran all the way. Nobody brought me. But I've come, for always, andI'll never leave you again. I'm sorry I broke your heart!"
"You've made it well again," he said, fondly, "and so we'll be married—you and I."
"Yes," repeated Araminta, her beautiful face alight with love, "we'll be married, you and I!"
"Sweet," he said, "do you think I deserve so much?"
"Being married is giving everything," she explained, "but I haven't anything at all. Only eight quilts and me! Do you care for quilts?"
"Quilts be everlastingly condemned. I'm going to tell Aunt Hitty."
"No," said Araminta, "I'm going to tell her my own self, so now! AndI'll tell her to-morrow!"
It was after ten when Ralph took Araminta home. From the parlour window Miss Mehitable was watching anxiously. She had divested herself of the rustling black silk and was safely screened by the shutters. She had been at home an hour or more, and though she had received plenty of good advice, of a stern nature, from her orthodox counsellor, her mind was far from at rest. Having conjured up all sorts of dire happenings, she was relieved when she heard voices outside.
Miss Mehitable peered out eagerly from behind the shutters. Up the road came Araminta—may the saints preserve us!—with a man! Miss Mehitable quickly placed him as that blackmailing play-doctor who now should never have his four dollars and a half unless he collected it by law. Only in the last ditch would she surrender.
They were talking and laughing, and Ralph's black-coated arm was around Araminta's white-robed waist. They came slowly to the gate, where they stopped. Araminta laid her head confidingly upon Ralph's shoulder and he held her tightly in his arms, kissing her repeatedly, as Miss Mehitable guessed, though she could not see very well.
At last they parted and Araminta ran lightly into the house, saying, in a low, tender voice: "To-morrow, dear, to-morrow!"
She went up-stairs, singing. Even then Miss Mehitable observed that it was not a hymn, but some light and ungodly tune she had picked up, Heaven knew where!
She went to her room, still humming, and presently her light was out, but her guardian angel was too stiff with horror to move.
"O Lord," prayed Araminta, as she sank to sleep, "keep me from the contamination of—not being married to him, for Thy sake, Amen."
Telling Aunt Hitty
Araminta woke with the birds. As yet, it was dark, but from afar came the cheery voice of a robin, piping gaily of coming dawn. When the first ray of light crept into her room, and every bird for miles around was swelling his tiny throat in song, it seemed to her that, until now, she had never truly lived.
The bird that rocked on the maple branch, outside her window, carolling with all his might, was no more free than she. Love had rolled away the stone Aunt Hitty had set before the door of Araminta's heart, and the imprisoned thing was trying its wings, as joyously as the birds themselves.
Every sense was exquisitely alive and thrilling. Had she been older and known more of the world, Love would not have come to her so, but rather with a great peace, an unending trust. But having waked as surely as the sleeping princess in the tower, she knew the uttermost ecstasy of it—heard the sound of singing trumpets and saw the white light.
Her fear of Aunt Hitty had died, mysteriously and suddenly. She appreciated now, as never before, all that had been done for her. She saw, too, that many things had been done that were better left undone, but in her happy heart was no condemnation for anybody or anything.
Araminta dressed leisurely. Usually, she hurried into her clothes and ran down-stairs to help Aunt Hitty, who was always ready for the day's work before anybody else was awake but this morning she took her time.
She loved the coolness of the water on her face, she loved her white plump arms, her softly rounded throat, the velvety roses that blossomed on her cheeks, and the wavy brown masses of her hair, touched by the sun into tints of copper and gold. For the first time in all her life, Araminta realised that she was beautiful. She did not know that Love brings beauty with it, nor that the light in her eyes, like a new star, had not risen until last night.
She was seriously tempted to slide down the banister—this also having been interdicted since her earliest remembrance—but, being a grown woman, now, she compromised with herself by taking two stairs at a time in a light, skipping, perilous movement that landed her, safe but breathless, in the lower hall.
In the kitchen, wearing an aspect distinctly funereal, was MissMehitable. Her brisk, active manner was gone and she moved slowly.She did not once look up as Araminta came in.
"Good-morning, Aunt Hitty!" cried the girl, pirouetting around the bare floor. "Isn't this the beautifullest morning that ever was, and aren't you glad you're alive?"
"No," returned Miss Mehitable, acidly; "I am not."
"Aren't you?" asked Araminta, casually, too happy to be deeply concerned about anybody else; "why, what's wrong?"
"I should think, Araminta Lee, that you 'd be the last one on earth to ask what's wrong!" The flood gates were open now. "Wasn't it only yesterday that you broke away from all restraint and refused to make any more quilts? Didn't you put on your best dress in the afternoon when 't want Sunday and I hadn't told you that you could? Didn't you pick a rose and stick it into your hair, and have I ever allowed you to pick a flower on the place, to say nothing of doing anything so foolish as to put it in your hair? Flowers and hair don't go together."
"There's hair in the parlour," objected Araminta, frivolously, "made up into a wreath of flowers, so I thought as long as you had them made out of dead people's hair, I'd put some roses in mine, now, while I'm alive."
Miss Mehitable compressed her lips sternly and went on.
"Didn't you take a rug out of the parlour last night and spread it on the porch, and have I ever had rugs outdoor except when they was being beat? And didn't you sit down on the front porch, where I've never allowed you to sit, it not being modest for a young female to sit outside of her house?"
"Yes," admitted Araminta, cheerfully, "I did all those things, and I put my hair up loosely instead of tightly, as you've always taught me. You forgot that."
"No, I didn't," denied Miss Mehitable, vigorously; "I was coming to that. Didn't you go up to Miss Evelina's without asking me if you could, and didn't you go bareheaded, as I've never allowed you to do?"
"Yes," laughed Araminta, "I did."
"After I went away," pursued Miss Mehitable, swiftly approaching her climax, "didn't you go up to Doctor Dexter's like a shameless hussy?"
"If it makes a shameless hussy of me to go to Doctor Dexter's, that's what I am."
"You went there to see Doctor Ralph Dexter, didn't you?"
"Yes, I did," sang Araminta, "and oh, Aunt Hitty, he was there! He was there!"
"Ain't I told you," demanded Miss Mehitable, "how one woman went up there when she had no business to go and got burnt so awful that she has to wear a veil all the rest of her life?"
"Yes, you told me, Aunt Hitty, but, you see, I didn't get burned."
"Araminta Lee, you're going right straight to hell, just as fast as you can get there. Perdition is yawning at your feet. Didn't that blackmailing play-doctor come home with you?"
"Ralph," Said Araminta—and the way she spoke his name made it a caress—"Ralph came home with me."
"I saw you comin' home," continued Miss Mehitable, with her sharp eyes keenly fixed upon the culprit. "I saw his arm around your waist and you leanin' your head on his shoulder."
"Yes," laughed Araminta, "I haven't forgotten. I can feel his arms around me now."
"And at the gate—you needn't deny it, for I saw it all—he KISSED you!"
"That's right, Aunt Hitty. At his house, he kissed me, too, lots and lots of times. And," she added, her eyes meeting her accuser's clearly, "I kissed him."
"How do you suppose I feel to see such goin's on, after all I've done for you?"
"You needn't have looked, Aunty, if you didn't like to see it."
"Do you know where I went when I went out? I went up to Deacon Robinson's to lay your case before him." Miss Mehitable paused, for the worthy deacon was the fearsome spectre of young sinners.
Araminta executed an intricate dance step of her own devising, but did not seem interested in the advice he had given.
"He told me," went on Miss Mehitable, in the manner of a judge pronouncing sentence upon a criminal, "that at any cost I must trample down this godless uprising, and assert my rightful authority. 'Honour thy father and thy mother,' the Bible says, and I'm your father and mother, rolled into one. He said that if I couldn't make you listen in any other way, it would be right and proper for me to shut you up in your room and keep you on bread and water until you came to your senses."
Araminta giggled. "I wouldn't be there long," she said. "How funny it would be for Ralph to come with a ladder and take me out!"
"Araminta Lee, what do you mean?"
"Why," explained the girl, "we're going to be married—Ralph and I."
A nihilist bomb thrown into the immaculate kitchen could not have surprised Miss Mehitable more. She had no idea that it had gone so far. "Married!" she gasped. "You!"
"Not just me alone, Aunty, but Ralph and I. There has to be two, and I'm of age, so I can if I want to." This last heresy had been learned from Ralph, only the night before.
"Married!" gasped Miss Mehitable, again.
"Yes," returned Araminta, firmly, "married. My mother was married, andRalph's mother was married, and your mother was married. Everybody'smother is married, and Mr. Thorpe says it's the nearest there is toHeaven. He was going to be married himself, but she died.
"Dear Aunt Hitty," cooed Araminta, with winning sweetness, "don't look so frightened. It's nothing dreadful, it's only natural and right, and I'm the happiest girl the sun shines on to-day. Don't be selfish, Aunty—you've had me all my life, and it's his turn now. I'll come to see you every day and you can come and see me. Kiss me, and tell me you're glad I'm going to be married!"
At this juncture, Thorpe entered the kitchen, not aware that he was upon forbidden ground. Attracted by the sound of voices, he had come in, just in time to hear Araminta's last words.
"Dear child!" he said, his fine old face illumined. "And so you're going to be married to the man you love! I'm so glad! God bless you!" He stooped, and kissed Araminta gently upon the forehead.
Having thus seen, as it were, the sanction of the Church placed upon Araminta's startling announcement, Miss Mehitable could say no more. During breakfast she did not speak at all, even to Thorpe. Araminta chattered gleefully of everything under the blue heaven, and even the minister noted the liquid melody of her voice.
Afterward, she went out, as naturally as a flower turns toward the sun.It was a part of the magic beauty of the world that she should meetRalph, just outside the gate, with a face as radiant as her own.
"I was coming," he said, after the first rapture had somewhat subsided, "to tell Aunt Hitty."
"I told her," returned the girl, proudly, "all by my own self!"
"You don't mean it! What did she say?"
"She said everything. She told me hell was yawning at my feet, but I'm sure it's Heaven. She said that she was my father and mother rolled into one, and I was obliged to remind her that I was of age. You thought of that," she said, admiringly. "I didn't even know that I'd ever get old enough not to mind anybody but myself—or you."
"You won't have to 'mind' me," laughed Ralph. "I'll give you a long rope."
"What would I do with a rope?" queried Araminta, seriously.
"You funny, funny girl! Didn't you ever see a cow staked out in a pasture?"
"Yes. Am I a cow?"
"For the purposes of illustration, yes, and Aunt Hitty represents the stake. For eighteen or nineteen years, your rope has been so short that you could hardly move at all. Now things are changed, and I represent the stake. You've got the longest rope, now, that was ever made in one piece. See?"
"I'll come back," answered Araminta, seriously. "I don't think I need any rope at all."
"No, dear, I know that. I was only joking. You poor child, you've lived so long with that old dragon that you scarcely recognise a joke when you see one. A sense of humour, Araminta, is a saving grace for anybody. Next to Love, it's the finest gift of the gods."
"Have I got it?"
"I guess so. I think it's asleep, but we'll wake it up. Look here, dear—see what I brought you."
From his pocket, Ralph took a small purple velvet case, lined with white satin. Within was a ring, set with a diamond, small in circumference, but deep, and of unusual brilliancy. By a singular coincidence, it fitted Araminta's third finger exactly.
"Oh-h!" she cried, her cheeks glowing. "For me?"
"Yes, for you—till I get you another one. This was my mother's ring, sweetheart. I found it among my father's things. Will you wear it, for her sake and for mine?"
"I'll wear it always," answered Araminta, her great grey eyes on his, "and I don't want any other ring. Why, if it hadn't been for her, I never could have had you."
Ralph took her into his arms. His heart was filled with that supreme love which has no need of words.
Meanwhile Miss Mehitable was having her bad quarter of an hour. Man-like, Thorpe had taken himself away from a spot where he felt there was about to be a display of emotion. She was in the house alone, and the acute stillness of it seemed an accurate foreshadowing of the future.
Miss Mehitable was not among those rare souls who are seldom lonely. Her nature demanded continuous conversation, the subject alone being unimportant. Every thought that came into her mind was destined for a normal outlet in speech. She had no mental reservoir.
Araminta was going away—to be married. In spite of her trouble, Miss Mehitable noted the taint of heredity. "It's in her blood," she murmured, "and maybe Minty ain't so much to blame."
In this crisis, however, Miss Mehitable had the valiant support of her conscience. She had never allowed the child to play with boys—in fact, she had not had any playmates at all. As soon as Araminta was old enough to understand, she was taught that boys and men—indeed all human things that wore trousers, long or short—were rank poison, and were to be steadfastly avoided if a woman desired peace of mind. Miss Mehitable frequently said that she had everything a husband could have given her except a lot of trouble.
Daily, almost hourly, the wisdom of single blessedness had been impressed upon Araminta. Miss Mehitable neglected no illustration calculated to bring the lesson home. She had even taught her that her own mother was an outcast and had brought disgrace upon her family by marrying; she had held aloft her maiden standard and literally compelled Araminta to enlist.
Now, all her work had gone for naught. Nature had triumphantly reasserted itself, and Araminta had fallen in love. The years stretched before Miss Mehitable in a vast and gloomy vista illumined by no light. No soft step upon the stair, no sunny face at her table, no sweet, girlish laugh, no long companionable afternoons with patchwork, while she talked and Araminta listened. At the thought, her stern mouth quivered, ever so slightly, and, all at once, she found the relief of tears.
An hour or so afterward, she went up to the attic, walking with a stealthy, cat-like tread, though there was no one in the house to hear. In a corner, far back under the eaves, three trunks were piled, one on top of the other. Miss Hitty lifted off the two top trunks without apparent effort, for her arms were strong, and drew the lowest one out into the path of sunlight that lay upon the floor, maple branches swaying across it in silhouette.
In another corner of the attic, up among the rafters, was a box apparently filled with old newspapers. Miss Hitty reached down among the newspapers with accustomed fingers and drew out a crumpled wad, tightly wedged into one corner of the box.
She listened carefully at the door, but there was no step in the house. She was absolutely alone. None the less, she bolted the door of the attic before she picked the crumpled paper apart, and took out the key of the trunk.
The old lock opened readily, and from the trunk came the musty odour of long-dead lavender and rosemary, lemon verbena and rose geranium. On top was Barbara Lee's wedding gown. Miss Hitty always handled it with reverence not unmixed with awe, never having had a wedding gown herself.