I WASN’T able to go to prayer meeting that evening because I had neuralgia in my face; but Thomas went, and the minute he came home I knew by the twinkle in his eye that he had some news.
“Who do you s’pose Stephen Clark went home with from meeting to-night?” he said, chuckling.
“Jane Miranda Blair,” I said promptly. Stephen Clark’s wife had been dead for two years and he hadn’t taken much notice of anybody, so far as was known. But Carmody had Jane Miranda all ready for him, and really I don’t know why she didn’t suit him, except for the reason that a man never does what he is expected to do when it comes to marrying.
Thomas chuckled again.
“Wrong. He stepped up to Prissy Strong and walked off with her. Cold soup warmed over.”
“Prissy Strong!” I just held up my hands. Then I laughed. “He needn’t try for Prissy,” I said. “Emmeline nipped that in the bud twenty years ago, and she’ll do it again.”
“Em’line is an old crank,” growled Thomas. He detested Emmeline Strong, and always did.
“She’s that, all right,” I agreed, “and that is just the reason she can turn poor Prissy any way she likes. You mark my words, she’ll put her foot right down on this as soon as she finds it out.”
Thomas said that I was probably right. I lay awake for a long time after I went to bed that night, thinking of Prissy and Stephen. As a general rule, I don’t concern my head about other people’s affairs, but Prissy was such a helpless creature I couldn’t get her off my mind.
Twenty years ago Stephen Clark had tried to go with Prissy Strong. That was pretty soon after Prissy’s father had died. She and Emmeline were living alone together. Emmeline was thirty, ten years older than Prissy, and if ever there were two sisters totally different from each other in every way, those two were Emmeline and Prissy Strong.
Emmeline took after her father; she was big and dark and homely, and she was the most domineering creature that ever stepped on shoe leather. She simply ruled poor Prissy with a rod of iron.
Prissy herself was a pretty girl—at least most people thought so. I can’t honestly say I ever admired her style much myself. I like something with more vim and snap to it. Prissy was slim and pink, with soft, appealing blue eyes, and pale gold hair all clinging in baby rings around her face. She was just as meek and timid as she looked and there wasn’t a bit of harm in her. I always liked Prissy, even if I didn’t admire her looks as much as some people did.
Anyway, it was plain her style suited Stephen Clark. He began to drive her, and there wasn’t a speck of doubt that Prissy liked him. Then Emmeline just put a stopper on the affair. It was pure cantankerousness in her. Stephen was a good match and nothing could be said against him. But Emmeline was just determined that Prissy shouldn’t marry. She couldn’t get married herself, and she was sore enough about it.
Of course, if Prissy had had a spark of spirit she wouldn’t have given in. But she hadn’t a mite; I believe she would have cut off her nose if Emmeline had ordered her to do it. She was just her mother over again. If ever a girl belied her name, Prissy Strong did. There wasn’t anything strong about her.
One night, when prayer meeting came out, Stephen stepped up to Prissy as usual and asked if he might see her home. Thomas and I were just behind—we weren’t married ourselves then—and we heard it all. Prissy gave one scared, appealing look at Emmeline and then said, “No, thank you, not to-night.”
Stephen just turned on his heel and went. He was a high-spirited fellow and I knew he would never overlook a public slight like that. If he had had as much sense as he ought to have had he would have known that Emmeline was at the bottom of it; but he didn’t, and he began going to see Althea Gillis, and they were married the next year. Althea was a rather nice girl, though giddy, and I think she and Stephen were happy enough together. In real life things are often like that.
Nobody ever tried to go with Prissy again. I suppose they were afraid of Emmeline. Prissy’s beauty soon faded. She was always kind of sweet looking, but her bloom went, and she got shyer and limper every year of her life. She wouldn’t have dared put on her second best dress without asking Emmeline’s permission. She was real fond of cats and Emmeline wouldn’t let her keep one. Emmeline even cut the serial out of the religious weekly she took before she would give it to Prissy, because she didn’t believe in reading novels. It used to make me furious to see it all. They were my next door neighbours after I married Thomas, and I was often in and out. Sometimes I’d feel real vexed at Prissy for giving in the way she did; but, after all, she couldn’t help it—she was born that way.
And now Stephen was going to try his luck again. It certainly did seem funny.
Stephen walked home with Prissy from prayer meeting four nights before Emmeline found it out. Emmeline hadn’t been going to prayer meeting all that summer because she was mad at Mr. Leonard. She had expressed her disapproval to him because he had buried old Naomi Clark at the harbour “just as if she was a Christian,” and Mr. Leonard had said something to her she couldn’t get over for a while. I don’t know what it was, but I know that when Mr. Leonard WAS roused to rebuke anyone the person so rebuked remembered it for a spell.
All at once I knew she must have discovered about Stephen and Prissy, for Prissy stopped going to prayer meeting.
I felt real worried about it, someway, and although Thomas said for goodness’ sake not to go poking my fingers into other people’s pies, I felt as if I ought to do something. Stephen Clark was a good man and Prissy would have a beautiful home; and those two little boys of Althea’s needed a mother if ever boys did. Besides, I knew quite well that Prissy, in her secret soul, was hankering to be married. So was Emmeline, too—but nobody wanted to help HER to a husband.
The upshot of my meditations was that I asked Stephen down to dinner with us from church one day. I had heard a rumour that he was going to see Lizzie Pye over at Avonlea, and I knew it was time to be stirring, if anything were to be done. If it had been Jane Miranda I don’t know that I’d have bothered; but Lizzie Pye wouldn’t have done for a stepmother for Althea’s boys at all. She was too bad-tempered, and as mean as second skimmings besides.
Stephen came. He seemed dull and moody, and not much inclined to talk. After dinner I gave Thomas a hint. I said,
“You go to bed and have your nap. I want to talk to Stephen.”
Thomas shrugged his shoulders and went. He probably thought I was brewing up lots of trouble for myself, but he didn’t say anything. As soon as he was out of the way I casually remarked to Stephen that I understood that he was going to take one of my neighbours away and that I couldn’t be sorry, though she was an excellent neighbour and I would miss her a great deal.
“You won’t have to miss her much, I reckon,” said Stephen grimly. “I’ve been told I’m not wanted there.”
I was surprised to hear Stephen come out so plump and plain about it, for I hadn’t expected to get at the root of the matter so easily. Stephen wasn’t the confidential kind. But it really seemed to be a relief to him to talk about it; I never saw a man feeling so sore about anything. He told me the whole story.
Prissy had written him a letter—he fished it out of his pocket and gave it to me to read. It was in Prissy’s prim, pretty little writing, sure enough, and it just said that his attentions were “unwelcome,” and would he be “kind enough to refrain from offering them.” Not much wonder the poor man went to see Lizzie Pye!
“Stephen, I’m surprised at you for thinking that Prissy Strong wrote that letter,” I said.
“It’s in her handwriting,” he said stubbornly.
“Of course it is. ‘The hand is the hand of Esau, but the voice is the voice of Jacob,’” I said, though I wasn’t sure whether the quotation was exactly appropriate. “Emmeline composed that letter and made Prissy copy it out. I know that as well as if I’d seen her do it, and you ought to have known it, too.”
“If I thought that I’d show Emmeline I could get Prissy in spite of her,” said Stephen savagely. “But if Prissy doesn’t want me I’m not going to force my attentions on her.”
Well, we talked it over a bit, and in the end I agreed to sound Prissy, and find out what she really thought about it. I didn’t think it would be hard to do; and it wasn’t. I went over the very next day because I saw Emmeline driving off to the store. I found Prissy alone, sewing carpet rags. Emmeline kept her constantly at that—because Prissy hated it I suppose. Prissy was crying when I went in, and in a few minutes I had the whole story.
Prissy wanted to get married—and she wanted to get married to Stephen—and Emmeline wouldn’t let her.
“Prissy Strong,” I said in exasperation, “you haven’t the spirit of a mouse! Why on earth did you write him such a letter?”
“Why, Emmeline made me,” said Prissy, as if there couldn’t be any appeal from that; and I knew there couldn’t—for Prissy. I also knew that if Stephen wanted to see Prissy again Emmeline must know nothing of it, and I told him so when he came down the next evening—to borrow a hoe, he said. It was a long way to come for a hoe.
“Then what am I to do?” he said. “It wouldn’t be any use to write, for it would likely fall into Emmeline’s hands. She won’t let Prissy go anywhere alone after this, and how am I to know when the old cat is away?”
“Please don’t insult cats,” I said. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. You can see the ventilator on our barn from your place, can’t you? You’d be able to make out a flag or something tied to it, wouldn’t you, through that spy-glass of yours?”
Stephen thought he could.
“Well, you take a squint at it every now and then,” I said. “Just as soon as Emmeline leaves Prissy alone I’ll hoist the signal.”
The chance didn’t come for a whole fortnight. Then, one evening, I saw Emmeline striding over the field below our house. As soon as she was out of sight I ran through the birch grove to Prissy.
“Yes, Em’line’s gone to sit up with Jane Lawson to-night,” said Prissy, all fluttered and trembling.
“Then you put on your muslin dress and fix your hair,” I said. “I’m going home to get Thomas to tie something to that ventilator.”
But do you think Thomas would do it? Not he. He said he owed something to his position as elder in the church. In the end I had to do it myself, though I don’t like climbing ladders. I tied Thomas’ long red woollen scarf to the ventilator, and prayed that Stephen would see it. He did, for in less than an hour he drove down our lane and put his horse in our barn. He was all spruced up, and as nervous and excited as a schoolboy. He went right over to Prissy, and I began to tuft my new comfort with a clear conscience. I shall never know why it suddenly came into my head to go up to the garret and make sure that the moths hadn’t got into my box of blankets; but I always believed that it was a special interposition of Providence. I went up and happened to look out of the east window; and there I saw Emmeline Strong coming home across our pond field.
I just flew down those garret stairs and out through the birches. I burst into the Strong kitchen, where Stephen and Prissy were sitting as cozy as you please.
“Stephen, come quick! Emmeline’s nearly here,” I cried.
Prissy looked out of the window and wrung her hands.
“Oh, she’s in the lane now,” she gasped. “He can’t get out of the house without her seeing him. Oh, Rosanna, what shall we do?”
I really don’t know what would have become of those two people if I hadn’t been in existence to find ideas for them.
“Take Stephen up to the garret and hide him there, Prissy,” I said firmly, “and take him quick.”
Prissy took him quick, but she had barely time to get back to the kitchen before Emmeline marched in—mad as a wet hen because somebody had been ahead of her offering to sit up with Jane Lawson, and so she lost the chance of poking and prying into things while Jane was asleep. The minute she clapped eyes on Prissy she suspected something. It wasn’t any wonder, for there was Prissy, all dressed up, with flushed cheeks and shining eyes. She was all in a quiver of excitement, and looked ten years younger.
“Priscilla Strong, you’ve been expecting Stephen Clark here this evening!” burst out Emmeline. “You wicked, deceitful, underhanded, ungrateful creature!”
And she went on storming at Prissy, who began to cry, and looked so weak and babyish that I was frightened she would betray the whole thing.
“This is between you and Prissy, Emmeline,” I struck in, “and I’m not going to interfere. But I want to get you to come over and show me how to tuft my comfort that new pattern you learned in Avonlea, and as it had better be done before dark I wish you’d come right away.”
“I s’pose I’ll go,” said Emmeline ungraciously, “but Priscilla shall come, too, for I see that she isn’t to be trusted out of my sight after this.”
I hoped Stephen would see us from the garret window and make good his escape. But I didn’t dare trust to chance, so when I got Emmeline safely to work on my comfort I excused myself and slipped out. Luckily my kitchen was on the off side of the house, but I was a nervous woman as I rushed across to the Strong place and dashed up Emmeline’s garret stairs to Stephen. It was fortunate I had come, for he didn’t know we had gone. Prissy had hidden him behind the loom and he didn’t dare move for fear Emmeline would hear him on that creaky floor. He was a sight with cobwebs.
I got him down and smuggled him into our barn, and he stayed there until it was dark and the Strong girls had gone home. Emmeline began to rage at Prissy the moment they were outside my door.
Then Stephen came in and we talked things over. He and Prissy had made good use of their time, short as it had been. Prissy had promised to marry him, and all that remained was to get the ceremony performed.
“And that will be no easy matter,” I warned him. “Now that Emmeline’s suspicions are aroused she’ll never let Prissy out of her sight until you’re married to another woman, if it’s years. I know Emmeline Strong. And I know Prissy. If it was any other girl in the world she’d run away, or manage it somehow, but Prissy never will. She’s too much in the habit of obeying Emmeline. You’ll have an obedient wife, Stephen—if you ever get her.”
Stephen looked as if he thought that wouldn’t be any drawback. Gossip said that Althea had been pretty bossy. I don’t know. Maybe it was so.
“Can’t you suggest something, Rosanna?” he implored. “You’ve helped us so far, and I’ll never forget it.”
“The only thing I can think of is for you to have the license ready, and speak to Mr. Leonard, and keep an eye on our ventilator,” I said. “I’ll watch here and signal whenever there’s an opening.”
Well, I watched and Stephen watched, and Mr. Leonard was in the plot, too. Prissy was always a favourite of his, and he would have been more than human, saint as he is, if he’d had any love for Emmeline, after the way she was always trying to brew up strife in the church.
But Emmeline was a match for us all. She never let Prissy out of her sight. Everywhere she went she toted Prissy, too. When a month had gone by, I was almost in despair. Mr. Leonard had to leave for the Assembly in another week and Stephen’s neighbours were beginning to talk about him. They said that a man who spent all his time hanging around the yard with a spyglass, and trusting everything to a hired boy, couldn’t be altogether right in his mind.
I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw Emmeline driving away one day alone. As soon as she was out of sight I whisked over, and Anne Shirley and Diana Barry went with me.
They were visiting me that afternoon. Diana’s mother was my second cousin, and, as we visited back and forth frequently, I’d often seen Diana. But I’d never seen her chum, Anne Shirley, although I’d heard enough about her to drive anyone frantic with curiosity. So when she came home from Redmond College that summer I asked Diana to take pity on me and bring her over some afternoon.
I wasn’t disappointed in her. I considered her a beauty, though some people couldn’t see it. She had the most magnificent red hair and the biggest, shiningest eyes I ever saw in a girl’s head. As for her laugh, it made me feel young again to hear it. She and Diana both laughed enough that afternoon, for I told them, under solemn promise of secrecy, all about poor Prissy’s love affair. So nothing would do them but they must go over with me.
The appearance of the house amazed me. All the shutters were closed and the door locked. I knocked and knocked, but there was no answer. Then I walked around the house to the only window that hadn’t shutters—a tiny one upstairs. I knew it was the window in the closet off the room where the girls slept. I stopped under it and called Prissy. Before long Prissy came and opened it. She was so pale and woe-begone looking that I pitied her with all my heart.
“Prissy, where has Emmeline gone?” I asked.
“Down to Avonlea to see the Roger Pyes. They’re sick with measles, and Emmeline couldn’t take me because I’ve never had measles.”
Poor Prissy! She had never had anything a body ought to have.
“Then you just come and unfasten a shutter, and come right over to my house,” I said exultantly. “We’ll have Stephen and the minister here in no time.”
“I can’t—Em’line has locked me in here,” said Prissy woefully.
I was posed. No living mortal bigger than a baby could have got in or out of that closet window.
“Well,” I said finally, “I’ll put the signal up for Stephen anyhow, and we’ll see what can be done when he gets here.”
I didn’t know how I was ever to get the signal up on that ventilator, for it was one of the days I take dizzy spells; and if I took one up on the ladder there’d probably be a funeral instead of a wedding. But Anne Shirley said she’d put it up for me, and she did. I had never seen that girl before, and I’ve never seen her since, but it’s my opinion that there wasn’t much she couldn’t do if she made up her mind to do it.
Stephen wasn’t long in getting there and he brought the minister with him. Then we all, including Thomas—who was beginning to get interested in the affair in spite of himself—went over and held council of war beneath the closet window.
Thomas suggested breaking in doors and carrying Prissy off boldly, but I could see that Mr. Leonard looked very dubious over that, and even Stephen said he thought it could only be done as a last resort. I agreed with him. I knew Emmeline Strong would bring an action against him for housebreaking as likely as not. She’d be so furious she’d stick at nothing if we gave her any excuse. Then Anne Shirley, who couldn’t have been more excited if she was getting married herself, came to the rescue again.
“Couldn’t you put a ladder up to the closet window,” she said, “And Mr. Clark can go up it and they can be married there. Can’t they, Mr. Leonard?”
Mr. Leonard agreed that they could. He was always the most saintly looking man, but I know I saw a twinkle in his eye.
“Thomas, go over and bring our little ladder over here,” I said.
Thomas forgot he was an elder, and he brought the ladder as quick as it was possible for a fat man to do it. After all it was too short to reach the window, but there was no time to go for another. Stephen went up to the top of it, and he reached up and Prissy reached down, and they could just barely clasp hands so. I shall never forget the look of Prissy. The window was so small she could only get her head and one arm out of it. Besides, she was almost frightened to death.
Mr. Leonard stood at the foot of the ladder and married them. As a rule, he makes a very long and solemn thing of the marriage ceremony, but this time he cut out everything that wasn’t absolutely necessary; and it was well that he did, for just as he pronounced them man and wife, Emmeline drove into the lane.
She knew perfectly well what had happened when she saw the minister with his blue book in his hand. Never a word said she. She marched to the front door, unlocked it, and strode upstairs. I’ve always been convinced it was a mercy that closet window was so small, or I believe that she would have thrown Prissy out of it. As it was, she walked her downstairs by the arm and actually flung her at Stephen.
“There, take your wife,” she said, “and I’ll pack up every stitch she owns and send it after her; and I never want to see her or you again as long as I live.”
Then she turned to me and Thomas.
“As for you that have aided and abetted that weakminded fool in this, take yourselves out of my yard and never darken my door again.”
“Goodness, who wants to, you old spitfire?” said Thomas.
It wasn’t just the thing for him to say, perhaps, but we are all human, even elders.
The girls didn’t escape. Emmeline looked daggers at them.
“This will be something for you to carry back to Avonlea,” she said. “You gossips down there will have enough to talk about for a spell. That’s all you ever go out of Avonlea for—just to fetch and carry tales.”
Finally she finished up with the minister.
“I’m going to the Baptist church in Spencervale after this,” she said. Her tone and look said a hundred other things. She whirled into the house and slammed the door.
Mr. Leonard looked around on us with a pitying smile as Stephen put poor, half-fainting Prissy into the buggy.
“I am very sorry,” he said in that gently, saintly way of his, “for the Baptists.”
Salome looked out of the kitchen window, and a pucker of distress appeared on her smooth forehead.
“Dear, dear, what has Lionel Hezekiah been doing now?” she murmured anxiously.
Involuntarily she reached out for her crutch; but it was a little beyond her reach, having fallen on the floor, and without it Salome could not move a step.
“Well, anyway, Judith is bringing him in as fast as she can,” she reflected. “He must have been up to something terrible this time; for she looks very cross, and she never walks like that unless she is angry clear through. Dear me, I am sometimes tempted to think that Judith and I made a mistake in adopting the child. I suppose two old maids don’t know much about bringing up a boy properly. But he is NOT a bad child, and it really seems to me that there must be some way of making him behave better if we only knew what it was.”
Salome’s monologue was cut short by the entrance of her sister Judith, holding Lionel Hezekiah by his chubby wrist with a determined grip.
Judith Marsh was ten years older than Salome, and the two women were as different in appearance as night and day. Salome, in spite of her thirty-five years, looked almost girlish. She was small and pink and flower-like, with little rings of pale golden hair clustering all over her head in a most unspinster-like fashion, and her eyes were big and blue, and mild as a dove’s. Her face was perhaps a weak one, but it was very sweet and appealing.
Judith Marsh was tall and dark, with a plain, tragic face and iron-gray hair. Her eyes were black and sombre, and every feature bespoke unyielding will and determination. Just now she looked, as Salome had said, “angry clear through,” and the baleful glances she cast on the small mortal she held would have withered a more hardened criminal than six happy-go-lucky years had made of Lionel Hezekiah.
Lionel Hezekiah, whatever his shortcomings, did not look bad. Indeed, he was as engaging an urchin as ever beamed out on a jolly good world through a pair of big, velvet-brown eyes. He was chubby and firm-limbed, with a mop of beautiful golden curls, which were the despair of his heart and the pride and joy of Salome’s; and his round face was usually a lurking-place for dimples and smiles and sunshine.
But just now Lionel Hezekiah was under a blight; he had been caught red-handed in guilt, and was feeling much ashamed of himself. He hung his head and squirmed his toes under the mournful reproach in Salome’s eyes. When Salome looked at him like that, Lionel Hezekiah always felt that he was paying more for his fun than it was worth.
“What do you suppose I caught him doing this time?” demanded Judith.
“I—I don’t know,” faltered Salome.
“Firing—at—a—mark—on—the—henhouse—door—with—new-laid—eggs,” said Judith with measured distinctness. “He has broken every egg that was laid to-day except three. And as for the state of that henhouse door—”
Judith paused, with an indignant gesture meant to convey that the state of the henhouse door must be left to Salome’s imagination, since the English language was not capable of depicting it.
“O Lionel Hezekiah, why will you do such things?” said Salome miserably.
“I—didn’t know it was wrong,” said Lionel Hezekiah, bursting into prompt tears. “I—I thought it would be bully fun. Seems’s if everything what’s fun ‘s wrong.”
Salome’s heart was not proof against tears, as Lionel Hezekiah very well knew. She put her arm about the sobbing culprit, and drew him to her side.
“He didn’t know it was wrong,” she said defiantly to Judith.
“He’s got to be taught, then,” was Judith’s retort. “No, you needn’t try to beg him off, Salome. He shall go right to bed without supper, and stay there till to-morrow morning.”
“Oh! not without his supper,” entreated Salome. “You—you won’t improve the child’s morals by injuring his stomach, Judith.”
“Without his supper, I say,” repeated Judith inexorably. “Lionel Hezekiah, go up-stairs to the south room, and go to bed at once.”
Lionel Hezekiah went up-stairs, and went to bed at once. He was never sulky or disobedient. Salome listened to him as he stumped patiently up-stairs with a sob at every step, and her own eyes filled with tears.
“Now don’t for pity’s sake go crying, Salome,” said Judith irritably. “I think I’ve let him off very easily. He is enough to try the patience of a saint, and I never was that,” she added with entire truth.
“But he isn’t bad,” pleaded Salome. “You know he never does anything the second time after he has been told it was wrong, never.”
“What good does that do when he is certain to do something new and twice as bad? I never saw anything like him for originating ideas of mischief. Just look at what he has done in the past fortnight—in one fortnight, Salome. He brought in a live snake, and nearly frightened you into fits; he drank up a bottle of liniment, and almost poisoned himself; he took three toads to bed with him; he climbed into the henhouse loft, and fell through on a hen and killed her; he painted his face all over with your water-colours; and now comes THIS exploit. And eggs at twenty-eight cents a dozen! I tell you, Salome, Lionel Hezekiah is an expensive luxury.”
“But we couldn’t do without him,” protested Salome.
“Icould. But as you can’t, or think you can’t, we’ll have to keep him, I suppose. But the only way to secure any peace of mind for ourselves, as far as I can see, is to tether him in the yard, and hire somebody to watch him.”
“There must be some way of managing him,” said Salome desperately. She thought Judith was in earnest about the tethering. Judith was generally so terribly in earnest in all she said. “Perhaps it is because he has no other employment that he invents so many unheard-of things. If he had anything to occupy himself with—perhaps if we sent him to school—”
“He’s too young to go to school. Father always said that no child should go to school until it was seven, and I don’t mean Lionel Hezekiah shall. Well, I’m going to take a pail of hot water and a brush, and see what I can do to that henhouse door. I’ve got my afternoon’s work cut out for me.”
Judith stood Salome’s crutch up beside her, and departed to purify the henhouse door. As soon as she was safely out of the way, Salome took her crutch, and limped slowly and painfully to the foot of the stairs. She could not go up and comfort Lionel Hezekiah as she yearned to do, which was the reason Judith had sent him up-stairs. Salome had not been up-stairs for fifteen years. Neither did she dare to call him out on the landing, lest Judith return. Besides, of course he must be punished; he had been very naughty.
“But I wish I could smuggle a bit of supper up to him,” she mused, sitting down on the lowest step and listening. “I don’t hear a sound. I suppose he has cried himself to sleep, poor, dear baby. He certainly is dreadfully mischievous; but it seems to me that it shows an investigating turn of mind, and if it could only be directed into the proper channels—I wish Judith would let me have a talk with Mr. Leonard about Lionel Hezekiah. I wish Judith didn’t hate ministers so. I don’t mind so much her not letting me go to church, because I’m so lame that it would be painful anyhow; but I’d like to talk with Mr. Leonard now and then about some things. I can never believe that Judith and father were right; I am sure they were not. There is a God, and I’m afraid it’s terribly wicked not to go to church. But there, nothing short of a miracle would convince Judith; so there is no use in thinking about it. Yes, Lionel Hezekiah must have gone to sleep.”
Salome pictured him so, with his long, curling lashes brushing his rosy, tear-stained cheek and his chubby fists clasped tightly over his breast as was his habit; her heart grew warm and thrilling with the maternity the picture provoked.
A year previously Lionel Hezekiah’s parents, Abner and Martha Smith, had died, leaving a houseful of children and very little else. The children were adopted into various Carmody families, and Salome Marsh had amazed Judith by asking to be allowed to take the five-year-old “baby.” At first Judith had laughed at the idea; but, when she found that Salome was in earnest, she yielded. Judith always gave Salome her own way except on one point.
“If you want the child, I suppose you must have him,” she said finally. “I wish he had a civilized name, though. Hezekiah is bad, and Lionel is worse; but the two in combination, and tacked on to Smith at that, is something that only Martha Smith could have invented. Her judgment was the same clear through, from selecting husbands to names.”
So Lionel Hezekiah came into Judith’s home and Salome’s heart. The latter was permitted to love him all she pleased, but Judith overlooked his training with a critical eye. Possibly it was just as well, for Salome might otherwise have ruined him with indulgence. Salome, who always adopted Judith’s opinions, no matter how ill they fitted her, deferred to the former’s decrees meekly, and suffered far more than Lionel Hezekiah when he was punished.
She sat on the stairs until she fell asleep herself, her head pillowed on her arm. Judith found her there when she came in, severe and triumphant, from her bout with the henhouse door. Her face softened into marvelous tenderness as she looked at Salome.
“She’s nothing but a child herself in spite of her age,” she thought pityingly. “A child that’s had her whole life thwarted and spoiled through no fault of her own. And yet folks say there is a God who is kind and good! If there is a God, he is a cruel, jealous tyrant, and I hate Him!”
Judith’s eyes were bitter and vindictive. She thought she had many grievances against the great Power that rules the universe, but the most intense was Salome’s helplessness—Salome, who fifteen years before had been the brightest, happiest of maidens, light of heart and foot, bubbling over with harmless, sparkling mirth and life. If Salome could only walk like other women, Judith told herself that she would not hate the great tyrannical Power.
Lionel Hezekiah was subdued and angelic for four days after that affair of the henhouse door. Then he broke out in a new place. One afternoon he came in sobbing, with his golden curls full of burrs. Judith was not in, but Salome dropped her crochet-work and gazed at him in dismay.
“Oh, Lionel Hezekiah, what have you gone and done now?”
“I—I just stuck the burrs in ‘cause I was playing I was a heathen chief,” sobbed Lionel Hezekiah. “It was great fun while it lasted; but, when I tried to take them out, it hurt awful.”
Neither Salome nor Lionel Hezekiah ever forgot the harrowing hour that followed. With the aid of comb and scissors, Salome eventually got the burrs out of Lionel Hezekiah’s crop of curls. It would be impossible to decide which of them suffered more in the process. Salome cried as hard as Lionel Hezekiah did, and every snip of the scissors or tug at the silken floss cut into her heart. She was almost exhausted when the performance was over; but she took the tired Lionel Hezekiah on her knee, and laid her wet cheek against his shining head.
“Oh, Lionel Hezekiah, what does make you get into mischief so constantly?” she sighed.
Lionel Hezekiah frowned reflectively.
“I don’t know,” he finally announced, “unless it’s because you don’t send me to Sunday school.”
Salome started as if an electric shock had passed through her frail body.
“Why, Lionel Hezekiah,” she stammered, “what put such and idea into your head?”
“Well, all the other boys go,” said Lionel Hezekiah defiantly; “and they’re all better’n me; so I guess that must be the reason. Teddy Markham says that all little boys should go to Sunday school, and that if they don’t they’re sure to go to the bad place. I don’t see how you can ‘spect me to behave well when you won’t send me to Sunday school.
“Would you like to go?” asked Salome, almost in a whisper.
“I’d like it bully,” said Lionel Hezekiah frankly and succinctly.
“Oh, don’t use such dreadful words,” sighed Salome helplessly. “I’ll see what can be done. Perhaps you can go. I’ll ask your Aunt Judith.”
“Oh, Aunt Judith won’t let me go,” said Lionel Hezekiah despondingly. “Aunt Judith doesn’t believe there is any God or any bad place. Teddy Markham says she doesn’t. He says she’s an awful wicked woman ‘cause she never goes to church. So you must be wicked too, Aunt Salome, ‘cause you never go. Why don’t you?”
“Your—your Aunt Judith won’t let me go,” faltered Salome, more perplexed than she had ever been before in her life.
“Well, it doesn’t seem to me that you have much fun on Sundays,” remarked Lionel Hezekiah ponderingly. “I’d have more if I was you. But I s’pose you can’t ‘cause you’re ladies. I’m glad I’m a man. Look at Abel Blair, what splendid times he has on Sundays. He never goes to church, but he goes fishing, and has cock-fights, and gets drunk. When I grow up, I’m going to do that on Sundays too, since I won’t be going to church. I don’t want to go to church, but I’d like to go to Sunday school.”
Salome listened in agony. Every word of Lionel Hezekiah’s stung her conscience unbearably. So this was the result of her weak yielding to Judith; this innocent child looked upon her as a wicked woman, and, worse still, regarded old, depraved Abel Blair as a model to be imitated. Oh! was it too late to undo the evil? When Judith returned, Salome blurted out the whole story. “Lionel Hezekiah must go to Sunday school,” she concluded appealingly.
Judith’s face hardened until it was as if cut in stone.
“No, he shall not,” she said stubbornly. “No one living in my household shall ever go to church or Sunday school. I gave in to you when you wanted to teach him to say his prayers, though I knew it was only foolish superstition, but I sha’n’t yield another inch. You know exactly how I feel on this subject, Salome; I believe just as father did. You know he hated churches and churchgoing. And was there ever a better, kinder, more lovable man?”
“Mother believed in God; mother always went to church,” pleaded Salome.
“Mother was weak and superstitious, just as you are,” retorted Judith inflexibly. “I tell you, Salome, I don’t believe there is a God. But, if there is, He is cruel and unjust, and I hate Him.”
“Judith!” gasped Salome, aghast at the impiety. She half expected to see her sister struck dead at her feet.
“Don’t ‘Judith’ me!” said Judith passionately, in the strange anger that any discussion of the subject always roused in her. “I mean every word I say. Before you got lame I didn’t feel much about it one way or another; I’d just as soon have gone with mother as with father. But, when you were struck down like that, I knew father was right.”
For a moment Salome quailed. She felt that she could not, dare not, stand out against Judith. For her own sake she could not have done so, but the thought of Lionel Hezekiah nerved her to desperation. She struck her thin, bleached little hands wildly together.
“Judith, I’m going to church to-morrow,” she cried. “I tell you I am, I won’t set Lionel Hezekiah a bad example one day longer. I’ll not take him; I won’t go against you in that, for it is your bounty feeds and clothes him; but I’m going myself.”
“If you do, Salome Marsh, I’ll never forgive you,” said Judith, her harsh face dark with anger; and then, not trusting herself to discuss the subject any longer, she went out.
Salome dissolved into her ready tears, and cried most of the night. But her resolution did not fail. Go to church she would, for that dear baby’s sake.
Judith would not speak to her at breakfast, and this almost broke Salome’s heart; but she dared not yield. After breakfast, she limped painfully into her room, and still more painfully dressed herself. When she was ready, she took a little old worn Bible out of her box. It had been her mother’s, and Salome read a chapter in it every night, although she never dared to let Judith see her doing it.
When she limped out into the kitchen, Judith looked up with a hard face. A flame of sullen anger glowed in her dark eyes, and she went into the sitting-room and shut the door, as if by that act she were shutting her sister for evermore out of her heart and life. Salome, strung up to the last pitch of nervous tension, felt intuitively the significance of that closed door. For a moment she wavered—oh, she could not go against Judith! She was all but turning back to her room when Lionel Hezekiah came running in, and paused to look at her admiringly.
“You look just bully, Aunt Salome,” he said. “Where are you going?”
“Don’t use that word, Lionel Hezekiah,” pleaded Salome. “I’m going to church.”
“Take me with you,” said Lionel Hezekiah promptly. Salome shook her head.
“I can’t, dear. Your Aunt Judith wouldn’t like it. Perhaps she will let you go after a while. Now do be a good boy while I am away, won’t you? Don’t do any naughty things.” “I won’t do them if I know they’re naughty,” conceded Lionel Hezekiah. “But that’s just the trouble; I don’t know what’s naughty and what ain’t. Prob’ly if I went to Sunday school I’d find out.”
Salome limped out of the yard and down the lane bordered by its asters and goldenrod. Fortunately the church was just outside the lane, across the main road; but Salome found it hard to cover even that short distance. She felt almost exhausted when she reached the church and toiled painfully up the aisle to her mother’s old pew. She laid her crutch on the seat, and sank into the corner by the window with a sigh of relief.
She had elected to come early so that she might get there before the rest of the people. The church was as yet empty, save for a class of Sunday school children and their teacher in a remote corner, who paused midway in their lesson to stare with amazement at the astonishing sight of Salome Marsh limping into church.
The big building, shadowy from the great elms around it, was very still. A faint murmur came from the closed room behind the pulpit where the rest of the Sunday school was assembled. In front of the pulpit was a stand bearing tall white geraniums in luxuriant blossom. The light fell through the stained-glass window in a soft tangle of hues upon the floor. Salome felt a sense of peace and happiness fill her heart. Even Judith’s anger lost its importance. She leaned her head against the window-sill, and gave herself up to the flood of tender old recollections that swept over her.
Memory went back to the years of her childhood when she had sat in this pew every Sunday with her mother. Judith had come then, too, always seeming grown up to Salome by reason of her ten years’ seniority. Her tall, dark, reserved father never came. Salome knew that the Carmody people called him an infidel, and looked upon him as a very wicked man. But he had not been wicked; he had been good and kind in his own odd way.
The gentle little mother had died when Salome was ten years old, but so loving and tender was Judith’s care that the child did not miss anything out of her life. Judith Marsh loved her little sister with an intensity that was maternal. She herself was a plain, repellent girl, liked by few, sought after by no man; but she was determined that Salome should have everything that she had missed—admiration, friendship, love. She would have a vicarious youth in Salome’s.
All went according to Judith’s planning until Salome was eighteen, and then trouble after trouble came. Their father, whom Judith had understood and passionately loved, died; Salome’s young lover was killed in a railroad accident; and finally Salome herself developed symptoms of the hip-disease which, springing from a trifling injury, eventually left her a cripple. Everything possible was done for her. Judith, falling heir to a snug little fortune by the death of the old aunt for whom she was named, spared nothing to obtain the best medical skill, and in vain. One and all, the great doctors failed.
Judith had borne her father’s death bravely enough in spite of her agony of grief; she had watched her sister pining and fading with the pain of her broken heart without growing bitter; but when she knew at last that Salome would never walk again save as she hobbled painfully about on her crutch, the smouldering revolt in her soul broke its bounds, and overflowed her nature in a passionate rebellion against the Being who had sent, or had failed to prevent, these calamities. She did not rave or denounce wildly; that was not Judith’s way; but she never went to church again, and it soon became an accepted fact in Carmody that Judith Marsh was as rank an infidel as her father had been before her; nay, worse, since she would not even allow Salome to go to church, and shut the door in the minister’s face when he went to see her.
“I should have stood out against her for conscience’ sake,” reflected Salome in her pew self-reproachfully. “But, O dear, I’m afraid she’ll never forgive me, and how can I live if she doesn’t? But I must endure it for Lionel Hezekiah’s sake; my weakness has perhaps done him great harm already. They say that what a child learns in the first seven years never leaves him; so Lionel Hezekiah has only another year to get set right about these things. Oh, if I’ve left it till too late!”
When the people began to come in, Salome felt painfully the curious glances directed at her. Look where she would, she met them, unless she looked out of the window; so out of the window she did look unswervingly, her delicate little face burning crimson with self-consciousness. She could see her home and its back yard plainly, with Lionel Hezekiah making mud-pies joyfully in the corner. Presently she saw Judith come out of the house and stride away to the pine wood behind it. Judith always betook herself to the pines in time of mental stress and strain.
Salome could see the sunlight shining on Lionel Hezekiah’s bare head as he mixed his pies. In the pleasure of watching him she forgot where she was and the curious eyes turned on her.
Suddenly Lionel Hezekiah ceased concocting pies, and betook himself to the corner of the summer kitchen, where he proceeded to climb up to the top of the storm-fence and from there to mount the sloping kitchen roof. Salome clasped her hands in agony. What if the child should fall? Oh! why had Judith gone away and left him alone? What if—what if—and then, while her brain with lightning-like rapidity pictured forth a dozen possible catastrophes, something really did happen. Lionel Hezekiah slipped, sprawled wildly, slid down, and fell off the roof, in a bewildering whirl of arms and legs, plump into the big rain-water hogshead under the spout, which was generally full to the brim with rain-water, a hogshead big and deep enough to swallow up half a dozen small boys who went climbing kitchen roofs on a Sunday.
Then something took place that is talked of in Carmody to this day, and even fiercely wrangled over, so many and conflicting are the opinions on the subject. Salome Marsh, who had not walked a step without assistance for fifteen years, suddenly sprang to her feet with a shriek, ran down the aisle, and out of the door!
Every man, woman, and child in the Carmody church followed her, even to the minister, who had just announced his text. When they got out, Salome was already half-way up her lane, running wildly. In her heart was room for but one agonized thought. Would Lionel Hezekiah be drowned before she reached him?
She opened the gate of the yard, and panted across it just as a tall, grim-faced woman came around the corner of the house and stood rooted to the ground in astonishment at the sight that met her eyes.
But Salome saw nobody. She flung herself against the hogshead and looked in, sick with terror at what she might see. What she did see was Lionel Hezekiah sitting on the bottom of the hogshead in water that came only to his waist. He was looking rather dazed and bewildered, but was apparently quite uninjured.
The yard was full of people, but nobody had as yet said a word; awe and wonder held everybody in spellbound silence. Judith was the first to speak. She pushed through the crowd to Salome. Her face was blanched to a deadly whiteness; and her eyes, as Mrs. William Blair afterwards declared, were enough to give a body the creeps.
“Salome,” she said in a high, shrill, unnatural voice, “where is your crutch?”
Salome came to herself at the question. For the first time, she realized that she had walked, nay, run, all that distance from the church alone and unaided. She turned pale, swayed, and would have fallen if Judith had not caught her.
Old Dr. Blair came forward briskly.
“Carry her in,” he said, “and don’t all of you come crowding in, either. She wants quiet and rest for a spell.”
Most of the people obediently returned to the church, their sudden loosened tongues clattering in voluble excitement. A few women assisted Judith to carry Salome in and lay her on the kitchen lounge, followed by the doctor and the dripping Lionel Hezekiah, whom the minister had lifted out of the hogshead and to whom nobody now paid the slightest attention.
Salome faltered out her story, and her hearers listened with varying emotions.
“It’s a miracle,” said Sam Lawson in an awed voice.
Dr. Blair shrugged his shoulders. “There is no miracle about it,” he said bluntly. “It’s all perfectly natural. The disease in the hip has evidently been quite well for a long time; Nature does sometimes work cures like that when she is let alone. The trouble was that the muscles were paralyzed by long disuse. That paralysis was overcome by the force of a strong and instinctive effort. Salome, get up and walk across the kitchen.”
Salome obeyed. She walked across the kitchen and back, slowly, stiffly, falteringly, now that the stimulus of frantic fear was spent; but still she walked. The doctor nodded his satisfaction.
“Keep that up every day. Walk as much as you can without tiring yourself, and you’ll soon be as spry as ever. No more need of crutches for you, but there’s no miracle in the case.”
Judith Marsh turned to him. She had not spoken a word since her question concerning Salome’s crutch. Now she said passionately:
“It WAS a miracle. God has worked it to prove His existence for me, and I accept the proof.”
The old doctor shrugged his shoulders again. Being a wise man, he knew when to hold his tongue.
“Well, put Salome to bed, and let her sleep the rest of the day. She’s worn out. And for pity’s sake let some one take that poor child and put some dry clothes on him before he catches his death of cold.”
That evening, as Salome Marsh lay in her bed in a glory of sunset light, her heart filled with unutterable gratitude and happiness, Judith came into the room. She wore her best hat and dress, and she held Lionel Hezekiah by the hand. Lionel Hezekiah’s beaming face was scrubbed clean, and his curls fell in beautiful sleekness over the lace collar of his velvet suit.
“How do you feel now, Salome?” asked Judith gently.
“Better. I’ve had a lovely sleep. But where are you going, Judith?”
“I am going to church,” said Judith firmly, “and I am going to take Lionel Hezekiah with me.”