THE ELECT LADY AND HER DEATH-BOOK.
In the dining-room of the old stone Mercer mansion in the town of Rossignol, Me., Mrs. Hippolyta Prymmer, sanctified vessel and uncommon saint, charter member of the church of the United Brethren, chief leader in religious work, and waggishly nicknamed by the ungodly about her "the elect lady," sat looking earnestly at her death-book.
This death-book was her never-failing source of interest and chastened entertainment. In it she had enrolled the names of the various friends of whom she had been deprived by death, and for its enlargement and adornment she collected photographs, cuttings from newspapers, and items of information, with an assiduity superior to that of some of her acquaintances, who prepared scrap-books merely for purposes of diversion and amusement.
The covers of the book were ornamented with two silver plates engraved with the names and ages of her two deceased husbands,—Sylvester Mercer and Zebedee Prymmer. These plates had been taken from the coffins of the two worthy men before they had been lowered to their graves. Wedged under each plate were locks of hair shorn from the heads of the dead men. Sylvester, according to his coffin plate, had been a man in the prime of life. His lock of hair was soft and brown, while that of Zebedee Prymmer, whose age was given as sixty-five, was stiff and grizzled.
Mrs. Prymmer did not quail as her eye ran over these somewhat ghastly souvenirs. She even sighed gently, and with eyes partly closed,—for she nearly knew the contents of the book by heart,—repeated softly some lines addressed to herself, written by Zebedee Prymmer before death, but worded as if they had been penned after his flight to regions above.
"Mourn not, oh loved, oh cherished dear,I have no longer foes to fear,From here above, far in the sky,I see the pit wherein they'll lie.""They digged around me in the dust,But Providence sustained the Just,Come soon and join the dear upright,And triumph over sons of spite."
"Mourn not, oh loved, oh cherished dear,I have no longer foes to fear,From here above, far in the sky,I see the pit wherein they'll lie.""They digged around me in the dust,But Providence sustained the Just,Come soon and join the dear upright,And triumph over sons of spite."
"Mourn not, oh loved, oh cherished dear,I have no longer foes to fear,From here above, far in the sky,I see the pit wherein they'll lie."
"Mourn not, oh loved, oh cherished dear,
I have no longer foes to fear,
From here above, far in the sky,
I see the pit wherein they'll lie."
"They digged around me in the dust,But Providence sustained the Just,Come soon and join the dear upright,And triumph over sons of spite."
"They digged around me in the dust,
But Providence sustained the Just,
Come soon and join the dear upright,
And triumph over sons of spite."
Mrs. Prymmer, musing enjoyably over these lines, had her attention distracted by her cat, who was mewing around her feet, turning his sleek face up to her sleek face, and pretending that he thought it was breakfast-time instead of bedtime.
"I sha'n't give you any milk," she said, severely, "you had enough for your supper; go to bed."
The cat fled down-stairs, and Mrs. Prymmer gazed across the room at the clock. The sight of her round gray eyes was undimmed. All her bodily faculties were in a good state of preservation, and undeterred by the mournful fact that she had laid two husbands in the grave, she was, perhaps, by no means averse to taking a third one. In the course of time she would probably have another offer, for Rossignol was a marrying-place, and she was somewhat of a belle among elderly widowers, being still good-looking in spite of the artificial and unpleasing compression of her lips, and the two lines up and down the corners of her mouth.
She began to wonder just how her son would take the news of another marriage on her part. She was a little afraid of this son, although she loved him better than any one else in the world. He was the only living person admitted into her death-book, and drawing his photograph from between the leaves, she looked at it half lovingly, half apprehensively. It was a not unstriking face that confronted her. Hewas a curious combination, this boy of hers,—half Englishman, half Yankee. His tall, firmly built figure, his reserve, and his pale face were a legacy from his father, who was of direct English ancestry; his business ability and calculating ways, and his granite-coloured eyes, that so swiftly and unerringly measured his fellow men with respect to their usefulness or uselessness to him, were direct gifts to him through his mother from a generation or two of New England traders.
She wondered once more just how he would look and what he would say if some one were to observe suddenly to him, "So I hear your mother is going to be married again."
Her plump shoulders quivered nervously, and she looked deeper into his fathomless eyes. Probably he would be annoyed at first, but in time he would calm down, and would go on living with her and a third husband just as he had lived with her and a second one.
"He never liked Zebedee," she reflected, comfortably, "yet he was always respectful to him. He's a pretty good boy is Justin," and she passed one hand caressingly over the pale, composed face, and wished earnestly that he would come home from the long and mysterious journey that he had undertaken some weeks ago.
The house was very quiet now that he was away.A cousin who boarded with her was also absent, and her solitary maid servant, who should have been in bed, was roaming the streets with a sailor lover.
"Half-past ten," said Mrs. Prymmer, in a voice that boded no good to the loitering maid, "and her hour is ten sharp. There she is,—the witch," as a ring at the bell resounded through the silent house.
She got up and went quickly through the hall. "Mary!" she said as she opened the door. "Mary!"
There was something so aggravating in her tone that it checked the apology on the lips of the belated girl, and made her toss her head angrily.
"Mary," repeated her mistress, warningly, "if this happens again I shall consider it my duty to dismiss you without a character."
The maid hurried up-stairs, her back respectful, her face working vigorously as she made mouths at an imaginary mistress in front of her.
Mrs. Prymmer was about to follow her when her attention was caught by a sound of sleigh-bells coming from the snowy street. The old stone house, in common with most of its neighbours, was perched on a bank some distance from the street, and was approached by several flights of steps cut into the terraces before it.
A sleigh was drawn up to the pavement below, and slowly descending from it was her son, whomshe had supposed to be in California. She held her breath with pleasure. She had got him back again, her one and only child, her son by her first marriage,—young Justin Mercer, junior deacon in the church of the United Brethren, the hope of the older members of the flock and the model of the rising generation. In unbounded pride she noted his firm step, his unruffled appearance, the uprightness of his figure, and the cool flash of the eye behind the glasses that he always wore.
Instead of looking like one arriving home from a journey, he had rather the appearance of one just about to leave home, and as calmly as if he had seen her a few hours before he bent his tall figure to bestow a filial embrace upon her.
In a sudden upsurging of maternal affection she responded warmly and involuntarily, until the remembrance of his abrupt departure made her draw back and survey him silently.
"Are you not glad to have me back?" he asked, with a slight smile.
"Yes, though your going away was none of the pleasantest," she said, in an injured voice, while with the tips of her fingers she arranged on her temples the thick crimped hair slightly disturbed by his caress.
"I am sorry for it, mother," he said, with the same curious smile, "and I regret to state that, unpleasantas it was, you may find it was not equal to my return."
"What do you mean?" she said, peevishly, "and why doesn't that man fetch in your things?"
"I told him to hold his horses until I came back. I have a present for you," and he turned and went down the steps while his mother returned to the shelter of the porch.
Suddenly she became as rigid as the door-post behind her. The present was taking on the shape of all things in the world most hateful to her. A young girl of medium height was coming up the steps, and bending over her in a protecting attitude was her son Justin.
They paused for an instant before her. Mrs. Prymmer had a brief confused vision of a big, beautiful wax doll whose limpid eyes shone out of a mist of light hair, then her son flashed her a swift glance, and seeing that he could hope for no response, laid a hand on the shoulder of the vision and withdrew it.
Mrs. Prymmer, brushing by the cabman who was staggering in under the weight of a trunk, marched solemnly into the hall, opened the door of the parlour, and, lighting the gas, sat down in an armchair of imposing proportions and awaited an explanation.
Her son had conducted his companion to thedining-room. She heard a few low-spoken words, then his heavy step came through the hall, and, entering the room, he sat before her.
"I don't know what some women would call this," she said, compressing her lips till there was nothing but a thin streak of red between them, "but I call it an insult."
"It is not intended as an insult," he said. "Perhaps if you will wait till I explain—"
"You can't explain away the fact that that is a woman," replied Mrs. Prymmer, pointing an accusing finger toward the next room.
No, he could not. With all the words that he could utter, with all the stock of logic at his command, Justin Mercer could not disprove the fact that in the room beyond them was a young and uncommonly beautiful woman.
"What do you mean by saying that she is a present for me?" asked his discomfited mother. "I have one girl now. I suppose this is some creature you have picked up on your travels."
Justin Mercer was not a man given to unseemly mirth, yet at this disdainful remark he made a sound in his throat closely approaching a laugh. "Did you look at her, mother?"
Mrs. Prymmer for a few instants forgot her vengeance in her curiosity. It was no servant, but a lady that had passed her in the doorway. Thedelicate face, with its clear-cut features and limpid eyes, was a refined and not a vulgar one.
"Who is she?" she asked, peremptorily.
"She is my wife," he said, quietly.
"Your wife," gasped Mrs. Prymmer, and she half rose from her chair, then staggered into it again, and laid her hand against the high back for support, while all the furniture in the room, presided over by her son's sober face, whirled slowly by her in a distracted procession.
"Shall I get you a glass of water?" he asked, sympathetically.
She made a prohibitory gesture. This was only the reflex action of the blow struck when first she had seen the young girl accompanying him up the steps. She knew then that he had brought home a wife. Moistening her dry lips with her tongue so that she might compass the words, she articulated, "This is the fruit of disobedience."
Her son did not reply to her, but there was no sign of regret on his face, no word of apology on his tongue. He had found the fruit sweet, and not bitter,—he had plucked it in defiance of her well-known wishes. She had lost the little boy that she had led by the hand for years,—the young man that had lingered by her side, apparently indifferent to all feminine society but her own. She had lost him for ever, and, making a motion of her plumphands as if she were washing him and his affairs from them, she got up and moved toward the door.
"Don't you want to hear about my journey?" he asked, kindly.
She did indeed want to hear. She was suffering from a burning inquisitiveness, yet she affected indifference, and said, coldly, "I do, if you will tell me the truth."
"Did I ever tell you a lie?"
"No, but I daresay you will begin now,—'by their fruits ye shall know them.' I thought you were never going to get married."
"I never said so."
"You acted it."
"You had better sit down, and I will tell you how it happened," he said, soothingly.
Mrs. Prymmer hesitated, then, dominated by his slightly imperious manner and her own ungovernable curiosity, she took on the air of a suffering martyr, and reseated herself.
There was a large mirror over the mantelpiece, and the young man, catching in it a glimpse of the contrast between his own pale face and the ruddy one of his mother, murmured, "You are very fresh-looking for fifty-five years."
It was not like Justin Mercer to make a remark about the personal appearance of man, woman, or child. His mother glanced at him in surprise,then for a brief space of time was mollified by his approval of her comfortable appearance, although she murmured a stern reference to gray hairs that are brought down by sorrow to the grave.
"Your face is full," he went on, in his composed voice, "and your hair is thick and glossy like a girl's, and your eyes are bright,—as bright as Derrice's there—"
The mention of his wife's name was inopportune. "Is that what you call her?" asked his mother, with a scornful compression of the lips.
"Yes, Derrice Lancaster."
Mrs. Prymmer's countenance grew purple. "She is not a daughter of that man?"
"She is."
"Help, Lord, for the godly man ceaseth," murmured the lady, upon whom these repeated blows were beginning to have the effect of inducing irrelevancy of Scripture quotations.
"If you like, I will tell you from the first," said her son.
"Do you want her to hear?" asked Mrs. Prymmer, with a glance toward the sliding doors that divided the two rooms.
The young man's face changed quickly, and muttering, "It would be just like her to listen,—the little witch," he got up and approached the doors.
"Hello," said a mischievous voice, and he caughta gleam of bright eyes and a smiling face at the gaping crack. Hastily opening the doors, he passed through, and, firmly closing them behind him, stood over the beautiful but slightly unformed and undeveloped figure sitting on the sofa, that was drawn close up to the doors.
"Derrice," he said, reprovingly.
"What a trying time you are having with your mamma," she said, saucily. "I was just about to interrupt. I want to go to bed."
"Very well," he said, submissively, and, preceding her into the hall, he picked up a small leather bag.
Mrs. Prymmer, peering out of the front room, saw them go by,—her son with the girl's cloak thrown over his shoulder, his head inclined toward her, as he talked in a low voice.
"Bewitched!" she exclaimed, furiously, and, creeping to the door-sill, she listened to their further movements.
Ever since his childhood her son had occupied a large room at the back of the house overlooking the garden. Mrs. Prymmer heard him open the door of this room and ask his wife to stand still while he found a match. Then there was a silence, and she pictured the girl's critical glance running over the muffled furniture, the covered bed, and the drawn blinds.
Presently there was the sound of the strange voicein the hall, "I cannot sleep in that room. It is damp, and the sheets are clammy."
"But, Derrice," said her son's clear tones in remonstrance.
"I am not mistaken," repeated the girl, "where are your other sleeping-rooms?"
"If Micah is at home we haven't any," he said, decidedly. "Most of our bedrooms are shut up."
"Then I shall have to sit up all night or go to a hotel," said the girl, with equal decision.
Mrs. Prymmer felt herself called upon to save the family reputation. She stepped into the hall, and in a voice choking with wrath called up the staircase, "Micah isn't home,—put her in his room."
The girl looked over the railing at her. It seemed to Mrs. Prymmer that her eyes were rolling mischievously. "Thank you," she said, sweetly, then she retired, and her disconcerted mother-in-law went back to the parlour.