It is in the quiet village, remote, as this was, from the rushing change of city life, that the fervor of religion always appears warmest and seems to linger longest.
In Oldfield everybody went to church twice a day on Sunday, in winter and in summer, and through the rain as well as through the sunshine. That is to say, everybody except old lady Gordon and Miss Judy Bramwell, neither of whom ever went at all.
There was nothing strange or inconsistent in old lady Gordon's staying away. She was generally held by everybody to be as an out-and-out heathen, whereas in reality she was merely a good deal of a pagan. And she was not in the habit of accounting to anybody for what she did or did not do, being equally indifferent to private and public opinion.
But Miss Judy's never going was a much harder thing to understand. For the little lady was not only the model for the whole community in week-day matters, but she was also known to be a most devout Episcopalian, so that, taken altogether, the fact that she never went to church remained always an impenetrable mystery, notwithstanding that the Oldfield church-goers discussed it untiringly on almost every Sunday of their lives. Nor did Miss Judy, who was the soul of guileless frankness in everything else, ever offer any sort of an explanation for this unaccountable remissness. She could not make any untrue excuses, and she would not give the real reason; her gentle heart being much too tender of her neighbors' feelings to admit of her mentioning the truth, so long as she was able to hide what she was bound in conscience to feel.
"They are doing the best they can, you know, sister Sophia," she would say, almost in a whisper, as the neighbors passed on Sundays; and she would steal on tiptoe to close the door, so that Merica might not overhear. "They are not to blame, poor things; it is their misfortune and not their fault, that they don't know the difference between a meeting-house and the Church, and between a lecture and the Service."
"Just so, sister Judy," Miss Sophia would respond, more befogged if possible over consecration and apostolic succession than she was over most things. When, however, after a time, she came gradually to comprehend that this stand, taken privately by Miss Judy, would spare herself the exertion of walking to the meeting-houses, both of which were at the other end of town, she became so decided in her support of Miss Judy's position as to remove the last shade of doubt from that mild little lady's mind. Nothing of all this was ever suspected by any third person, but in the absence of any actual knowledge, it ultimately came to be taken for granted that Miss Judy stayed at home on Sundays and read the prayer-book to her sister because Miss Sophia was not equal to the long walk to church and back, especially in bad weather. Miss Judy of course said not a word either to confirm or to contradict this impression, which strengthened as the years went by. But she always gave the neighbors so sweet a smile when they passed on the way to meeting that everything seemed to everybody just as it should be.
One of the churches belonged to the Methodists and the other to the denomination known as The Disciples of Christ. The town was not large enough to supply two congregations or to support two preachers; and it was consequently necessary to hold services in each of the churches on alternate Sundays in order to insure a sizable congregation and a moderate support for the circuit rider and the Christian elder, when they came from their farms in another part of the county to preach on their appointed days; thus giving freedom to all and favor to none.
A single contribution box served for the two churches. This, which was in reality a contribution bag, was a sort of inverted liberty cap made of ecclesiastical black cloth, and lined with churchly purple satin. When not in use it usually stood on the end of its long staff in what was called the Amen corner of the Methodist church. The office of taking it down from its accustomed resting-place, and of carrying it over to the Christian church when needed there, had belonged from time immemorial to Uncle Watty. It is not certain to which of the two denominations Uncle Watty himself belonged. It was, indeed, never a very clearly established fact that he was a member of any denomination, but this uncertainty had nothing whatever to do with the lifelong holding of his office. It seemed to everybody to be the right and proper thing for Uncle Watty to take up the collection, mainly for the reason that he always had done it, which is accepted as a good and sufficient reason for many rather singular things in that region. Miss Judy, who knew about it, as she knew about everything, although she never saw him do it,—since she never went to meeting,—always considered it a particularly kind and delicate arrangement, devised by some thoughtful, feeling person expressly to save Uncle Watty the embarrassment of having nothing to put in the bag himself. But Uncle Watty apparently took another view of it; and, like a good many people who do little themselves and exact much from others, he was extremely rigorous and almost relentless in his handing of the contribution bag. Its tough, hickory handle was equal to the full length of the benches, and no man, woman, or child might hope to evade its deliberate presentation under the very nose, and its being steadily held there, too, until Uncle Watty thought everybody's duty was fully done.
When there was a fifth Sunday in the month, both of the regular preachers came to the village, inviting any other preacher who chanced to be in the vicinity to join in the debate which then took the place of the sermon, and which was held in the court-house, on neutral ground, as it were. Sometimes the Cumberland Presbyterians and the Hard-shell Baptists took part, and now and then a Foot-Washing Baptist came along, so that these fifth Sundays were usually memorable occasions in Oldfield. Occasionally, to be sure, there was some slight friction, as was, perhaps, unavoidable under the circumstances; but, on the whole, this rotation in creeds and dogmas gave remarkable general satisfaction. The exceptions were very few and purely personal in character, the gravest and most important growing out of an unfortunate dispute between Miss Pettus and the Christian elder over the ownership of a runaway pig. The controversy ended in the reverend gentleman's getting the pig. When, therefore, on the following Sunday—through some singular mischance—he chose as a text: "Children, have ye any meat?" Miss Pettus not unnaturally felt that he was wantonly adding insult to injury, and, rising from her seat in the front of the church, the indignant lady—holding herself haughtily erect and her head very high—walked straight down the whole length of the middle aisle and out through the women's door. It was a year or more before she could be induced to go back again to hear the elder preach, notwithstanding that he did everything in his power (like the good man that he was) to convince her of his innocence of any thought of offence. But she tried to forgive him—which is all that the best of us can do—and she ultimately succeeded, in so far that she returned to the meeting-house on his day. She could not help, however, saying at the time, when coming out, how much she disliked levity in the pulpit, be it Christian or Methodist; yet she admitted afterward, when cooler, that he might have meant no irreverence, though there was no gainsaying his levity, when he announced at the close of the sermon that he would preach again on the second Sunday, "the Lord willing;" but that he would preach again on the fourth Sunday "whether or no." There are always plenty of overcritical people besides Miss Pettus to be found everywhere. Some of those living in Oldfield complained that the circuit rider pounded so much dust out of the pulpit cushion that they took cold from continual sneezing every time he preached. Others were inclined to criticise the too vigorous elocution of the elder when he warmed to the warning of his flock against the shifting sands of dangerous doctrines, bidding them build their house of faith upon a rock, so that it might falln-o-twhen the windsb-l-e-w.
Sidney, who called herself a Whiskey Baptist, and who consequently regarded herself and was regarded by others as something of a free lance—in theology as in most other things,—used to express her opinions of the shortcomings of both the Methodists and the Christians with entire frankness, but always more in jest than in earnest. Indeed, all these trivial faultfindings were no more than the passing expression of sectarian jealousy, and harmless as heat lightning, so that, on the whole, religion flourished in Oldfield.
It was a pleasant, peaceful sight to see the people coming out of their green-bowered houses on that radiant May morning. The old locust trees were at the sweetest and whitest of their flowering; the light, fine foliage seemed to float on the south breeze, and the long clusters of snowy flowers swung gently to and fro over the heads of the church-goers, like silvered censers filling the air with richest incense. And there at the base of every fragile spray—emblem of life's mortality—lay the bud of the next year's leaf—symbol of life's immortality. But the simple people, walking beneath, went on their way heeding only the beauty, and the sweetness, and the warmth of the sunshine. They greeted one another after the friendly custom of the country, which gave a greeting even to strangers,—and these church-goers were all old friends. Only the young man leaving old lady Gordon's gate might be accounted a stranger. Yet his ancestors also slept on the highest, greenest hillside, under the long grass over which the soft wind was running with swift, invisible feet. There were no strangers even there, where all the tombstones bore familiar names; the new ones freshly inscribed, gleaming white and erect against the green; the older ones showing gray as they leant; the oldest, lying brown and prone, and crumbling slowly back to earth.
The cracked bell of the wooden church rang with the homesick sound, full of a homely pathos that richer-toned bells never give tongue to. In response to its pathetic call the people went on toward the meeting-house in little groups, chatting with one another. Anne Watson was among the first now as always, when the preaching was to be in her own church. Her faith enjoined the weekly "breaking of bread," and it had ever been a sore trouble to her that the opportunity was not given oftener than twice a month in her own church. In her grave uneasiness of conscience she had sought to do her duty in the other church whenever she could. But this had been before her husband was stricken; since that time she had not felt compelled to leave him, except for the service in her own church. But the feeling that she must go there now became more imperative in its demands, if possible, than it ever had been. Therefore, when the bell began to ring that day, Anne put on her bonnet and came to take an hour's anxious leave of her husband.
She was a tall, delicately built woman, too thin and too unbending to be graceful, and yet too quiet and too dignified to be awkward. Her straight features were neither noticeably pretty nor decidedly plain, and her face was pale without being fair. Her hair, of an ashen shade, clung to her hollow temples; there was not one loose lock, or the suggestion of a ripple under her quakerish bonnet. The straight skirt of her lead-colored dress hung flat, as the skirts of such women always hang, falling to her feet in unbroken lines. It was her eyes alone which made Anne Watson's appearance utterly unlike that of any other woman of her not uncommon type. And even her eyes were neutral in color and slightly prominent, as the eyes of such women nearly always are, but so singularly and luminously clear that a white light seemed to be shining behind them.
She fixed these wonderful eyes on her husband as she stood before him ready for church, and yet loath to leave him, and still lingering to see if she might not do something more for his comfort during her absence. She drew the stand nearer to his shaking uncertain hands, after turning the pillows at his helpless back and straightening the cushion under his powerless feet. When she could find nothing more to do, she bent down silently and kissed his scarred forehead. There was nothing for her to say, nothing for him to hear. At the door she looked back, and again from the gate, before passing out to hasten toward the church as though her haste in going might the sooner fetch her back.
All along the big road the people were coming. The doctor and his wife were not far behind Anne, and following them came Miss Pettus and her brother, accompanied by Sam Mills. The old man, his father, was worse that morning, or thought he was, which amounted to the same thing, so that Kitty had been compelled to stay at home as usual; but she leant over the front gate, looking after her husband, with her bare red arms rolled in her apron and her honest face beaming with happy smiles as she hailed the passers-by, until the old man's harsh, querulous voice was heard calling her into the house. From the opposite direction, also, the pious people of Oldfield were approaching the meeting-house, the men to enter one door and the women another. Even the children were strictly divided, the boys sitting with their fathers and the girls with their mothers. Once when a man, who was a stranger and unacquainted with Oldfield customs, wandered in and unknowingly took a seat on the women's side, a scandalized shock passed over the entire congregation. It was a serious matter, to be gravely discussed for many a day thereafter.
On the church steps stood Lynn Gordon, intent upon watching and waiting for the coming of the girl whom he had come hoping to see. So intent was he that he was not aware of the glances cast upon himself by those passing into the building. Yet he was well worth looking at, for he was a handsome young fellow, and dressed, moreover, as no one had ever before been dressed in Oldfield. His pantaloons, made of dove-colored canton cloth, were tight beyond anything ever seen in that part of the country, and held to his high-heeled varnished boots by a strap under his arched instep. His long-waisted, short-skirted coat of dark blue was lined and trimmed with rich goffered silk. His waistcoat was of a buff color anden piqué, for, strange—incredible, indeed—as it may seem, Paris at that time set the fashions for fine gentlemen as well as for fine ladies, and the London papers gravely recorded weekly what the Frenchmen were wearing. Lynn Gordon's hat, too, was of the latest French mode, just brought over for the Boston dandies on the eve of his leaving Harvard. Its brim was very wide and slightly curled, and its crown was high and widened perceptibly toward the top. His tie, a large, loose bow of black brocade, gave the final touch of elegance.
There was nothing modish in poor little, country-bred, Doris's dress when this fine gentleman saw her coming behind all the rest, after he had almost given her up. The skirt of Miss Judy's book-muslin was much too narrow for the requirements even of Oldfield fashions, but Doris did not know it, and the young man was not thinking of it as he saw her first, far up the big road, descending its gradual slope beneath the flowering locust trees. The gentle breeze caught the ivory softness of her skirt, pressing it into enchanting curves around her slender limbs; a long, thin white scarf streamed back from her shoulders, and the white ribbons of her straw hat floated out behind her golden head. The thought which arose in Lynn's mind as he thus saw Doris approaching was not of any fleeting fashion, but of a living Winged Victory lovelier than any antique sculpture.
He lingered at his post on the steps till she ascended them and went by him into the church, and he noted the little flurry of delicate color which followed her shy side glance. But she did not pause, entering the meeting-house at once, by way, of course, of the women's door, and going straight up the aisle to a seat reserved for her between her mother and Uncle Watty. The young man had never seen either Sidney or her brother-in-law, but he knew who they were as soon as he caught sight of them. And the sight was something of a shock. And yet what did it matter, after all? he asked himself. The girl's beauty and refinement of appearance were only the more remarkable because she came of such humble, homely people. He could not take his eyes from the heavy braids of shining gold gleaming below the white straw hat; and although he was unable to see the beautiful face from the place in which he sat, he was nevertheless vividly conscious of its soft dark eyes and its exquisite rose-red mouth; and he fancied that he could distinguish her voice in the old-fashioned hymn, given out two lines at a time by the preacher.
He kept the back of the charming head in view all down the aisle, when the sermon was over and the congregation arose to leave the church. But Colonel Fielding was at the outer end of the bench on which the young man had been seated, and it required some minutes for the old gentleman's friends to help him regain his feet. Poor, feeble old man! And then everybody was talking to everybody else while passing down the aisle. It was the custom in Oldfield for neighbors thus to greet one another after the sermon, and Lynn consequently found himself hemmed in and could move only with the crowd; so that notwithstanding his strenuous though quiet efforts to reach the door of the men's side, before Doris could reach the entrance on the women's side, she had already passed out and was well on her way homeward when he reached the big road.
He was keenly disappointed, and stood for a moment undecided what to do or which way to go, until the doctor and his wife spoke to him. They were almost the last of the home-going procession at that end of the village; and the young man joined them in the lingering hope that the girlish figure in white, fluttering ahead, might be overtaken, since he now saw that it was not, after all, so very far in advance. Mrs. Alexander undoubtedly would present him, so he thought; she could hardly do anything else; and, so hoping, he walked on up the big road, listening as best he could to what she was saying. But the slender young shape in white went rapidly on and did not linger, and never once looked back. Sidney turned at the gate and nodded to her neighbors; but Doris passed through it without pausing, and disappeared under the low arch of silver leaves.
Again Lynn went back to his grandmother's house, thinking of Doris, but again he refrained from speaking of her, although he hardly knew why, unless it was because he shrank from the harshness of his grandmother's cynical comments. Old lady Gordon asked about many of the people whom he had seen at church, but it did not occur to her to mention the daughter of Sidney Wendall. Nevertheless, the girl clung to Lynn's thoughts through all the warm idle afternoon hours of the perfect spring day. Talking half-heartedly, absently, of other things, he still thought of her, even until the evening, coming little by little to think of her as the most beautiful girl whom he had ever seen. He knew, upon reflection, that meeting her was merely a question of a short time in a place so small as Oldfield; and he was not quite sure that, after all, he really wished to make her acquaintance. It would be best, perhaps, considering the career which he had laid out for himself, that he should know as few young women as possible. Moreover, it seemed most unlikely, from all that he had heard of Doris Wendall and of her family and training and environment, that she could possess any charm other than a beautiful face. Yet at the same time he ardently admitted that merely to look upon such rare beauty was a delight to such a worshipper of beauty as he knew himself to be.
He smiled at his own weakness and folly, when he found himself going toward the tall poplars at the close of the long day. The supple tops of the great trees bent white against the darkening sky. But although the leaves no longer dazzled as when they turned their silver lining to the noonday sunlight, they were still too restless and too thick to be seen through, and, smiling again at his foolish craving for another glimpse of beauty, the young man went on, hoping for better luck as he came back. Going beyond the eastern hills which rimmed the village, he paused and looked down and far out over the wide lowlands; at the emerald seas of wheat flowing with waves of purple shadows; at the springing vivid lines of young corn, stretching to the dim distant horizon; at the rich, dark green of the vast tobacco fields already beginning to be dotted by the small, thick-leaved plants; at the red herds, and at the white flocks dimly visible through the fleecy mists trailing above the meadows. He stood still, leaning on a fence and listening to the gentle lowing of far-off cattle, and the homely barking of distant dogs, which were the most distinct sounds. Then, as he listened, lingering, the music of the woods and fields grew fainter—fainter, till it became hushed with the falling of the twilight. Only the whip-poor-will's lonesome cry—the vesper bell of the birds—rang out at long intervals from the dark willows fringing a far-away stream.
The dusk falls very slowly and very softly over the Pennyroyal Region, settling like the exquisite gray down from some wonderful brown wings. It was falling, but still lingering between daylight and darkness, when Lynn Gordon turned at last toward the village. He could not see the people sitting in Sunday quiet and peace on their vine-wreathed porches; but he heard them talking in low tones of the humble little things that make the sweetness of home. A feeling of longing came over him such as he had never known before; a yearning for the home which had never been his, for the loved ones whom he could not remember. The fireside smell of smoking tobacco mingled with the scent of the homely flowers blooming in the yards and gardens. Great white moths fluttered back and forth across the deserted highway, seeking the sweetest of those shy blossoms which yield their beauty and fragrance only to the gloaming.
As the young man approached the poplars, sombre now as cypress trees in the deepened twilight, a sudden breeze stirred the leaves and swayed the branches. But the fleeting glimpse of white at which he started forward so eagerly, proved to be nothing more than a bunch of pale roses drooping beside the window. There was not a glimmer of light behind the curtain, and as he strolled on along the big road the lights in all the houses went out one by one, as the simple people, drowsy from the day's unaccustomed idleness, sought their early rest. Tom Watson's lamp alone shone afar, throwing its beams a long way down the big road, and the sight of it suddenly touched the young man's softened heart with keenest pity, reminding him, almost reproachfully, of the promise which he had quite forgotten.
At his grandmother's house all was dark and still; the dogs leaping to meet him knew him well enough not to bark, and he sat down on the porch to smoke a cigar. He could always think more clearly when smoking, and he wished now to think as clearly as possible. For the past two days his thoughts had been wandering, as he rarely allowed them to wander, far away from his life plans. Firmly he now bent them back; intently he surveyed every up-hill step in the direction of his high ambition; calmly he faced the full length and difficulty of the struggle between him and his goal, without thought of faltering or fear of failure. He said to himself, as the young who have never measured their strength against their weakness often say to themselves:—
"I will not do any of those things which I firmly set on that side; I will do all these things which I calmly range on this side: the shaping of a man's life lies in his own hand; it has but to be powerful enough to grasp and firm enough to hold."
It is easy to be calm and common to be sure on starting in life's race. And, indeed, this young fellow was better trained and equipped for the running of it than most young men are. Feeling this intelligently, but without undue conceit, he now threw back his broad shoulders and lifted his proud head. The arrogance of youth takes no heed of the slight chances that defeat great plans, no heed even of the divinity that shapes mortal hewing. He looked absently at the red rim of the climbing moon, and scarcely noting that, as its disk grew larger and its beams grew brighter, a mocking-bird, at home with his beloved in one of the giant elms, began a murmuring melody, as though he were wooing his mate in dreams. Yet, as the paling, brightening moon arose higher and higher, till it hung a great shield of burnished silver on night's starry wall, the mocking-bird's song grew clearer and sweeter, till, soaring to the moonlit heavens, it arose to a very pean of love triumphant.
Lynn set out on his errand of mercy very early the next morning. The eternal freshness of dawn seemed still to be lingering amid the cool shadows of the wooded hillsides. The woods and fields alike were still bubbling with matin song. Heavy drops of dew still hung on the blue-eyed grass, sparkling in the sunlight like happy tears.
The doctor, however, was ready and waiting. The day's work began with the sunrise in Oldfield, and no one in all the region round had more to do between the rising and the setting of the sun, or indeed between its setting and rising again, than John Alexander always had. Ah, those village doctors of the old time! It is known in a way to all who think, how large a part they must have had in the making of these far-off corners of our great country, and yet the greater part can never be known. A doctor's memory is the greatest catholic confessional of humanity—and forever sacred. It is only the trivial, the whimsical outer edges of the deep experiences of these old-time country doctors that history may ever touch. Being human, they growled aloud sometimes over these trifles, as the doctor was growling when Lynn Gordon found him on that May morning.
A patient, a sufferer from chills and fever, which were still the scourge of the Ohio lowlands, had come to him on the day before for quinine. The doctor had given it to him in solution, the only form in which it was then known to country practitioners. Quinine was a costly medicine in those days, under the heavy tax which was removed long afterwards through the most earnest and even impassioned efforts of a Kentucky statesman, who, in a memorable speech, eloquently implored Congress to keep, if it would, its tax on silks and laces and precious stones but—for humanity's sake—to allow his constituency to have all the free quinine that they wanted.
"I gave this chap a big bottle of quinine," the doctor said. "He paid a stiff price for it, too, and I saw him put it in his saddle-bags with great care. Nevertheless, he managed somehow to crack the bottle, and, when only a part of the way home he found that it was leaking. He couldn't think of losing the quinine,—it had cost too much,—and he saved it by drinking that whole bottleful at a gulp. Well, he certainly had the benefit of it, none of it was wasted; but I feel a little tired from being up most of the night and having had pretty brisk work to keep him alive. What fools these mortals be;" the doctor yawned, as he struck his pipe musingly on the porch railing, thus ranging his thoughts while clearing his pipe of ashes. "And here's this other hard job, that's quite as unnecessary, on hand for to-day, and no more to be shirked or put off than the other was. Well, come along," he said, reluctantly laying down his pipe, the sole luxury that he allowed himself. "We may as well be going; ''twere well it were done quickly,'" he quoted again, for this rugged country doctor knew his Shakespeare as a man may know a book when he reads only one.
They went down the porch steps, talking of indifferent matters, pausing a moment at the gate, long enough for Lynn to speak a few words in return for the greeting which the doctor's wife gave him from the window. The Watson house was near by,—only a few paces down the big road,—and they were almost immediately standing before its open door. There the doctor halted with the look of one who musters his forces after having set his thoughts in order. He drew himself up and threw back his shoulders as if settling to a firm purpose with a new determination, and he finally buttoned his coat. That poor old shabby coat! Ah! that dear old coat! So eloquent in its faded shabbiness of the many fierce storms and the many merciless suns which had beaten upon his tireless ministrations to suffering humanity! And the buttoning of the doctor's old coat was always as the girding of a warrior's armor for battle.
The young man standing beside him on the steps gave him a careless side glance. He did not understand the meaning of what he saw, and he merely smiled at its apparent absurdity. A moment later he followed the doctor into the house, all unafraid, as youth often enters upon the most appalling of the mysteries of living.
It was Anne who met them and gave them an impassive good-morning, and silently led them into the room in which her husband was sitting. The sick man, propped up in his usual seat by the window, looked round when they came in, and murmured some indistinct greeting. But his miserable, restless eyes went back almost at once to their ceaseless quest of the deserted big road, stretching dully toward the dim, distant horizon.
"How are you to-day, Tom?" asked the doctor, perfunctorily, and then he continued without waiting for a reply to his inquiry, "We are not going to let you mope like this, old boy. I've been trying to think of something to help you—to fill the time. It's after a man gets out of bed that the worst tug comes—while he is still tied to the house and yet not actually ill. We mustn't let him mope, must we, Anne?" he said.
He turned to the silent, motionless woman who sat by without so much as the natural feminine rustle of garments.
Anne looked at him through the white light of her clear eyes, but she did not speak. She had been well called a "still-tongued woman."
The doctor, glancing away, went on uneasily, yet determinedly:—
"But I am not sure what Tom would like. I don't think he cares for backgammon or checkers or dominoes or any of those milk-and-water games. You don't know anything about chess, do you, Tom?" he asked.
The stricken man made no reply; he could utter but few words and those only with indistinctness and difficulty. He did not even turn his head; the turning of it ever so slowly was hard and caused him great pain.
"I scarcely think chess would be the thing anyway—it's too heavy and requires too much thinking to be good for an invalid. You must have something light and amusing. That's the sort of game we must give you to keep you from moping."
The doctor spoke to the husband, but his eyes were on the wife and regarding her anxiously, though his lips were smiling.
There was no responsive smile on Anne's pale face. It was quite still and grave as it always was, but a thin cloud of alarm seemed suddenly rising in her clear gaze, as white smoke floats over the crystalline sky of a winter's day. But yet she said not a word.
The doctor also fell unexpectedly silent, with his eyes fixed sternly on the back of the sick man's chair and a frown gathering between his shaggy, grizzled brows, as it always gathered when he was sorely perplexed. He was only an old-fashioned country doctor—merely a good man first and scientist afterwards. So that he now sat speechless, casting about in his troubled thoughts for the gentlest words wherewith he must wound the quiet, pale-faced woman, whose very lack of comprehension appealed to his great heart as all helplessness did. He saw, as only doctors can see, how frail was the body holding this strenuous spirit. As he thus sat silent, gathering courage, the utter stillness of the room grew tense. The young man, sitting on the other side of the chamber, silent and ill at ease, moved uneasily, keeping his eyes on the floor. The soft, monotonous murmur of the bees in the honeysuckle over the window sounded unnaturally loud and shrill.
At last the doctor spoke distinctly and firmly, but without looking at Anne:—
"There is only one thing to do. We must find a partner for Tom—Mr. Gordon here has kindly offered—and we must give him a real good, lively game of cards."
It was out now, and he was glad and sorry at the same time.
Anne gave a startled cry, inarticulate, like the terror of a dumb creature. She recoiled as if a black pit had opened at her feet.
"Tom's need is very great. He is very, very weak," the doctor urged, in the space of the recoil.
Anne instantly flew to her husband as the mother bird flies to the fallen fledgling, and laid her little trembling hands on his broken shoulders, as the mother bird spreads her weak wings between helplessness and danger.
"I will take care of him," she said, speaking out of that tender, protecting maternal instinct which is the divine part of every good woman's love for her husband.
"I can see no other way," the doctor urged gently, not knowing what else to say.
"There must be some other way! Surely our Father never forces us to commit sin. Surely in His mercy He gives us a choice;" Anne panted, like a frightened wild creature at bay.
Yet she faced the two men steadily over her husband's powerless head, her clear eyes clouded darkly now, and her set face as white and as inscrutable as the cold mask of death.
"I can only say again what I have said before," the doctor repeated weakly, glancing at Anne and quickly looking away.
"The way will mercifully be opened unto me. A light will be shown as a lamp to my feet."
Anne's murmured words were barely to be heard, yet they bore, nevertheless, to the three men who listened, the full strength of her faith, firm as the Rock of Ages.
The doctor arose hurriedly and went out into the passage, and stood for a while in the doorway, looking at the quiet big road, at the peace of the green earth, and at the sunlight flooding the blue heavens. When he turned back his sunken eyes were wet and he could not meet Anne's gaze nor the sick man's, which was also turned upon him with all its dumb, restless, desperate misery—with all its terrible voiceless clamor for relief.
"I don't know what to do," he said, trying to speak lightly, but sighing in spite of himself and spreading out his hands. "I suppose we'll have to give it up, Tom, old fellow. Well, maybe Anne knows best after all. These wives of ours usually do know better what is good for us than we know ourselves. A good wife is always more to be depended upon than medicine when a man's pulling through a tedious convalescence. You don't need any more medicine. I am coming, though, every day, if I can—just as a neighbor, to see how you are getting along."
He turned away from the sick man. He could not look at him without being compelled to renew the struggle with Anne; that infinitely cruel, that ineffably piteous struggle which wrung his own heart, and which would be useless in the end. He took one of Anne's cold little hands in his warm large clasp, thinking how small and weak it was to hold so firmly to its mistaken ideals, how much more firm than his own, which was not strong enough to hold to an unmistakable duty. And then he and Lynn Gordon went away, as best they could go, both feeling as the conscientious and the impressionable must always feel after having, however unwillingly, stirred the depths of the deep, still pool of another's life.
Out of the house, and out of hearing, the doctor became, however, once more himself in a measure. He smote his powerful thigh with his strong hand, and upbraided himself aloud for most disgraceful moral cowardice. He convicted himself, almost in a shout, of having deserted Tom Watson—poor devil—and of having virtually run away, like the veriest coward, simply because he knew that, in a moment more, he would have been crying like any child. And all on account of the silly fanaticism of a woman with a mind no wider than a cambric needle—sheer foolishness, morbid sentimentality—and much more of the same tenor, while Lynn Gordon laughed at him a little nervously.
"But, foolish or wise, she believes what she does believe. By the eternal, I'd like to hear any man doubt it! Why, young sir, that little slim, unbending splinter of a woman is the stuff that they threw to the beasts in old Rome!"
There was no consciousness of heroism in Anne's own sadly humble thoughts. When the doctor and the young man were gone, she bent down silently and kissed her husband with tender timidity, as if begging his forgiveness for what she could not help. Kneeling by his side, as she often knelt in her unwearying service, she strove to look into his averted face, and to meet and to hold his miserable eyes with her own clear gaze, from which the clouds were fast drifting away. The white light behind her strange eyes had sunk low under the shock, and had died out in the stress of terror; but it was gradually beginning to rise and shine again through the crystal windows of her soul. Her husband did not look at her; he seemed not to hear what she said; he was staring after the two men who were walking away down the big road, his look straining to follow them as a chained animal strains its fetters toward companionship. Anne saw nothing of this; she was not a bright woman, and entirely without imagination. She saw only that he did not notice her, that she was far from his thoughts. And she was used to being over-looked by her husband, and accustomed to being forgotten by him. She arose and went quietly across the room, and brought a footstool, and sat down upon it by his side, laying her head on the arm of his chair, with her hands folded on her lap.
She was not weeping,—she had never been a crying woman,—and in truth she was not more unhappy at this moment than she had been for years. She was, indeed, even less unhappy, now that the shock was well over and the danger safely passed. A feeling of peace was in truth already hovering in her breast, though very timidly, as a frightened dove comes slowly back to its nest. This spirit of peace had begun to brood in Anne's lonely heart soon after her husband's hurt, although Anne herself was scarcely aware of the fact. Through the endless months of his greatest suffering she had been not only upheld, but comforted, by the growing belief—changing little by little to exaltation—that the torture was but a fiery furnace intended for the purification of her husband's soul and her own—for she, too, suffered with every pang which wrenched his shattered body. It was a terrible faith, and yet it was the faith of the martyrs; and Anne held not back from sealing it, as they sealed it, with life itself,—ay! even unto the dear life of her husband, which was infinitely dearer to her than her own. For she loved him as none save a nature such as hers can love; with an intense, narrow, almost fierce and wholly terrible concentration. It was a love which had almost entirely excluded every one else; not only every other man, but her father and mother and sisters and brothers, all had been shut out from her inmost heart, from her earliest youth till this latest moment when she sat unnoticed by her husband's side. He had never loved her with the best love that he was capable of giving. Love is perhaps never quite equal, certainly it never seems equal, in any marriage. The one always loves more, or less, than the other. And then, in circumscribed lives, such as Anne's and Tom's were, both men and women choose the one whom they prefer from among the few whom they chance to know; they cannot choose from a large number which might possibly have induced a different selection. But the width of the world would not have altered Anne's choice. And a love like hers changes no more with time than it is influenced by environment; it is too little of the flesh, and too much of the spirit to age, or to wither, or to grow cold. Even her husband's neglect had made no difference through all the unhappy years of her married life; even his disregard of religion did not lessen or alter her love, although it put her and her husband farther apart than they might otherwise have been, and came nearer than all else to breaking her heart. She could bear the loss of happiness in her daily life; she could bear to be deprived of her husband's society day after day and night after night, by interests and associations in which she had no part,—living was but waiting, anyway, to Anne. But she could not bear the thought of the Long Time without the beloved. To Anne, as much as to any mediæval saint in any rock-ribbed cell, the longest, happiest earthly life measured nothing against a glorious eternity. Her husband was handsome, spirited, high-hearted, masterful, compelling, and kind, too, in his careless way; another woman might have been happy and proud to be his wife; but Anne's heart had ached from first to last for the one thing of which she never spoke, and for which she was always praying.
Then came the accident, striking down the strong man at the height of his powers, as the lightning blasts the mighty oak in full leaf. Stunned at first, Anne, rallying, felt the blow as a manifestation of offended Power. A mind like hers works in strangely tortuous ways. But after a while she began to see in this awful affliction a means of grace thus given when all else had failed; and it was then that the wan ghost of happiness began to visit Anne's desolate breast. The world had been violently wrenched away from her husband's grasp, which otherwise would, most likely, never have loosed; it might perhaps now come to pass—through mercy cloaked in cruelty—that his thoughts would turn heavenward. So poor Anne thought, and thus it was that when, to all outward seeming, the husband's hopeless convalescence was the last settling down of darkest despair, in reality a shining rainbow of hope first began to span the wife's long-clouded content.
Was it then possible for Anne to listen for a moment to this incredible, monstrous, destroying thing which the doctor had urged? Could she by listening endanger this late-coming chance for the salvation of her husband's soul in consenting to the sinful relief of his bodily need? The thought of yielding never crossed her mind, nor the shade of a shadow of doubt that she was right. It was to her simply a question of her conscience standing firm against her love. Anne—fortunate in this, however unfortunate in all other respects—always saw the way before her, open, and straight, and very, very narrow. To her clear sight a sharp, distinct line ever divided right from wrong; on this side everything was snow-white, on that side everything was jet-black. There were no myriad middle shades of gray to bewilder Anne's crystal gaze. Living were less hard for some of us—some, too, as conscientious as Anne—if all could see, or even think they see, as clearly through the whitish, grayish, blackish mists, so that they also might be able unerringly to tell where the pure white ends and the real black begins.
When the doctor's deep voice roared out what he thought of any man who failed in his duty for fear of offending anybody's prejudices, Miss Judy, who was busy among the shrubbery in her yard, overheard him, and was quite frightened by the severity of his tone, though she did not catch the words. She knew him to be the mildest of absent-minded men, and she accordingly fluttered around the house, wondering what could be the matter.
She had been engaged in tying up a rose bush which grew at the side of the door, and which was too heavy laden with its sweet burden of blush roses. She was holding a big bunch in her hand as she hurried toward the gate, blushing when she saw the gentlemen, till her delicate face was as pink as the freshest among her roses. The doctor brightened and smiled, as everybody brightened and smiled at the sight of Miss Judy. He opened the gate before she reached it, knowing that she would never tempt ill luck by shaking hands over it. When they had shaken hands, he presented Lynn Gordon, whom she had not met, and who stood a little apart, thinking what a pretty old lady she was.
"Miss Judy," said the doctor, before she had time to ask what had happened, "what do you think of playing poker?"
"Mercy—me!" exclaimed Miss Judy, opening her blue eyes very wide in blank amazement. And then, catching her breath, she became mildly scandalized.
"Well—really, doctor!" she began, blushing more vividly, making her little mouth smaller than usual, "primping" it, as she would have said, and bridling with the daintiest little air of prudery, which she never would have dreamt of putting on for the doctor alone, but which seemed to her to be the proper manner before a strange young gentleman—and one from Boston too. "I have never been required to think anything of any gambling game! Such matters were left entirely to gentlemen; they were not mentioned before ladies in my day."
"Bless your little heart!" exclaimed the doctor. "If I've said a word that you don't like, I'm ready to go right down on my knees in the dust—here and now—in the middle of the big road."
Miss Judy smiled, shaking her little head till the thin curls behind her pretty ears were more like silver mist than ever. In gentle confusion she began dividing the bunch of blush roses into halves, giving one to the doctor and the other to Lynn. She had known his father, she said shyly to the young man, and his mother also, although not so well, since the latter had not been brought up in Oldfield as his father was.
"But, Miss Judy, I want to talk to you seriously about card-playing," the doctor persisted. "You see you have got us all into the selfish habit of bringing every one of our burdens to lay them on your little shoulders. Unselfishness like yours does harm; it breeds selfishness in others."
Miss Judy protested that she had not the least idea of what he was talking about; but she saw that he was in earnest, and she straightway forgot all her quaint airs, and listened with deepest interest and tenderest sympathy to his story of his perplexity over the hopeless case of Tom Watson, and over the unbending attitude of Anne.
"The passion for gaming is just as strong in that poor fellow as it ever was. I had suspected it before, but I wasn't sure until to-day," the doctor went on, looking across the way at the sick man's window. "I disapprove of gambling as much as any one, but I can't for the life of me see any harm that could possibly come now to that poor unfortunate, from any sort of a game—if anybody can possibly stand it to play with him."
Miss Judy looked puzzled and a little alarmed. "Were you—do you wishmeto play with him?" she faltered, rather shocked, yet wondering if she could learn, and quite ready to try.
The doctor was too deeply absorbed—too seriously troubled—to smile as he usually did at Miss Judy's sweet absurdities, appreciating them almost as much as he valued her heart of gold. In truth he hardly heard what she said.
"Maybe you can make Anne see how different things are now," he went on musingly, and somewhat hesitatingly, as though the possibility had suddenly occurred to him. "Women understand one another," he added, uttering a fallacy accepted by many a sensible man and rejected by every sensible woman.
The fair old face on the other side of the gate grew grave in its perplexity. Quick to decide for herself in any matter of principle, Miss Judy was slow to decide for any one else. She did not consider herself wise, and it was hard, she thought, for the wisest to put herself in another's place, and no one—so she believed—could judge justly without so doing. She knew Anne's prejudice, that had been well known always to all the Oldfield people; but she had never ventured to form an opinion as to whether Anne had ever been justified in taking such a stand, which appeared strange to Miss Judy even in the beginning, and stranger now in Tom's extremity. She had merely wondered, as everybody had; but it was always harder for Miss Judy than for almost any one else to understand how there ever could be any actual conflict between love and faith, which were always and inseparably one and the same to her.
"I am not sure," she faltered, with a flutter of timidity, and blushing again. "Anne is such a good woman—so much better and wiser than I am—and so very reserved. I should hardly dare approach her, even if I were sure of being in the right. And I am far from being sure. Suppose we consult sister Sophia?" she said suddenly and with her pretty face lighting at the happy thought. "You know, doctor, that her judgment is much sounder, much more practical, than mine. She sometimes has very valuable ideas—when I don't at all know what to do."
Miss Judy turned to the young man with a soft little air and a touch of gentle pride that charmed him: "I am speaking, sir, of my sister, Miss Sophia Bramwell."
Thus delicately proclaiming Miss Sophia to be a personage whom it was an honor as well as an advantage to know, Miss Judy went indoors to ask, with the usual elaborate, punctilious ceremony, if she would be so kind as to take the trouble to come out to the front gate, where the doctor was waiting to consult her in an important matter; and where it would give herself the greatest pleasure to present old lady Gordon's grandson—who was waiting with the doctor,—provided, of course, that the introduction would be entirely agreeable to Miss Sophia. There were excellent reasons why Miss Judy thus begged Miss Sophia to come out instead of inviting the gentlemen to come in, but neither of the sisters then or ever spoke of these, nor of any other merely sordid things. It took Miss Judy some time, however, to make the request of Miss Sophia as politely as she fondly considered her due; and although it did not take Miss Sophia long to say "Just so, sister Judy," with all the accustomed promptness and decision, several minutes necessarily elapsed before she was really ready to appear. There was the getting up from, and the getting out of, her low arm-chair, always a difficult, tedious process; and there was the further time required for reaching up the chimney to get a bit of soot; and for fetching the heavy footstool clear across the big room to stand upon, in order to see in the mirror. Yet all this must be done ere she could go out. The sun was shining too brilliantly for even Miss Sophia to venture into the broad daylight without taking more than the usual precaution. Even she could not think of going out after having applied the soot haphazard, as she sometimes did in emergencies. But, fortunately, time was no consideration in Oldfield; and Miss Sophia was at last safely descended from the footstool and fully prepared to face the daylight and also the strange young gentleman from Boston.
Lynn could not help staring a little, thus taken unawares; unconsciously he had expected Miss Sophia to be like her sister. But the deference with which Miss Judy laid the case before her struck him as an exquisite thing, too fine and sweet and altogether lovely to be smiled at, either openly or secretly. He did not know then—as he soon came to understand—that Miss Sophia's ready and firm response was an unvaried formula which vaguely served most of her simple conversational requirements. But he did know, as soon as he saw the little old sisters together, how tenderly they loved one another. Miss Judy looked at him with undisguised pride in Miss Sophia, shining in her flax-flower eyes, turning again as pink as the sweetest of the blush roses, with delight in the firm promptness with which Miss Sophia responded. There was only the slightest involuntary movement of her proud little head toward her sister when the gentlemen were upon the point of leaving; but it nevertheless reminded the doctor to take Miss Sophia's hand before taking her own, when he bent down to touch their hands with his rough-bearded lips in old-time gallantry, half in jest and half in earnest, but wholly becoming to him no less than to the two serious little ladies.
The gentlemen were no sooner gone, leaving the sisters—or Miss Judy at least—to think over what had been said, than she began forthwith to devise ways and means of showing her sympathy with her neighbors, Anne and Tom, in their terrible affliction. Her first impulse was always to give—and she had so little to give, dear little Miss Judy! It now happily occurred to her, however, that Tom might like a taste of early green peas. Anne's were barely beginning to bloom, as Miss Judy could see by looking across the big road, and as she told Miss Sophia. No wonder Anne had neglected to plant them till late, poor thing! Who would have remembered the garden in the midst of such awful trouble as hers? And then it was still quite early in the season,—Miss Judy had gathered the first peas from her own vines only that morning, while the tender pale green pods were still wet with dew, as properly gathered vegetables should be. And, although she had gone carefully over the vines, cautiously lifting each waxen green tendril, fragrant with white blossoms, she had found but a handful of pods which were really well filled.
"But they are very sweet and delicate, and they will not seem so few if Merica puts them on a slice of toast and runs over with them while they are piping hot, before they have time to shrivel," Miss Judy said, smiling happily at her sister as she bustled about, getting a pan ready for the shelling of the peas.
Miss Sophia's face fell. She had been looking forward to those peas ever since breakfast. And she remembered that Miss Judy had sent Tom the earliest asparagus. But she assented as readily and as cheerfully as she could, and, drawing her low rocking-chair closer to Miss Judy's, resignedly settled herself to help with the shelling of the peas. The tinkling they made as they fell in the shining pan soon lulled her, for she never could sit still long and keep awake, so that she presently fell to nodding and straightening up and nodding again. Straightening up very resolutely, she began rocking slowly, trying in that way to keep from going to sleep.
"The creak of that old chair makes me sleepy too," said Miss Judy, smilingly, yet looking a little sad. "It sounds to-day just as it did when mother used it to rock us to sleep—just the same peaceful, contented, homely little creak. There!" she said as the last plump pea tinkled on the tin. "And I declare, sister Sophia, just look at all these fine fat hulls! Why, we can have some nice rich soup made out of them, as well as not!"
"Just so, sister Judy," Miss Sophia responded eagerly, at once wide awake and sitting up suddenly, quite straight. "And with plenty of thickening too."
"To be sure! What a head you have, sister Sophia," Miss Judy cried, admiringly. "And then we'll have something to send old Mr. Mills as well as Tom. Just to please Kitty," she added, seeing the shade which came over Miss Sophia's face, and misunderstanding its source. "It is ten to one but he will be in one of his tempers and throw the soup out of the window, as he did that dinner of Kitty's—dishes and all. But we can instruct Merica to hold on to the bowl till Kitty herself takes it from her. It always pleases Kitty so, for anybody to show the old man any little attention. And, after all, he is not so much to be blamed, poor old sufferer. Being bedfast with lumbago must be mighty trying to the temper. And then Sam, too, is threatened with a bad pain in his back every time he tries to do any work. It actually appears to come on if he even thinks about working, or if a body so much as mentions work before him. Maybe that's what makes Sam a bit irritable with the old man sometimes. But Kitty never is. All his crossness, all his unreasonableness, all his fault-finding—which is natural enough, poor old soul—just rolls off her good nature like water off a duck's back. She only laughs and pets him, and goes on trying harder then ever to please him. Did you ever see anybody like Kitty, sister Sophia?"
Miss Judy had arisen, gathering up her apron, which was filled with the pea-shells; but she now paused, holding the pan, to await Miss Sophia's reply with the greatest, keenest interest,—as she often did,—as though Miss Sophia, who had never been separated from her longer than two hours at a time in the whole course of their uneventful lives, might have known some peculiar and interesting persons, whom she herself had not been so fortunate as to meet. This was one of the things which made them such delightful company for one another. When, therefore, Miss Sophia now said, "Just so, sister Judy," with great promptness and decision, Miss Judy was newly impressed with the extent and soundness of her sister's knowledge of human nature.
Tripping briskly out of the room carrying the peas and the pea-shells (to which Miss Sophia had secretly transferred her expectation), she entered the kitchen, full of thoughts of the delicate cooking of the peas, and was surprised to find Merica missing. Yet the day was Monday, and the smoke from the invisible and mysterious wash-kettle floated up from a newly kindled fire behind the gooseberry bushes. Miss Judy did not know what to make of Merica's absence at such a time; and she stepped down from the rear door of the passage to the grass of the back yard and called. There was no answer, and Miss Judy stood hesitating a moment in puzzled astonishment, but as she turned there was a sudden rush—sounds of scuffling, a smothered shriek—and the girl fell over the fence, striking the ground with limbs outstretched, like some clumsy bird thrown while trying to fly. The fence, which divided Miss Judy's garden from old lady Gordon's orchard, was a very high one, but Miss Judy was more shocked than alarmed at seeing Merica come over it in so indecorous a manner.
"What does such conduct mean, Merica?" she said severely.
The girl had never heard her gentle mistress speak so sharply—but she herself was past mistress of deceit. She therefore gathered herself up as slowly as possible, in order to gain time, deliberately smoothing down her skirt and carefully brushing off the dirt. The mask of a dark skin has served in many an emergency. Merica could not entirely control the guilty shiftiness of her eyes, but she did it in a measure, and she was quite ready with a deceitful explanation almost as soon as she had recovered her breath. She knew from long experience how easy it was to deceive Miss Judy, the most innocent and artless of mistresses. She also knew—as all servants know the sources of their daily bread—the weak spot in Miss Judy's armor of innocence and artlessness. Accordingly, looking her mistress straight in the face, Merica now said brazenly that she had been over to old lady Gordon's to get the strange young gentleman's clothes; and Miss Judy, blushing rosy red, dropped the subject in the greatest haste and confusion, precisely as Merica expected her to do. The little lady was indeed so utterly routed that she gave the order for the steaming of the peas very timidly; and when Merica, seeing her advantage, followed it up in a most heartless manner by insisting upon boiling them instead, Miss Judy gave way without a struggle, and went silently back to the house as meek as any lamb.
She did not mention the matter to her sister; the delicate subject was, in fact, rarely mentioned between them, and it was, of course, never spoken of to any one else. To be sure, everybody in Oldfield had seen Merica coming and going with carefully covered baskets, which, nevertheless, proclaimed the laundry with every withe—as some baskets do, somehow or other, quite regardless of shape; but the fetching and the toting, as Merica phrased these transactions, were usually in the early morning when the neighbors were busy in the rear of their own houses; or in the dusk of evening when the gloaming cast its shadow of softening mystery over the most prosaic aspects of life. And everybody also saw the smoke arising every Monday morning from beneath the wash-kettle, hid in its bower of gooseberry bushes; but no one in all the village would have been unkind enough to ask or even to wonder, whether all the white bubbles arising with the steam could be portions of the two little ladies' own meagre wardrobe. It is true that on one occasion, when Sidney was very, very hard pressed for a new story,—as the most resourceful of professional diners-out must be now and again,—she had been overly tempted into the spinning of a weird and amusing yarn, about seeing a long, ghostly pair of white cotton legs, of unmistakably masculine ownership, flapping over the gooseberry bushes in a high wind as she went home after dark on a certain wild and stormy night. But she could hardly sleep on the following night, her uneasy conscience pricked her so sorely, and, setting out betimes the next morning, she made a round over the complete circuit of the previous day, unreservedly taking back the whole story. And never again did she yield to the never ceasing temptation to make capital of Miss Judy's little ways, about which, indeed, many a good story might have been excellently told.
That small gentlewoman herself, naturally, never dreamt of doing anything so indelicate as to look behind the gooseberry bushes while the clothes were in the tubs or the kettle or drying on the line. Sometimes, when she was compelled to send Merica away on an errand while the wash-kettle was boiling, she would take the girl's post temporarily and would punch the white bubbles gingerly with the clothes-stick to keep them from being burned against the side of the kettle; but she always blushed very much and was heartily glad when Merica returned to her duty. The simple truth was that Miss Judy thought it right to allow Merica, on her own proposal, to earn in this manner the wages which she and her sister were unable to pay, since they could give her but a nominal sum out of their little pension, which was all that they had. And yet, although this was the case, she saw no reason for talking about a disagreeable thing which she was thus forced to put up with. She never spoke of anything unrefined if she could help it. And those who knew her shrinking from all the more sordid sides of household affairs, and from all the commonplace and unbeautiful aspects of life, seldom if ever approached her with anything of the kind.
Far, indeed, then, would it have been from the rudest of the Oldfield people to have hinted to Miss Judy of certain matters which were plain enough to every one else. Miss Pettus alone thought Miss Judy ought to be told of Merica's scandalous "goings-on."
"I saw her and Eunice yesterday, in old lady Gordon's orchard, a-fighting over Enoch Cotton like two black cats—right under that poor little innocent's nose—and she never knowing a blessed thing about it!" Miss Pettus fumed.
But Sidney put her foot down. Miss Judy should not be told: and there was to be "no if or and" about it, either. "What's the use of worrying Miss Judy? She could no more understand than a baby in long clothes. And what's the odds, anyway?" demanded this village philosopher. "If they ain't a-fighting about Enoch Cotton they'll be a-fighting about somebody else."
Mrs. Alexander sided with Sidney. It would be a shame to tell Miss Judy; as Sidney said, it would be like going to a little child with such a tale; and the doctor's wife strengthened the impression made by her own opinion by saying that the doctor said Miss Judy must not be told. He simply would not allow it—that was all.
Kitty Mills, too, opposed the telling of Miss Judy earnestly enough, but she could not help laughing at the recollection of a scene which she had witnessed a few days before; and which she now went on to describe to the ladies who were holding this conclave.
"I happened to be raising the window of Father Mills's room,—he likes it down at night no matter how hot it is, and wants it raised and lowered all through the day,—and I saw Merica run out of Miss Judy's kitchen, and jump the back fence. She couldn't have more than 'lighted on the ground on the other side, when the air was filled all of a sudden with aprons and head-handkerchiefs—and smothered squalls. And bless your soul, there sat Miss Judy by the front window, knowing not a breath about what was going on over in the orchard—calm and sweet as any May morning and pretty as a pink—the dear little thing,—darning away on Miss Sophia's stocking, till you couldn't tell which was stocking and which was darn; and talking along in her chirrupy funny little way about that Becky (whoever she is), for all the world as if she were some real, live woman living that minute, right on the other side of the big road; and there was poor Miss Sophia a-listening, pleased as pleased could be, and mightily interested too, though it was plain to be seen that she had no more notion of what Miss Judy was talking about than the man in the moon;" and Kitty Mills took up her apron to wipe away the tears that had come from laughing over the picture thus conjured up.
Old lady Gordon did not enter into the conclave. She thought nothing about Miss Judy in connection with the rivalry between Eunice and Merica for the heart and hand of her black coachman, Mr. Enoch Cotton. Indeed, she thought nothing at all about the matter. In passing it seemed to her quite in the usual order of colored events. It had not up to that time touched her own comfort at any point. Eunice, knowing her mistress, was careful, even in the height of her jealous rages, even when she met Merica in the orchard by challenge to combat, to guard the excellence and the regularity of old lady Gordon's meals, thereby insuring against any interference from her.
"Just give Miss Frances her way and she'll give you your way, and that's more than you can say for most folks; lots of folks want their way and your way too, but Miss Frances don't."
Eunice had said this to Enoch, who was comparatively a newcomer, speaking in the picturesque dialect of her race, which is so agreeable to hear and so disagreeable to read. Having determined, as a mature widow knowing her own mind, to take Enoch Cotton unto herself for better or worse, it seemed to Eunice best to instruct him with regard to the keeping of his place as the gardener and the driver of the antiquated coach in which old lady Gordon, who never walked, fared forth at long and irregular intervals. This helpful instruction had been given before Merica's entrance into the field came cruelly to chill the confidence existing between Eunice and Enoch Cotton. It was during this completely confidential time that Eunice had also told him that it was entirely a mistake to suppose the mistress to be as hard to get along with as some people thought she was. The main thing, the only thing in fact, was to keep from crossing her comfort.
"I've got nothing to do but to cook what she wants cooked in the way she wants it cooked, with her batter cakes brown on both sides; and to be careful to have the meals on the table at the stroke of the clock. You've got nothing to do but to raise plenty of the vegetables she likes, and to have the coach 'round at the front gate to the minute by the watch. We won't have any trouble with Miss Frances so long as we do what she wants and don't cross her comfort. If you ever do cross it—even one time—then look out!"
Eunice had eloquently concluded these valuable hints, silently nodding her head, with her blue-palmed black hands on her broad hips. And Enoch Cotton—alas! learned his lesson so well that, although old lady Gordon became gradually aware of his inconstancy, she saw no reason to interfere in Eunice's behalf.
Miss Judy, the only person whose comfort was really imperilled, sat chatting that day with Miss Sophia, all unconscious, till the peas were cooked. She then went out to put them in her mother's prettiest china bowl—the little blue one with the wreath of pink roses round it—and daintily spread a fringed napkin over the top. Maybe Tom might notice how pretty it looked, Miss Judy said to Miss Sophia, though he noticed sadly little of what went on around him. Anyway, it would be a compliment to Anne to send the peas in the best bowl. Miss Judy hesitated before putting the soup in the next best bowl. It would be a serious matter indeed if the old man should seize it and fling it out of the window before Kitty could stop him, as he often did with her cooking and her dishes. Still, it did not seem quite polite to Kitty to send it in a tin cup, so that, after Miss Judy had consulted Miss Sophia, who assented very quickly and firmly,—fearing that the rest of the soup might get cold,—Merica was given the second best bowl also, but charged not to let go her hold on it until Kitty herself took it out of her hand.
"Give it to old Mr. Mills with sister Sophia's compliments," Miss Judy said, with unconscious irony.
Miss Sophia ate her portion of the soup with much satisfaction, while Miss Judy watched her with beaming eyes, turning at length to follow Merica's progress with a radiant gaze. It always made her happy to do anything for any one; and she never felt that she had very little to do with. As Merica came out of the Watsons' gate and started up the big road with the bowl of soup, Miss Judy, in her satisfaction, could not help calling the girl back to ask whether Tom Watson appeared to notice the wreath of roses. It was a bit disappointing to have Merica say that she hardly thought he had. Then Miss Judy, sighing a little, gave the servant further directions, telling her to go on from the Mills' house up to Miss Pettus's to ask for the loan of the chicken-snake which Mr. Pettus had killed that morning. Miss Judy was afraid that Miss Pettus would forget to hang it before sundown (white side up) on the fence to fetch rain, which was really beginning to be needed very much by the gardens. If Miss Pettus neglected it till the sun went down, there would of course be no use in hanging it on the fence at all, so that, to make sure, it was better for Merica to borrow it and fetch it home when she came. Merica sullenly demurred that the snake would not stay on the stick, and that it would crawl off as fast as it was put on; adding rather insolently that she could not be all day putting a garter-snake on a stick and having it crawl off every step of the way down the big road—with a fire under the wash-kettle. But Miss Judy gently assured her that the garter-snake—or any other kind of a serpent—would stay on a stick if it were put on tail first. It stuck like wax then, Miss Judy said, and could not crawl off, no matter how hard it might try.
"And when you've got the garter-snake tail-first over the stick, you might stop and remind Miss Doris not to be late in coming by for me to go with her to-morrow morning to take her dancing lesson. No, wait a moment; you had best ask her if she will be so very kind as to come to see me this evening, so that we may practise some songs—particularly 'Come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer'—and then we can talk over the dancing lesson," said Miss Judy.
There were not many days during the whole year, and there had hardly been a whole day for many a year, on which Miss Judy and Doris could not find some good and urgent reason for seeing one another.