"I'm busy just now,Stirring my molasses,I've no timeTo make a rhymeFor every fool that passes."
"I'm busy just now,Stirring my molasses,I've no timeTo make a rhymeFor every fool that passes."
"I'm busy just now,
Stirring my molasses,
I've no time
To make a rhyme
For every fool that passes."
And Pendleton went on his way a sadder man; for the six red-haired little Clapsaddles were as usual hanging about the goose-pond, and had made themselves masters of this colloquy; which, consequently, spread with the rapidity of a Virginia creeper, from Rocky Point to Purcellville.
There is no doubt that Peter's gift was a great comfort to him, and, modest as he was, he accepted the inevitable fame growing out of his contributions to theBannerwith a certain degree of complacency. The power of looking at the events of life with a view to turning them into poetry invests even common subjects with interest, and when any really exciting thing happens the gifted mind is conscious ofa wonderfully uplifting feeling, such as the admiral of a fleet may experience when an enemy's ironclad opens fire. Opportunity is the spur that starts genius into a canter.
Peter sat smoking, and thinking how to turn the fight between himself and Funkhausen into a poem which should arouse the enthusiastic admiration of all readers of theBanner; including Mistress Amanda and perhaps Nellie.
When Funkhausen had set his hirelings upon the stalwart Peter he had not taken into account two things: one was that there was not a darkey in the county without a feeling of personal liking for the kind-hearted poet, and the other, that negroes are cowardly except under the influence of excitement. The foremost man in the group happened to be one to whose family Peter had rendered many kindnesses. When the blue eyes of his master's victim looked steadily into his own, Jake felt a curious tremor of mingled superstition and perplexity, which caused him to fall back on his comrades instead of advancing to the attackFunkhausen was doing his best to urge on. Peter's raised fist conveyed reminder as well as menace. That hand had been ready to extend help to those in need, but it was equally ready to strike down an offender. And the negroes did not like the looks of the strong, resolute white man standing upon the defensive, alone, but with right upon his side. They began to mutter and to fall back, until the whole mass had melted away; in some way bearing Funkhausen along with them. Whereupon Peter mounted his horse and quietly rode home.
But the county rang with the affair. As much to vindicate himself as for vengeance, Funkhausen had Peter up before the church for discipline. But to his disgust, and to the delight of everybody else, Deacon Greene declared that Peter had done nothing to be disciplined for; but that "if he hadn't fought Funkhausen the church would have turned him out!"
Mistress Amanda gave a dinner party and made Peter the guest of the occasion. It happenedupon Michaelmas and old Aunt Viny insisted, for luck's sake, upon dressing a pair of her master's geese, and sending them to Benvenew. So that Peter had the pleasure of seeing pretty Nellie blush under the sly allusion made by one of the guests to the old proverb about "the maid that eats of the bachelor's goose." But on the other hand, common sense told him that blushing was with Nellie no sign of especial embarrassment. Indeed, it was probable that the proverb was unknown to her. She was much occupied, all dinner-time, with the account young Armstrong—now ordained and installed as the regular preacher for Sneaking Creek church—was giving her of a bush-meeting in the woods back of Purcellville. He was anxious for her mother to take her to the meetings, but Mistress Amanda did not like bush-meetings; and she was not inclined to encourage any species of religious excitement in Nellie. Peter would gladly have offered to drive her but he could not venture to do so in the face of her mother's disapproval. It seemed a littlehard to him that he should not be able to avail himself of this little opportunity to please the young girl. And if jealousy had been possible to him he must have felt a twinge of it in seeing how absorbed Nellie was in the talk Armstrong was pouring into her ears. But the time had not yet come for him to recognize the significance of what was going on under his eye. The happenings of our daily life are like the characters at a masked ball. Capering before us, they seem entirely unrelated to ourselves in any particular, and it is only when they unmask that we know them for what they are.
Peter, the dreamer, wove some new fancies about his dainty love as he sat with a writing pad upon his knee, and his short pipe between his lips. The world was very beautiful to him. And to-morrow would be Sunday; the happiest day of all the good week; for he would see Nellie at church.
The collie dog at his feet jumped up and ran down the walk. At the gate stood a shabby phaeton made distinguished by carrying MistressAmanda. As he hastened out she called in a loud, clear tone:
"Good morning, Mr. Weaver, have you any turkey eggs to spare?"
Her hand, in its old gray gauntlet, was extended, and as he took it for a second in his own she added, lower,
"So much as a concession to our neighbor's greed, yonder!"
Peter looked and saw Elmer Hall approaching, driving a pair of hogs before him. Taking the cue, he talked about turkey eggs until the grunts had died away in the distance.
Then said madam—"I didn't come to talk about turkey eggs."
Peter drew a hand through his handsome hair; looked down reflectively and looked up smiling. "Will you come in?" he suggested. A decided shake of the head answered that. "My five years' seniority wouldn't excuse it—to the Greenes and Aylors! I doubt if even my mother could venture it. We may risk ten minutes here at the gate."
Mistress Amanda began flicking her whip at a thistle; her forehead gathering lines. Suddenly the words shot from her:
"You are a patient man!"
"Well! You haven't come two miles to tell me that?"
"But I have. Patience is a most unusual virtue—in a man, but there is such a thing as having too much of it. Do you remember the story of the fox and the wolf?"
"The nursery tale? Let me see. I think my grandmother used to tell it to me, but that was long ago. I forget the point."
"The wolf bit him—put out his eyes, and so on, the fox simply saying all the time, 'patience!' Till finally the enemy tore his heart out, and the fox found, too late, that patience is the most dangerous of all virtues."
Peter gazed at the narrator of this fable in amazement. For the first time in his life the idea that women are incomprehensible found lodgment in his mind.
"Ah, I see you think me daft," said his friend.And not for the first time in her life, by any means, she found a man dense.
"In so many plain words, then, are you not in love?"
The blood seemed on the point of bursting through Peter's skin; his head weighed a ton; his legs became pipe-stems. He gasped something inarticulately. Then, manly sense asserted itself. His look grew steady and grave and nobody could have found fault with his manner, as he said:
"You know I love your daughter. I reckon everybody knows that."
Mistress Amanda turned impulsively. Her face had been carefully averted during this conversation, but now she let her eyes meet his. There was the emphasis of a kept-down excitement in her tone:
"Everybody except the one person who ought to know it. It is a well-kept secret so far as she's concerned."
"I've only been waiting for the right time—she's so young—such a child!" Things dancedin the sunshine before the man's eyes. His long, lovely dream!—this was so sudden a call to hard reality; he could not waken in a minute.
"Nellie is not a girl to be won by accumulated acts of worship," said Mistress Amanda tersely. "Some girls can be won in that way; romantic girls. They would be flattered at being made the subject of verses; would like to feel that a great, powerful creature trembled before them. But Nellie is wonderfully free from that sort of vanity. So far from understanding the real feeling that is at the bottom of all the favors you show her she looks upon you as a sort of good godfather who has a fanciful, half-playful preference for her. You have never come near enough to her to touch the ruling motive of her character."
It sprang to Peter's lips to ask what that was; but he forbore the question. There seemed to him an indelicacy in arriving at a comprehension of his love through another person's perceptions, even if that person washer mother. Mistress Amanda, however, was no muddy stream whence truth must be laboriously filtered out, but a clear fountain, throwing facts high and rapidly in the air for the dullest seer to take in.
"She has a large vein of the practical in her. Probably you think—all you men think—that, with that soaring look, her feet never touch the ground. But you may take sentimental flights into the region of romance for the next ten years without interesting her enough to make her even look to see where you are. Don't woo her with poetry, my friend. She never reads it. I never saw her with any book of verse in her hand except a hymn-book."
A wild idea of putting his talent to this use came to Peter. After a moment's reflection he turned it out, as he would have locked his barn door against a suspicious steed bearing about him marks of gipsy ownership. And herein did my honest hero show his Dutch descent in his characteristic rejection of schemes out of the range of his natural inclination.
"I'm not much of a poet," he said, with an effort at a laugh.
"You look at things rather too much from a sentimental standpoint," observed Mistress Amanda. She had beaten the thistle quite to powder, and, laying down her whip, adjusted her gauntlets and gathered the reins into a firm grasp. Her fine black eyes had a singular expression.
"Not too much forsomewomen. The kind of sentiment there is in you is the kind that makes a man loyal, tender, and—of all things the rarest!—appreciative toward the woman you may marry. I wish girls were able to discriminate between the shepherding qualities in men and the huntsman's qualities. But they like the sound of the horn and the dash of the horses—the fiery eye and the masterful grip! Only after their gallants have thrown aside all their pretty trappings and come down to the plain garb of the household boss do they learn that a little kindness and consideration in a husband outranks all the more showy qualities."
"Nellie certainly ain't one to be taken in by a glittering outside—I sh'd think," Peter remarked.
"Not of the kind you have in your mind. But she is peculiarly constituted—extremely susceptible to anything like an appearance of superiority of the moral sort; or, not so much moral—I wish it was that!—but spiritual sort. Some girls pine for a man to take them in hand and lead them along the straight and narrow path; and a thorny path their saintly director generally manages to make it for them. Bah, I've no patience with the 'Queechy' species of hero!" exclaimed Mistress Amanda, lashing her whip in the air. Her horse, however, had sensibilities of his own, and taking this as a definite appeal to his own intelligence he started down the road at a pretty brisk pace, carrying his mistress off with excellent stage effect, her exit speech vibrating in Peter's astonished ears.
He stood leaning upon the gate, after she had turned the corner of the lane, for fifteenminutes; his cheerful face clouded slightly as he chewed the cud his friend had shown him, gazing, ox-like, at the present surroundings that lay about his feet, and unable to realize, even after some effort, the meaning of the suggestions that had been made as to possible dangers lurking in the future.
There was a placidity about Peter amounting to dulness, when he was pricked upon the matter of threatened changes. Your light-weight men, nervous, springy, and quick-glancing, are full of apprehensions; they believe that it is no more than likely that to-morrow may be doomsday, and they prepare themselves even for the most improbable crises. But two hundred pounds gives a certain faith in the established order of things, and it is a significant fact that bulk and the conceit that the world moves slowly, go together. Foretellers are so apt to have a lean and meagre frame that I should be loth to trust the pretensions of a prophet over-endowed with flesh. So the fact that Peter had a constitutional dislike to beingstirred up to initiative acts must be laid to his girth and his double chin; not to any lack of fine feeling. His affection for Nellie had become so much a part of himself that it partook of his temperament, and was deliberate and sober; incapable of sudden transitions. Adoring her at a distance had the charm of familiarity, and although in sentimental moods the man liked to picture his star, his flower, as a little housewife, seated of evenings by his side before the fire, with some sewing in her dainty fingers, and a tenderly inclined ear toward the thing he might like to read to her; still, he had grown so used to thinking of such scenes as afar off that to be suddenly desired to look at the necessity of at once taking steps to make his dream a reality, or else to abandon hope of ever making it one, was to ask too much of his optimistic nature. For what is an optimist but a person who believes that everything will turn out all right; whether he chooses to go to work at dawn or lie in bed till twelve?
But, Peter's indolence had a tinge of nobilityin it. He saw a young girl, happy in her ignorance of life's responsibilities, fresh, sweet, and bright, with the reflection of her own innocent and tender fancies shining in her unclouded eyes, and he was loth to interpose his tall shadow between her and the landscape. His wish had been to stand aside until she should come gradually to recognize him as an agreeable feature of it, perhaps to learn to look upon him as something indispensable to her life, making a part—a large part of her happiness. Some men of generous nature prefer to have a woman turn toward them of her own accord rather than to put forth the effort that makes wooing an affair of capture. It is pretty certain to happen, though, that the choice of a man of this view is apt to fall upon a girl whose instinct is not so much womanly as feminine. And those who have studied woman-kind will understand the distinction.
But Mistress Amanda's point had, nevertheless, been made, for she had given Peter to understand that there was a rival in the field.And the most optimistic of men does not fail to experience certain sensations in his brain extending to his strong right arm, when an intruder threatens to snatch away the glass where he is quietly watching the full bead gather and waiting to raise it to his thirsting lips.
IV.
IfPeter's thoughts had sought his rival they would have found him at a certain fine old mansion bearing upon the face of the stone gate-post the nameRoselawn. A well shaded drive swept up to the doorway, hospitably broad, and in seasonable weather open, giving a view of such a hall as can only be found in an old southern house. Family portraits looked down from the walls upon the carefully preserved furniture, recognizing, it may be, with some satisfaction, the presence of articles that had been in favor during their lifetime.
It was Monday morning, and breakfast time,according to the habits of the Armstrong family. The judge was in his place, his wife, comely, neat, and quiet, was in hers, and the three daughters, Laura, Violet, and Bess, had come in severally, and slipped into their chairs after a warm greeting to their father and a rather less impulsive and loving one to their quiet mother.
"Miles not down?" said Violet, the sprightliest of the sisters; a slim girl with a delicately up-tilted face in which dark eyes and a saucily curved mouth prepared one for good-humored but probably pointed banter.
"Down!" repeated that personage, coming in, and dropping discontentedly into the vacant chair next to his mother. "If you had beenupand keeping your chickens in order instead of—whatever else you were doing—I could have got some sleep after four o'clock and been down before. I wish you'd think proper to order that black rooster made into fricassee," he continued to his mother, who had no time to reply, however, for Violet put in an instant protestfor her pet Captain Jinks, who was such a darling, and so intelligent he could do everything except talk.
Miles dropped the subject, not caring to compromise his dignity by a dispute over such a trifle, but his entire bearing expressed that appearance of unappreciated worth which is so exasperating to women in a family; divining, as they do, that the root of it is invariably some kind of causeless irritation. The girls discovered in a minute that Miles had "got out of the wrong side of the bed" that morning; this supplying a vague, kindly explanation of his acerbities of temper. Undoubtedly he was cross. It showed in his way of receiving a remark that Laura now made. Laura was of the languid type of fair women; heavy-lidded gray eyes, peachy skin, and flesh all wrought into curving lines. A subdued greed of pleasure is the predominating quality of this sisterhood, often existing under the perfect disguise of plaintive, gentle renunciation. When thoroughly understood they weep the profuse tears of spiritsfeeling themselves above the comprehension of the ordinary mind.
"Please get Wash to hitch Peg-leg to the phaeton right after breakfast, will you?" Laura said. "I must drive over to Miss Annie's to try on my dress she is making for the tournament."
The light of disapproval kindled in Miles' grave face.
"Are you girls going to persist in attending that silly entertainment?" he inquired.
"You certainly didn't used to think it silly," answered the one chiefly addressed. "Time was—and not so very long ago, either—when you rode at tournaments yourself! I haven't forgotten the tournament at Manasses two years ago, when we were visiting cousin Jennie Davis"——
But Miles' head had disappeared, following his hands in a dive beneath the table for his egg-cup, rolled off by a movement of his arm that would have seemed scarcely accidental could this young gentleman have been suspectedof an ulterior wish to cut short some embarrassing allusion. Every one is endowed with some propensity tending to the discomfiture of others. Laura's talent in this direction, unknown to herself, lay in bringing up people's outgrown inclinations; so keeping them to the mortified level of a self they conceived they had risen above and would fain forget. Reminiscences of this kind are peculiarly afflicting to young divines, to whom the problem of preserving an appearance commensurate with the severity of their doctrine is often in danger from the good memories of their intimate friends. Can we wonder that the ordained preacher of twenty-two shrank sensitively from reminders of the peccadilloes committed by the gay youth of twenty?
Miles suffered, in the privacy of family life, from the tendency to treat him as an ordinary young man, whereas, he felt that he had become remarkable. To be informed, at the instant of assuming a superior tone, that he had been used to joining in the customs he condemnedwas sufficiently humiliating. But Laura's observation held a sting for his irritable conscience that she had no idea of. The dropping of the egg-cup had stopped her slow speech, for she had an acute sense of sympathy for awkwardness in a person ordinarily free from it, being herself studiously graceful.
"Let Sally bring you another egg," she was good enough to suggest. The yellow damsel dawdling against the side table put herself to some trouble to carry out the order, for the admiration that was but lukewarm in the house glowed effulgently in the kitchen; the young preacher being idolized by the negroes.
But Miles' appetite had been satisfied. He pushed back his plate and looked past his offending sister into space; his mind taking a flight in search of consolation ending at Benvenew, making some pretty notes of a pair of confiding eyes and a sweetly deferential tongue that had never uttered a word hurtful to his self-esteem. Of one devout disciple he was sure. Mingled with his triumph in it was agrateful acknowledgment of the immense advantage in this connection of quality over quantity; the sweetbriar rose being worth all the rest of feminine creation.
"What's that about the tournament?" the judge inquired. Three girlish voices chimed an answer of which he extracted the gist at his leisure; managing to arrive at the important item, that Miles was setting himself above all innocent amusements, and declined to accompany his sisters to the tournament.
"Miles' nonsense be damned!" said the head of the house. "I'll be your beau if he won't. I reckon I'm young enough yet to go about with all of you." The judge was forty-five, and excepting for a little too much fulness of chin, and a slight stiffness in his knees, he might have passed for the handsome elder brother of his son. Secretly, he was proud of the boy and looked upon the extreme views he held as the natural excess of an enthusiastic temperament concentrating itself upon theology. He expected Miles to grow more reasonable when hisfirst zeal should have worn off. But his own disposition was choleric, and while he was looking forward to an amelioration of the strict views held by the young preacher he was frequently tempted to bluster a little upon their points of difference.
The Armstrongs were rather given to disputations, and the household atmosphere was not seldom an uncomfortable one for the neutral mother, who had positive opinions upon only two subjects: the flavor of cookery and the good looks of her husband. She was quite satisfied that her son treated her respectfully, that he had good manners, and that his clothes set well; in less important points he was welcome to follow his own inclinations. During little clashes she was accustomed to occupy herself with considerations about the next dinner. Therefore, Miles was surprised to hear her say:
"I think Miles is very much in the right in not giving his countenance to tournaments. As a minister, he couldn't. They bet on thehorses and betting's not right. I heard that Penny Haywood bet fifty dollars last year and lost. I'm sure, Judge, you wouldn't like Miles to bet?"
The judge had given to this unwonted animation the compliment of wide-open eyes and smiling mouth.
"No danger of Miles betting!" he answered, reassuringly. "All I ask is that he shouldn't be so stiff-necked about his sisters taking their enjoyment in the way of all young folks."
Miles had again betrayed singular discomfiture at this new suggestion about himself. The slow, faint color of one who colors seldom and then from mortification, burned in his cheeks, and he arose with a muttered excuse and left the room, turning at the door to say:
"I'll have Peg-Leg put in the phaeton for you, Laura."
The instinct to seek comfort for his wounded self-love would have driven him straight to Benvenew, but it was too early in the day, and he had no excuse. The morning wore awaytediously. Unhappily for the young man the things that had once interested him and furnished occupation for his spare hours were now under the ban of his tyrant conscience. He had embraced the course known as "setting a good example," and for the sacrifices involved he found recompense both in his own consciousness of superiority and in the fact that Nellie looked on and admired. Yet, if he was in danger of becoming a prig, there were sound faculties in him that made it quite as probable that some sudden turn would swing him into the path of practical usefulness. At home he met at every turn with just the sort of opposition to confirm his dislike of the easy self-indulgence that swayed the rest.
Everybody else in the Armstrong family did what he or she wished to do; it was for him to do what he thought right, regardless of inclinations. Laura was indolently selfish, Violet energetically set upon carrying out her own plans, and Bess, his junior by a year, was strong-minded; something that in his viewwas less endurable than pure frivolity. His bitter admiration for her cleverness sometimes found vent in expressions of solicitude for her future husband, to which she always responded thathiswife would have her profound sympathy, for his ideas of the family state were founded upon Old Testament precedent, to which the new dispensation and womanhood were altogether opposed.
Sauntering discontentedly along the great stretch of piazza Miles heard stray bits of his sisters' talk as they sat at work, and contrasted it with Nellie's sweet, sensible remarks, and the feeling of her perfection grew strong in him. Beginning in agreement of tastes and opinions the intimacy between the two young people had now reached the stage where conscious preference may at any instant change to blind attraction. Sedateness and dignity had marked their intercourse so far; but the impulse Miles felt swelling his breast was the first rise of a wave capable of sweeping away all the pretty dalliances of friendship, and of carryinghim out on the swift flowing sea of a great passion. His was a temperament sure to love ardently and he had not dissipated his energies prematurely.
Two o'clock sees our young preacher mounted on his Kentucky thoroughbred mare, Stella, a beautiful chestnut, tractable only with her owner. As he leaped into the saddle she looked so knowing that he, to try her, let the reins hang, and said softly, "To Benvenew!" Whereupon the intelligent creature gave her slender head a light toss, and started off up the slope of the hill at a pace that brought him, in less than an hour, to the grand old park that surrounded that historic mansion.
He had feared to find Nellie, as usual, surrounded by the rest; but as he drew near the little summer-house, covered with a luxuriant grape-vine, now rich in purple clusters, he saw her standing there, a basket on her arm, filling it with the grapes. In a moment he was on the ground beside her, Stella standing still,untied, and docile to his wish as an obedient child.
At the first shy glance she gave him, Miles forgot the smart to his vanity that had sent him to her, forgot everything but that the sweetest girl in the world stood there, blushing under his fixed gaze, her little fingers trembling in his grasp, for when she laid her hand in his he suddenly found it impossible to let it go.
"Come and sit down, please," he said, drawing her inside the bower and seating himself beside her on the rustic bench. "It is an age since I saw you."
"Yesterday?" questioned Nellie, demurely raising her brows.
"I don't count seeing you in a crowd. The last time we really had any time together was at the fair—away back in September. There are so many things I have always wanted to talk with you about. You are the only person that has a real sympathy with me in the work I am trying to do here, Miss Nellie. Andyou don't know how dearly I value your sympathy."
Now, my innocent, modest beauty had known what it is to hear manly voices sink into tender cadence, declaring her sympathy necessary to all their aims and enterprises in life, nor had the deeper experience of that special pleading, to which this is the preliminary, been wanting. The practical sense her mother had spoken of gave her intimation of the thing that yet lay, half unsuspected, in the depths of Armstrong's mind, like the sweet arbutus under the smothering cedar. The cedar here was the young man's egotism, claiming attention as its right, and some storm wind would have to sweep the prickly covering away before the delicate blossoms of real love revealed themselves.
And the storm wind was even at that moment brewing. It is usually while we are most free from forebodings, most satisfied with ourselves, that the ugly head of misfortune thrusts from around the corner and brings us with ashock to a recognition that the past is perpetually linking itself with the present, and that a forgotten sin is capable of coming to life after we have left it in the desert to starve.
Nellie had begun to murmur that she was happy if anything she could do was a help to him, when her soft speech was interrupted by a flying scout from the house, a small negro boy, whose bare heels scarcely rested upon the ground while he delivered in emphatic voice a message from Mistress Amanda:
"Miss Nell, yo's ter go straight ter th' house,efyo' please, ter say good-by ter Mr. Beeswax afore he leaves. Lemme tote de grapes."
The basket was seized, and the scout began the march, looking back every instant to be assured that the young pair followed.
They followed with vexation in the heart of one, at least. To the other it was more of a habit to submit her will to others, so her face remained calm and her tones gentle as she replied to the slight remarks Armstrong forcedhimself to make. At the door the scout left them to deposit his burden in the kitchen and go back after Stella, whom he was burning to mount, not dreaming of the experience that was in store for him.
The young pair entered the parlor and found Mistress Amanda and old lady Powell entertaining a short, keen-eyed, sallow man whose age was not to be easily guessed. His occupation might have been set down as mercantile, and he was, in fact, a commercial drummer.
"Mr. Beesly, let me present you to Mr. Armstrong, our minister," said Mistress Amanda, formally.
The stranger bowed with ironical exaggeration. "I have met Mr. Armstrong before," he said, in what struck her as a disagreeably significant tone. She gave a swift, searching look at the young preacher.
Armstrong was standing with a rigid air of dignity that sat not ill on his handsome person. But he had suddenly grown very pale.
V.
Itspoke well for Armstrong that, at the very instant of running into a most unexpected and disagreeable dilemma, he did not wish he had been warned so that he might have avoided it. A Gorgon would have been a winning object to him in comparison with the wiry little man now smiling a curiously double-faced smile at him, but beyond the involuntary pallor that had come he gave no sign of discomfiture; and after a sharp glance to see how his salutation had been met, Beesly turned away with a mutter that lost itself in his bushy whiskers, "true grit!" and began to make himself fascinating to Nellie.
She had been sent for to bid this forty-second cousin good-by, but now she was here he seemed in no haste to depart. Leaving Armstrong to the tender mercies of Mistress Amanda, he followed the young girl over to her grandmother'ssofa, where she had shyly taken refuge, and drawing up a chair in front of the two, bent himself to entertain.
No men have more facility in this line than "drummers." They learn to observe human nature and become adept at humorous description of adventures, taking pains to tone their note up or down to suit their company. It can be a "bray" among other men, and a "coo" with women. For the chaste ears of old lady Powell, and her innocent granddaughter, Beesly's talk was a light sparkle of harmless fun that drew the laughter of both. Nellie had a sense of fun—not humor—under her demureness, and she was pleased and amused as he meant her to be.
To the investigating glances Armstrong threw toward her corner from time to time, there was presented the singular spectacle of the girl who had, but a few minutes before, been blushing under his words of admiration, seeming wholly content with the exchange of another man's company for his own; even althoughshe must have realized that an interview had been interrupted which promised to be an important one.
Important to the lady, Sir Egoist? Mark her now, leaning back against the red silk cushions, as Beesly bends eagerly forward in the full swing of some fine narrative; the dimpling smile showing a glimpse of even, milk-white teeth behind a bud of a mouth, dewily innocent as a baby's. The light in the wily fellow's eyes is reflected in her hazel ones as she catches the point of his sketch, and now she hides her lovely face against her grandmother's ample bosom, in an outburst of mirth so rare with her as to seem almost indecorous. Has it ever been your good fortune, Miles Armstrong, to arouse so hearty an interest and sway so readily that timid nature? She has certainly forgotten you, and the serious business of life you are so fond of discoursing with her, in the glow of feelings natural to youth and feminine love of enjoyment.
Armstrong's face grew gloomy, and hisconversation absent-minded, while Mistress Amanda, taking note of everything, was led to speculate on a set of possibilities that had never before suggested themselves to her astute intellect. Was it possible that the law of contrasts, leading the fancies of men and maidens to attach themselves to the persons most dissimilar, could apply to her daughter Nellie, for whom she had been anticipating a very different inclination! Girls were capable of such freaks. After all, if it were not for Peter Weaver, the idea of Beesly as a permanent member of the family would not be so unwelcome. His shrewd sense and light views formed a very good balance to the over-seriousness of the young girl. Mingled with a pang for her silent and devoted hero, Mistress Amanda felt a certain satisfaction in this introduction of a new player into her little domestic drama. She became more affable with the young preacher.
These two had never yet been able to strike upon a single topic of mutual interest wherethe clash of disagreement did not instantly lead to silence.
"Let us harmonize upon the weather," Mistress Amanda had once observed when argument had threatened to become personal. But one cannot always talk about the weather. She tried apples.
"Is your father shipping his usual quantity of golden pippins to England this fall? I hear that he has had the honor of furnishing some to the queen's own table; that her preference is for pippins."
"Three thousand barrels, I believe," said Armstrong, in a lukewarm response.
"Indeed! That means quite a nice return in money;" her tone had a tinge of regret for her own exclusion from so excellent a business arrangement. The orchard at Benvenew was a fairly fine one, but its full resources were undeveloped for lack of capital. If she had the money Mistress Amanda felt sure she might rival the success of the master of Roselawn, who was rolling up a fortune before the admiringeyes of his neighbors. Envy of a neighbor's superior success is not a Virginian trait. All your true Virginian asks for is the tithe due to friendship and he will put hands in pockets and look on while the enterprising compatriot piles up his dollars. But, being a woman, Benvenew's mistress could not and did not try to suppress the emulative instinct that made her long for an opportunity to prove her business capacity.
Beesly's ears, sharp as a hunter's, had caught the word "money," and with his quick way of whirling about, he threw a sentence toward the other guest.
"By the way, talking of money, Armstrong, it's kind of curious, isn't it?—But, never mind, we'll have a chance to discuss that going home. What I was going to tell you was about the wedding of the turkey-girl in the Tennessee mountains," he continued, turning back with equal suddenness to his old and young auditors, who had scarcely had time to follow his flight with their eyes before he waswith them again, fluent as a blackbird rehearsing a well-practised theme.
Was it a malicious impulse suddenly checked by compunction for the man he was "cutting out," and toward whom decency demanded at least the avoidance of insult upon the top of injury? Or was it a mere random arrow from his whimsical quiver that had made the young preacher start and redden, while his deep eyes began to burn with an intense fire that promised some strong kind of entertainment for the person proposing to accompany him "home."
Whichever it was, Armstrong now made up his mind that as his object in coming to Benvenew had been defeated, he would, at least, take the initiative in breaking up that littleséanceyonder, toward which he felt unsanctified resentment.
He arose. At the movement old lady Powell, whose pleasure in the vivacity of her entertainer had been more than once disturbed by the feeling that she was not paying proper attention to her minister, gently released herselffrom her granddaughter's encircling arm, and came towards him.
"You shorely ain't thinkin' o' goin',yit, Mr. Armstrong? Why, we hain't seen nothin' o' you yit, and it's seldom enough you come. Stay to tea, now! Mandy, do press Mr. Armstrong to stay to tea!"
"Will sally-lunn tempt you?" smiled Mistress Amanda, choosing always to suppose that the proper appeal to men was through appetite. But she overlooked the counterpoise of sentiment when a man is under twenty-five. Armstrong remained standing. A word from Nellie might have changed his mind, but although she looked at him she did not speak; and, unfortunately, Beesly did. His high-pitched voice made his interference doubly offensive to the young preacher's refined sensibilities.
"Oh, I say, Armstrong, I'm not ready to go. Tea-time at Benvenew has peculiar seductions," and he pointed the remark by a smile at Nellie that some observers might have called frankand kind; others, devilish. So much depends upon the point of view. Armstrong's was that of the harsher criticism; not to be wondered at, considering the difference in his feelings on entering and departing from Benvenew that day.
"I am not aware sir, that my going places any constraint upon you," said Armstrong with the most distant air a man could assume.
Beesly laughed. What defense is dignity against a laugh, with which the company, ignorant of any occult meaning, show an inclination to join, moved both by sympathy with the joker and the polite wish to smooth over a little difficulty between two guests! Armstrong realized keenly that he was at extreme disadvantage, since the animosity that he felt toward Beesly could not be explained and must bear the semblance of ill-temper. That it might be interpreted as jealousy did not occur to him. It was, however, natural that the women should take this view of it.
Now, Nellie, with all her good and sensible qualities, had one little foible. She was notaware of it, and, indeed, her position as the recognized beauty of the county was so certain to develop the trait in any young woman not altogether an angel, that she is excusable for having grown just a little bit vain. Hers was not the vanity of dwelling in thought upon her own attractions, for, in moments of deliberate reflection, she was given to a humble estimate of herself; but it was the innocent, childlike love of notice, and of the subtle flattery conveyed in being sought out and distinguished by attention. Maiden-like, she fled to corners, and woman-like there was pleasure in being followed. The boldest admirer was likely then to gain the ear of modesty that had this susceptible spot in it.
Beesly was wise in making of his small, active person a very bulwark against the outer world; his play of wit so filling the space that the girl only saw dimly what was going on outside her corner. She looked up to find the preacher's fine form drawn up before her. He persisted in going. His somber eyes meant toconvey to her that this was something more than an ordinary good-by.
The ubiquitous Beesly gave her no opportunity to realize the situation. A cool clasp of her little fingers, a bow, and Armstrong was gone from the room.
Then Beesly sprang up, with a good-humored show of despair. "Plague the fellow!—if hewillgo, I must tear myself away. I have something particular to say to him, and to-morrow I start for Chicago. I'll be back in a week or so, though, Cousin Amanda, and you can order the sally-lunn then."
He shook hands all around, his jolly, hearty manner contrasting forcibly with the seriousness of the other, and departed, leaving a track of glittering light behind him, as some persons do. What matter if the glitter is a tinsel clap-trap? Nonsense helps to make life cheerful, and a jolly good fellow is especially a boon in country society.
Mistress Amanda went to the window and began dropping the muslin curtains. She likedto put this veil between the outer dusk and the fire-lit room.
"Heigho!" she yawned; "'what fools these men be.'"
"Mortals, mamma, I think," was the gentle correction of Nellie.
Her astonished mother stared. "What do you know of Shakespeare?" she ejaculated.
The young girl blushed. "Papa used to read to us in the evenings sometimes. Have you forgotten, mamma? I recollect Midsummer Night's Dream very well."
Her mother spent several minutes in silent reflection, studying her daughter. "I don't know that I understand you as well as I thought I did," she then observed, with unusual softness.
Nellie came around to the back of her chair, putting a soft hand on her shoulder. "But you love me, mamma?"
"Love you?" Mistress Amanda's splendid eyes grew moist. "Yes, dear, I love youdearly. All the good that can come to me in this world is to see you happy."
"That's right, Mandy," said old lady Powell cheerily. "But you's young enough, child, to see a heap o' satisfaction on yo' own account, yit."
A little negro boy, sprawling on the floor of his mammy's cabin, and rubbing his back as he could reach it, might have told Mr. Beesly something about the paces of the mare, Stella, which that gentleman was trying to catch up with. A start of five minutes was too much in Stella's favor, if her master had intended flight from his persistent acquaintance. When the little man swung himself into his saddle, and looked here and there and everywhere in the fast-gathering dusk for the sight of a horseman in the road ahead, there was nothing whatever to be seen.
Beesly was a poor rider, on a strange, borrowed horse, and the country was unfamiliar to him. Twenty paces from Benvenew the road forked, and the commercial traveler had notthe slightest idea which path to take. Invoking good luck, he took the one to the left. It went past a farm-house or two, where the hungry fellow saw lights twinkling in kitchens, and smelled—in imagination—the odor of squirrel-stew and corn-pone. After this he passed the old mill, and the outlook grew less promising.
"A plague upon him!" cried the baffled pursuer. "I didn't think Armstrong was the man to run away. What did he take me for, anyway?"
Darkness comes rapidly in these mountains. Beesly found himself skirmishing around in a curiously eccentric style, and the certainty that he was entirely astray gained his slow credence. He was not fortified by a good meal, either, to enjoy the cool night breeze that began to play through his light summer suit.
"Get along! Go somewhere, I don't care where, so it leads to supper!" he apostrophized the horse, and that animal, left to his own judgment, bethought himself of a certain hospitablestable where more than once he had had a good meal when business led him in the direction of its owner. So, taking a start, he cantered along the road at a very creditable pace, and paused of his own accord in front of Peter Weaver's gate.
The front windows of Peter's cottage were wide open, and Beesly had a view of a big man in his shirt-sleeves going around a well-lit room, holding a book in his hand, and singing at the top of an exceedingly powerful voice.
"Hallo! Hallo in there!" shouted Beesly's thin falsetto, and presently it dawned upon Peter's comprehension that somebody outside was trying to make himself heard. He came to the door, holding a lamp high above his head, the light casting into relief his ruddy face and Titan-like frame.
"A handsome fellow, by heaven!" thought the drummer, who never lost a picturesque feature.
"Can a gentleman who has lost his way beg the favor of an hour's rest and a bit of supper?"he sang out toward the Titan, who responded with a hearty:
"Sartain, sir! And most welcome. 'Light and come right in. I'll send a nigger after your horse."
"I'm a distant cousin of Mistress Amanda, up to Benvenew," said Beesly, as he entered the cottage and proceeded to make himself at home in his usual easy fashion. "I insisted on leaving there before supper, and have been properly punished by losing my way."
"Cousin to Mistress Amanda? That gives you a claim on me, sir, to any extent," said Peter, throwing a log on the fire, and calling out the back door to his cook to hurry up supper.
"You see, sir," he continued, "living all by myself here I've fallen into the way of kind o' having meals at any hour I like, and supper's ruther put back to-night. I'm glad it's so, as I've the good fortune to have yo' company."
"Why, I had an idea that I might take supper along with your preacher here, Mr. MilesArmstrong, but if you'll believe me, he went off and left me in the lurch, although I had something very particular to say to him."
"Possible!" ejaculated Peter, his face becoming thoughtful.
Loquaciousness was Beesly's prime vice. He felt himself aggrieved in this instance, and, convinced by the appearance of a bountiful supper that his host was a good fellow, and entitled to confidence, he poured out a tale that had the unintended effect of impairing Peter's appetite.
"You see—it's this way. Three years back now—Armstrong was a minor, anyway, and not responsible for the money if he chose to put it that way. But he put a bet on Belle Noir—a pretty big bet—we fellows sort o' goaded him to it,—and he lost. Plumb five hundred dollars he lost, sir! And if you'll believe me, he wrote a letter to Keats—Keats backed Charlie Boy—saying he had no mind to ask his governor for the money, that betting was against his conscience, anyway, but that, ashis honor demanded that he pay up, he earnestly requested for time to do it in. Well, Keats said he'd give him time. He was going abroad and he'd give him till he came back. Now, sir, that was three years ago, and Armstrong's never given a sign. I met Keats in New York last week, and he said he meant to come down here and see Armstrong. He says he hates a sneak. That's what I meant to tell Armstrong to-night; that Keats is coming here. You see, nobody knows a word about it but us three. By the bye, I guess you'd better not mention it. I don't want to make trouble."
"You certainly have astounded me, sir," affirmed Peter Weaver. "Mr. Armstrong's the very last person I'd have suspected of ever getting into such a box as this. And five hundred dollars, too. That's a mighty big lot of money to throw away."
"If he's saving up his salary to pay it it'll take him rather awhile to get it together," grinned Beesly. "What does he get for preaching?"
"We pay our preacher two hundred and fifty dollars a year, sir. And perquisites," he added, as the drummer gave a significant whistle. "There are perquisites—there'd be more if he got married"—
"Perhaps he will before long. There are pretty gals down here. Cousin Amanda's girl is a thundering beauty. I shouldn't wonder if Armstrong had got his eyes set that way. Little mite strait-laced, though, is Nellie. By George, what'd she say if she knew the preacher used to bet on horses? Reformed, didn't he?"
"Mr. Armstrong's said to have experienced sanctification," said Peter, slowly.
"Oh, come, now, that's too good," shouted the commercial traveler.
"There may be such a thing; I'm called skeptical myself. But whether there is or not, there's goodness. And for my part, I believe Mr. Armstrong's an upright, moral, well-meaning man, and it's the duty of his friends to stand by him," said Peter Weaver. But deepdown in his heart was a cry. The preacher was, then, in love with Nellie: did Nellie love the preacher?
VI.
Thehardest thing in the world to bear is self-contempt. The man or woman who has once slipped from his own standard of rectitude—whatever it is—has henceforth in his soul a little Inferno where desperate desire is continually carrying a huge stone up a hill and memory is as continually rolling it down again.
Armstrong's thoughts shaped themselves into some such words as these as he galloped out from Benvenew. He was not running from Beesly through any cowardly impulse; but because he wanted to think the matter all out, alone. The moment he had laid eyes on the fellow he knew that the thing he had been fighting down so long, overlaying by a structure of self-denial and good deeds, had come uppermost in the foreground of his life, and mustbe faced as a sin freshly committed, because to the present hour concealed. The young man had a strong nature, proud and tender; a little one-sided in its development, and the more likely to cut out intense suffering for itself through the aid of imagination. When conscience lashed he had no instinct to shrink away and make excuse; instead, he cried "Peccavi!" feeling that he deserved the more because no one but himself knew that he deserved it. Herein, although circumstances may have made it appear that he was nearly, if not quite, a hypocrite, Miles Armstrong proved himself none, for he felt that the worst of a sin was in its commission, not in the fact of its being made public. It would have been a relief to him all along if that gambling experience in his past, when, for a brief space he had sowed wild oats, could have been known to all the world; then he might have shouldered blame, lived the matter down, and started afresh, with a clear page for the future. But expediency had been his counselor. She hadwhispered that his usefulness would be impaired if he let himself appear as a common youth; a preacher should be in a certain sense, immaculate; his faults and follies were between himself and his conscience. What hehadbeen was not the world's business; only what he wasnow.
And so Armstrong had concealed his fault and gone on trying to forget it, but never able to do so, until, between looking on the picture of what he was believed to be, and what he was in his own knowledge of himself, the great contrast took the form of an accusation that made him out—liar: of all things the meanest and most despicable when the lie is one which assumes the appearance of a virtue that a man has not.
To the sky the young preacher turned his face, worn in a few hours to the sharp outlines of pain, and in the dusk and loneliness of that mountain path, over which Stella was swiftly bearing him home, he made a vow in his heart that from this hour he would cease to be theslave of the Lie. He would descend, before the eyes of men and women, into the valley of humiliation, that he might emerge a free soul, even if he must in consequence go on with his life stripped of all that made it pleasant and useful.
And then Miles, lifting his hat as if bidding farewell to something beloved, rode calmly on to Roselawn.
Again, the little church beside Sneaking Creek was crowded as upon the Sunday the young preacher had given his first sermon. Some indefinite rumor had got abroad of a surprise in store for the congregation; how started it would be difficult to say, and nobody had the slightest idea of what he expected; only there was an atmosphere of expectancy.
All the Armstrong family were at church, the Judge resplendent with a purple necktie, and his wife in a purple silk; the girls, as usual, attired with taste and at considerable expense. Mistress Amanda and her mother were in their pew, with Nellie between them, charmingas the spirit of October, in a carefully turned claret-colored poplin and a toque trimmed with autumn leaves. And Peter Weaver was there; with a dubious expression, and very sore in mind; wishing to believe the best of people under adverse circumstances, and nobly ready to put himself out of the question if he must do so to make little Nellie happy.
There was a peculiar stillness as Armstrong arose after the hymn that heralded the sermon. The young man's pale, tense look produced a general sensation of anxiety. Some good mothers in Israel were for handing him up their smelling salts. Girls scrutinized his features with their mouths falling apart, wondering what dreadful thing had happened to him to make his lips so set and his eyes so deep and black. But all turned their faces toward him with the sure response of sympathy toward unaffected feeling.
"My people!"——
The words were those of an old minister, grown gray in service among loved friends;but they came earnest and unstudied from the heart of the young preacher. Hearts thrilled to him, answering the strangely sweet appeal that breathed through the notes of that fine voice, always beautiful in its modulations, but to-day with a new quality that won without his hearers knowing why.
"You have come for a sermon," Armstrong went on. "I have no sermon to give you. When you elected me to serve as the minister of this church I had joy in taking the place you gave me. I love the work. At this instant, when I am about to give it up, every fibre of my nature clings to it, my heart and my mind as well. Yet I must give it up. I am not worthy to be your minister; nornow, to be a minister at all. And the reason is this. Some time ago, before I was ordained, I was for a season given over to ungodliness. I fell into one sin that by heaven's grace did not lead to worse, as it might have done. It was not a thing most of you would call very bad"—the proud Armstrong blood made the speaker'shead rear slightly. He felt his father's angry eyes upon him and even imagined he heard the word "fool"; but he sternly went on:
"We southerners are too apt to look with indulgence upon social sins. Horse-racing and gambling are things you might consider excusable in a young man, even in one meaning to be a minister. These were my failings. I don't exaggerate them so much as to say that because I did these things I am unfit to serve as your minister. No; it is not that."
A deep breath labored through his lungs, and the many staring eyes in front of him all seemed to swim together and take on the form of a question. What was it, then? What was to come?
"The first duty of any soul is to be thoroughly honest," continued the young preacher. "He who glosses over his own faults and acts as if he had a guiltless past behind him helps to spread the fell disease of deceit and hypocrisy; the great pest of our times. And of this baseness I have been guilty. I let it be supposedthat I had experienced sanctification. I came before you unconfessed and with a semblance of uprightness it was not my privilege to claim. All men are sinners, and it is the nature of some not to feel their sins acutely; they can go about with light hearts, never aware of the yoke a Christian should bear. But others are different. Every man according to his nature. We can only be guided by the light within. But wo to that man who wilfully shuts his eyes to the revelation of his own conscience! St. Paul felt the weight of his sins upon his soul and bravely cried out, 'I am the chief of sinners!' He made the world see him just as he was, not pretending goodness that did not belong to him. This is the right thing to do; above all, the right and only thing for a teacher of men to do. I have always felt this, and have acted contrary to my convictions. I have lived a lie before you. Now, for the first time you see me as I am and know that I am not what you thought me. It is the just punishment of one who 'knows theright and chooses the wrong,' to lose all he has sought to gain. I lose what I value most in giving up my privilege of usefulness among you. But it is my duty to do this, and I dare not shrink from it because it is hard."
Soldiers know that valor is born in the heat of strife, called out by the sight of waving banners, the note of bugles, and the feeling of a great mass rushing all together against a foe. A far greater effort of courage is made by the man who deliberately stands up before his friends and makes a confession that may in an instant turn their esteem to contempt, and leave him alone and defenseless among a host of accusers. In making his supreme effort Armstrong had not been blind to this probable result. His imagination had vividly pictured the moment of his humiliation. Nerved to carry the thing through, his voice uttered the final word without a falter. Then, stepping back, he sat down.
Every sort of confusion prevailed. The general feeling was that of excitement and astonishment,especially among the younger set. Very few were able to appreciate the strange manifestation of moral greatness that had been made before them; and with these the uppermost sensation was that of awkwardness. Bluff old farmers had grown red and uneasy, aware that their young preacher had climbed to a height where they could not approach him. They shuffled their feet and looked down. The women whispered; some tittered hysterically. One got up and crossed the church to say something to a friend. It was the signal for a general movement, and in a few moments nearly everybody had changed their places. Armstrong, with his fingers over his closed eyes, saw nothing, but he felt terrible vibrations in his brain. He was alone; deserted. In a single moment of suffering years can be compressed, and a sensitive nature grows old fast.
There was a light touch upon his arm, a touch that thrilled him through and through. He looked, and standing beside him was beautiful Nellie; shy, shrinking Nellie, always dreadingany conspicuous position, and wont to hide behind her mother's ample shadow. She was upon the platform, holding out her small, ungloved hand, her eyes shining through tears, her cheeks flushed rosy red; forgetful of shyness, all thought of self lost in the outburst of sympathy and reverence that had led her feet straight to him her heart called lover, leader and highest among men.
The young preacher's sunken eyes gleamed with a new, wonderful hope. They devoured the sweet face. Her hand was caught and held, pressed hard while he whispered, "Nellie, love!" and then, mindful of the staring people, Armstrong would have swept her quickly back, but the young girl felt to her very finger-tips the sense of that great stare. Her head dropped, her form trembled, the roses in her cheeks turned to fire, and shrinking, faltering, on the verge of a burst of weeping, she turned and hid her face on the young preacher's breast!
Scarcely a second was given to the people to take this sight in before Peter Weaver's hugeform towered on the platform in front of the young pair. He had hastened, almost leaped up the steps, and behind him Nellie fled to the little door at the side of the platform and so out from the church. One great throb of pain had Peter's heart given at sight of Nellie on Armstrong's breast, one strong, silent effort of renunciation of a lifetime's hopes he made, and then self was put behind him, for good and all. He had a duty to perform, and he did it with his might.
"I want to say a word or two!" his great voice sang out, silencing the clamor and confusion in another thrill of curiosity.
"I ain't a speaker, as you all know——"
A comment from the rear chimed in, "You're a poet!" It was Penny Haywood, and Violet Armstrong, hanging upon his arm, quickly forced him to be silent.
"But there air facts in nature that speak for themselves, and don't require eloquent speech-making to get people to understand 'em. One of these facts is a good man. There are lots ofgood women—God bless 'em!—and some pretty good men in an all 'round way. But the rarest thing on all of God's earth is a thoroughly good, honest man; one whose acts air as transparent as daylight, that stands up before his fellows clean and sound, and dares to father everything he has ever done in his life, without shamming or palliating anything. You know it was this kind of an honest man that old Diogenes went 'round seeking with a lantern and couldn't find. Well, if he'd come seeking him in Fauquier County, Virginia, he'd have found him right here in the Second Baptist church, and his name's Miles Armstrong!"
"Good!" pronounced a woman's voice; Miss Lavinia Powell, not afraid to speak her mind, and esteeming it a rare privilege to assent to a man's common-sense.
"I consider, ladies and gentlemen, that we've had here before us to-day an exhibition of high and fine moral feeling that ought to be a lesson to us all our lives. And as for the modesty of the man that's given it, and his idea of beingunworthy to go on preaching to us and all that, why, I say—I say that there ain't another as worthy one to be found anywhere, and if you're of my mind, we'll go right on having Mr. Miles Armstrong preach to us as long as he lives! And what's more," shouted Peter, while he unnecessarily reared himself a-tip-toe, "I'm darned if I think it'll hurt the church a bit if, to crown this occasion, you all join in a cheer of good-will to our preacher, Mr. Miles Armstrong and Miss Nellie Thomas, his wife—that's-to-be!"
Then there was laughing and acclamation, and crowding toward the platform, and the young preacher's hand was seized and wrung until his fingers ached, and his bewildered brain ceased to think at all, but left him altogether at the mercy of his friends, who nearly tore him to pieces in their zeal.
Peter Weaver for once asserted himself and claimed the privilege of driving the young preacher to Benvenew—where he was panting to go after Nellie—in his own high top buggy. He had something to say in private.
"It's this," said Peter, laying his broad hand earnestly on the young man's knee, when they were well along on the road and no one was near. "I knew about the thing you've been taking so hard, before you told of it to-day. Beesly told me. Now, my dear sir, you want money. You don't want to ask your father for it. No need. You've done enough. Let me help you out o' this leetle scrape. I've more money than I know what to do with. I've got five hundred dollars right here, in this little roll, and I want you to take it. Not as a loan; as a gift. Do, now!"
Armstrong protested, thanked him with no lack of warmest gratitude, but absolutely refused. His father was rich, he said, and would help him. His road was easy before him now, easier than he deserved. All Peter could think of to console himself was that he would buy Nellie a wedding present with the money.
Shame-faced little Nellie, hiding behind the parlor curtains, longing for Armstrong, and fearing to have him come! How quickly hefound her and carried her triumphantly to that distant corner where a great black horse-hair sofa swallowed them up; the worn horse-hair so slippery that he had to put his arm around her to hold her on.
Mistress Amanda was a dumfounded woman. So swiftly and suddenly had come the surprises of that morning that all she could do was to contemplate her daughter from a distance, and say "Well!" in a tone that meant resignation to circumstances.
But she had had her proud moment. Her heart—warm and true yet after bitter life-experiences—had leaped with delight when Peter Weaver made the little speech that with her knowledge of him, showed him a hero, capable of the most generous sacrifice it is within the power of a man to make. "Hero," she called him, to honest Peter's immense confusion, as they sat sedately in two armchairs before the fire, with their backs to the young couple in the far corner of the spacious room; talking over the details of the great occurrence.
"For such a sensible woman you air given to making too much of the little things men do that air right to do," said Peter, smiling.
"So few men do the little things that are right," sighed Mistress Amanda, looking at her own past in the bed of fire. "You are the only man I know, Peter, that I would put a heavy stake on to take the straight course every time."
"What, leave out Armstrong?" remonstrated Peter, with a jerk of his head backward toward the corner.
"Armstrong has come upon me too suddenly," complained Mistress Amanda. Then, with the generosity of a candid nature she paid rightful tribute to what commanded her admiration.
"He is certainly an excellent young man," she said. "A noble fellow. I've thought of him more than once as you spoke of him in that speech of yours,—'the man Diogenes sought!' I trust he will make my little Nellie happy."
"She has that within her that ensures happiness,"said Peter steadily. "The sweetest, soundest heart ever a woman had. Heaven bless her!"
Mistress Amanda softly stretched out her firm, shapely hand, and laid it on his own as it rested on the arm of the chair. It was a friendly, sympathetic touch. Perhaps unawares, something more went into it than she intended.
Peter looked at her with great kindness.
"You and me air getting to be middle-aged people, Amanda," he said. "The chief thing now is for us to make the young people happy."
But old lady Powell, apparently dozing in her chair on the opposite side of the fire was building a double air-castle. She said to herself that Peter's little green cottage would suit the young preacher and his bride very well, if its master should come to Benvenew to live. Nothing was more likely. And Amanda and Peter would just hit it off together. Everybody could see that. It was perfectly plain.