June 1. Cousin Mehitable is capable of surprises. She has written to Deacon Richards to have my baby taken away from me.
The Deacon came in to-night, so amused that he was on the broad grin when he presented himself, and chuckling even when he said good-evening.
"What pleases you?" I asked. "You seem much amused about something."
"I am," he answered. "I've been appointed your guardian."
"By the town authorities?" I demanded. "I should have thought I was old enough to look after myself."
"It's your family," he chuckled. "Miss Privet has written to me from Boston."
"Cousin Mehitable?" I exclaimed.
"Miss Mehitable Privet," he returned.
"She has written to you about me?" asked I.
He nodded, in evident delight over the situation.
My astonishment got the better of my manners so that I forgot to ask him to sit down, but stood staring at him like a booby. I remembered Cousin Mehitable had met him once or twice on her infrequent visits to Tuskamuck, and had been graciously pleased to approve of him,—largely, I believe, onaccount of some accidental discovery of his very satisfactory pedigree. That she should write to him, however, was most surprising, and argued an amount of feeling on her part much greater than I had appreciated. I knew she would be shocked and perhaps scandalized by my having baby, and she had written to me with sufficient emphasis, but I did not suppose she would invoke outside aid in her attempts to dispossess me of Thomasine.
"But why should she write to you?" I asked Deacon Daniel.
"She said," was his answer, "she didn't know who else to write to."
"But what did she expect you to do?"
The Deacon chuckled and caressed his beardless chin with a characteristic gesture. When he is greatly amused he seizes himself by the chin as if he must keep his jaw stiff or an undeaconical laugh would come out in spite of him.
"I don't think she cared much what I did if I relieved you of that baby," was his reply. "She said if I was any sort of a guardian of the poor perhaps I could put it in a home."
"But you are not," I said.
"No," he assented.
"And you shouldn't have her if you were," I added.
"I don't want the child," Deacon Daniel returned. "I shouldn't know what to do with it."
Then we both laughed, and I got him seated in Father's chair, and we had a long chat over the whole situation. I had not realized how much I wanted to talk matters over with somebody. Aunt Naomi is out of the question, because she is so fond of telling things;Miss Charlotte would be better, but she is not very worldly wise; and if I may tell the truth, I wanted to talk with a man. The advice of women is wise often, and yet more often it is comforting; but it has somehow not the conclusiveness of the decision of a sensible man. At least that is the way I felt to-night, though in many matters I should never think of trusting to a man's judgment.
"I think I shall adopt baby legally," I said. "Then nobody could take her away or bother me about her."
He asked me if her father would agree, and I said that I was sure he would.
"It would make her your heir if you died without a will," he commented.
I said that nothing was more easy than to make a will, and of course I should mean to provide for her.
"You are not afraid of wills, then?" Deacon Daniel observed, looking at me curiously. "So many folks can't bear the idea of making one."
"Very likely it's partly because I am a lawyer's daughter," I said; "but in any case making a will wouldn't have any more terrors for me than writing a check. But then I never had any fear of death anyway."
Deacon Daniel regarded me yet more intently, clasping his great white hands over his knee.
"I never can quite make you out, Miss Ruth," he said after a little. "You haven't any belief in a hereafter that I know of, but you seem to have no trouble about it."
I asked him why I should have, and he answered that most people do.
"Perhaps that is because they feel a responsibility about the future that I don't," I returned. "I don'tthink I can alter what is to come after death, and I don't see what possible good I can do by fretting about it. Father brought me up, you know, to feel that I had all I could attend to in making the best I can of this life, without wasting my strength in speculating about another. In any case I can't see why I should be any more afraid of death than I am of sleep. I understand one as well as I do the other."
He looked at the rug thoughtfully a moment, and then, as if he declined to be drawn into an argument, he came back to the original subject of our talk.
"Would Tom Webbe want to have anything to do with the child?" he asked.
"I think he would rather forget she is in the world," I told him. "By and by he may be fond of her, but now he tries not to think of her at all. I want to make her so attractive and lovely he can't help caring for her."
"But then she will care for him," the Deacon commented.
"Why, of course she will. That is what I hope. Then she might influence him, and help him."
"You are willing to share her with her father even if you do adopt her?" he asked.
I did not understand his manner, but I told him I did not think I had any right to deprive her of her father's affection or him of hers if I adopted her a dozen times over.
The Deacon made no answer. His face was graver, and for some time we sat without further word.
"Tom Webbe isn't as bad as he seems, Miss Ruth," Deacon Daniel said at length. "If you had to live with his mother, I guess you'd be ready to excuse him for 'most anything. His father never hadthe spunk to say boo to a goose, and Mrs. Webbe has bullied him from the time we were boys. He's as good as a man can be, but it's a pity he don't carry out Paul's idea of being ruler in his own house."
"Paul was a bachelor like you, Deacon Daniel," I answered, rather saucily; "and neither of you knows anything about it."
He grinned, but only added that Tom had been nagged into most of his wildness.
"I'm not excusing him," he went on, apparently afraid that he should seem to be condoning iniquity; "but there's a good deal to be said for him. Aunt Naomi says he ought to be driven out of decent society, but Tom Webbe never did a mean thing in his life."
I was rather surprised to hear this defense from Deacon Richards, but I certainly agreed with him. Tom's sin makes me cringe; but I realize that I'm not capable of judging him, and he certainly has a good deal of excuse for whatever evil he has fallen into.
June 2. One thing more which Deacon Richards said has made me think a good deal. He asked me what Tom had meant to do about the child if its mother lived. I told him Julia had been willing for me to have baby in any case. He thought in silence a moment.
"I don't believe," he said, "Tom ever meant to live with that woman. He must have married her to clear his conscience."
"He married her so the child should not be disgraced," I answered.
Deacon Daniel looked at me with those great keen eyes glowing beneath his shaggy white brows.
"Then he went pretty far toward clearing his record," was his comment. "There are not many men would have tied themselves to such a wife for the sake of a child."
This was not very orthodox, perhaps, but a good heart will get the better of orthodoxy now and then. It has set me to thinking about Tom and his wife in a way which had not occurred to me. I wonder if it is true that he did not mean to live with her. I remember now that he said he would never see Julia again, but at the time this meant nothing to me. If he had thought of making a home, he would naturally expect to have his child, but after all I doubt if at that time he considered anything except the good of baby. He did not love her; he had not even looked at her; but he tried to do her right as far as he could. He could give her an honest name in the eyes of the world, but he must have known that he could not make a home with Julia where the surroundings would be good for a child. This must have been what he considered for the moment. Yet Tom is one who thinks out things, and he may have thought out the future of the mother too.
When I look back I wonder how it was I consented so quickly to take Tomine. I wanted to help Tom, and I wanted him to be able to decide without being forced by any consideration of baby. I do not know whether he ought to have married Julia for her own sake. If she had lived, I am afraid I should have been tempted to think he had better not have bound himself to her; and yet I realize that I should have been disappointed in him if he had decided not to do it. I doubt if I could have got rid entirely of the feeling that somehow he would havebeen cowardly. I wonder if he had any notion of my feeling? He came out of the trial nobly, at least, and I honor him with all my heart for that.
June 5. Aunt Naomi has now a theme exactly to her taste in the growing extravagance of George's wife. Mrs. Weston has certainly elaborated her style of dress a good deal, a thing which is the more noticeable from the fact that in Tuskamuck we are on the whole so little given to gorgeous raiment. I remember that when I called I thought her rather overdressed. To-day Aunt Naomi talked for half an hour with the greatest apparent enjoyment about the fine gowns and expensive jewelry with which the bride is astonishing the town. I am afraid it does not take much to set us talking. I tried half a dozen times to-day to change the subject, but my efforts were wasted. Aunt Naomi was not to be diverted from a theme so congenial. I reminded her that any bride was expected to display her finery—this is part of the established formality with which marriage is attended.
"That's all very well," she retorted with a sniff; "folks want to see the wedding outfit. This is finery George Weston has had to pay for himself."
"I don't see how anybody can know that," I told her; and I added that it did not seem to me to be the town's business if it were true.
"She tells everybody he gave her the jewelry," Aunt Naomi responded; "and the dresses she's had made since she was married. She hadn't anything herself. The Watsons say she was real poor."
"The marriage was so sudden," I said, "that very likely she hadn't time to get her wedding outfit. Atany rate, Aunt Naomi, I don't see what you and I have to do with her clothes."
The dear old gossip went on wagging her foot and smiling with evident delight.
"It's the business of the neighbors that she's sure to ruin her husband if she keeps on with her extravagance, isn't it? Besides, she wears her clothes to have them talked about. She talks about them herself."
"A few dresses won't ruin her husband," I protested.
"She has one hired girl now, and she's talking of a second," Aunt Naomi went on, unshaken. "Did you ever hear of such foolishness?"
I reminded her that I had two maids myself.
"Oh, you," she returned; "that's different. I hope you don't put her on a level with real folks, do you?"
I tried to treat the whole matter as if it were of no consequence, and I did stop the talk here; but secretly I am troubled. George has very little aside from what he earns in his profession, and he might easily run behind if his wife is really extravagant. He needs a woman to help him save.
June 6. Tomine delighted the family to-day by her wonderful precocity in following with her eyes the flight of a blue-bottle fly that buzzed about the nursery. Such intelligence in one so young is held by us women to betoken the most extraordinary promise. I communicated the important event to Mr. Saychase, who came to call, and he could neither take it gravely nor laugh at the absurdity of our noticing so slight a thing. He seemed to be trying tofind out how I wished him to look at it; and as I was divided between laughter and secret pride in baby he could not get a sure clue. How dull the man is; but no doubt he is good. When piety and stupidity are united, it is unfortunate that they should be made prominent by being set high in spiritual places.
June 9. I have a good deal of sympathy with Cain's question when he asked the Lord if he were his brother's keeper. Of course his crime turned the question in his case into a mere pitiful excuse, but Cain was at least clever enough to take advantage of a principle which must appeal to everybody. We cannot be responsible for others when we have neither authority nor control over them. It is one of the hardest forms of duty, it seems to me, when we feel that we ought to do our best, yet are practically sure that in the end we can effect little or nothing. What can I do to influence George's wife? Somehow we seem to have no common ground to meet on. Father used to say that people who do not speak the same ethical language cannot communicate moral ideas to each other. This is rather a high-sounding way of saying that Mrs. Weston and I cannot understand each other when anything of real importance comes up. It is of course as much my fault as hers, but I really do not know how to help or change it. I suppose there is a certain arrogance and self-righteousness in my feeling that I could direct her, but I am certainly older and I believe I am wiser. Yet I am not her keeper, and if to feel that I am not involves me in the cowardice of Cain, I cannot help it. I am ready to do anything I can do, but what is there?
June 11. Still it is George's wife. I dare say a good deal of talk has been circulating, and I have not heard it. I have been so occupied with graver matters ever since George was married that I have seen few people, and have paid little heed to the village talk. To-day old lady Andrews said her say. She began by reminding me of the conversation we had had in regard to calling on the bride.
"I am glad we did it, Ruth," she went on. "It puts us in the right whatever happens; but she will not do. I shall never ask her to my house."
I could say nothing. I knew she was right, but I was so sorry for George.
"She is vulgar, Ruth," the sweet old voice went on. "She called a second time on me yesterday, and I've been only once to see her. She said a good deal about it's being the duty of us—she said 'us,' my dear,—to wake up this sleepy old place. I told her that, personally, since she was good enough to include me with herself, I preferred the town as it had been."
I fairly laughed out at the idea of old lady Andrews' delivering this with well-bred sweetness, and I wondered how far Mrs. Weston perceived the sarcasm.
"Did she understand?" I asked.
"About half, I think, my dear. She saw she had made a mistake, but I doubt if she quite knew what it was. She was uneasy, and said she thought those who had a chance ought to make things more lively."
I asked if Mrs. Weston gave any definite idea how this liveliness was to be secured.
"Not very clearly," was the answer. "She said something about hoping soon to have a larger houseso she could entertain properly. Her dress was dreadfully showy, according to my old-fashioned notions. I am afraid we are too slow for her, my dear. She will have to make a more modern society for herself."
And so the social doom of George's wife is written, as far as I can see. I can if I choose ask people to meet her, but that will do her little good when they have looked her over and given her up. They will come to my house to meet anybody I select, but they will not invite her in their turn. It is a pity social distinctions should count for so much; but in Tuskamuck they certainly do.
June 12. Mr. Saychase called again this afternoon. He is so thin and so pale that it is always my inclination to have Hannah bring him something to eat at once. To-day he had an especially nervous air, and I tried in vain to set him at his ease. I fear he may have taken it into his head to try to bring me into the church. He did not, it is true, say anything directly about religion, but he had an air of having something very important in reserve which he was not yet ready to speak of. He talked about the church work as if he expected me to be interested. He would not have come so soon again if he did not have some particular object.
It is a pity anything so noble as religion should so often have weak men to represent it. What is good in religion they do not fairly stand for, and what is undesirable they somehow make more evident. If superstition is to be a help, it must appeal to the best feelings, and a weak priest touches only the weaker side of character. One is not able to receive him onhis merits as a man, but has to excuse him in the name of his devotion to religion.
Still, Mr. Saychase is a good man, and he means well with whatever strength of mind nature endowed him.
June 13. Tom came to-day to see baby,—not that he paid much attention to her when he saw her. It amuses me to find how jealous I am getting for Tomine, and anxious she shall be treated with deference. I see myself rapidly growing into a hen-with-one-chicken attitude of mind, but I do not know how it is to be helped. I exhibited baby this afternoon with as much pride and as much desire that she should be admired as if she had been my veriest own, so it was no wonder that Tom laughed at me.
He was very grave when he came, but little by little the fun-loving sparkle came into his eyes and a smile grew on his face.
"You'd make a first rate saleswoman, Ruth," he said, "if you could show off goods as well as you do babies."
I suppose I can never meet Tom again with the easy freedom we used to feel, especially with baby to remind us; but we have been good friends so long that it is a great comfort to feel something of the old comradeship to be still possible.
Tom was so awkward about baby, so unwilling to touch her, that I offered to put her into his arms. Then he suddenly grew brave.
"Don't, Ruth," he said. "It hurts you that I can't care for the baby, but I can't. Perhaps I shall sometime."
I took Thomasine away without a word, and gaveher to Rosa in the nursery. When I came back to the parlor Tom was in his favorite position before the window. He wheeled round suddenly when he heard me.
"You are not angry, Ruth?" he asked.
"No, Tom," I answered; "only sorry."
I sat down and took up my sewing, while he walked about the room. He stopped in front of me after a moment.
"I wanted to tell you, Ruth," he said, "that I am not going back to New York."
I looked at him questioningly, and waited.
"I had really a good opening there," he went on; "but I thought I ought not to take it."
I asked him why.
"I'll be hanged if I quite know," he responded explosively. "I suppose it's part obstinacy that makes me too stubborn to run away from disgrace, and partly it's father. This thing has broken him terribly. I'm going to stay and help him out."
I know how Tom hates farming, and I held out my hand to him and said so.
"I hate everything," he returned desperately; "but it wouldn't be square to leave him now when he's so cut up on my account."
We were both of us, I am sure, too moved to have much talk, and Tom did not stay long. He went off rather abruptly, with hardly a good-by; but I think I understood. I am glad he has the pluck to stand by poor old Deacon Daniel; but he must learn to be fond of baby. That will be a comfort to him.
June 15. George seems to me to be almost beside himself. I cannot comprehend what his wife is doingto him. She has apparently already come to realize that she is not succeeding in Tuskamuck, and is determined to conquer by display and showy ways of living. She cannot know us very well if she supposes that such means will do here.
Her latest move I find it hard to forgive her. I do not understand how George can have done it, no matter how much she urged him; but I am of course profoundly ignorant how such a woman controls a man. I am afraid one thing which made him attractive to me was that he was so willing to be influenced, but we see a man in a light entirely different when it is another woman who shapes his life. What once seemed a fine compliance takes on a strange appearance of weakness when we are no longer the moving force; but I think I do myself no more than justice when I feel that at least I tried always to influence George for his own good.
Poor Miss Charlotte came over directly after breakfast this morning to tell me. She had been brooding over it half the night, poor soul, and her eyes looked actually withered with crying and lack of sleep.
"I know I exaggerate it," she kept saying, "and of course he didn't mean to insult me; but to think anybody dared to ask me to sell the house, the Kendall house that our family has lived in for four generations! It would have killed my father if he had known I should live to come to this!"
I tried to soothe her, and to make her believe that in offering to buy her house George had thought only of how much he admired it, and not at all of her feelings, which he could not understand.
"Of course he could not understand my feelings," Miss Charlotte said, with a bitterness which I am surewas unconscious. "He never had a family, and I ought to remember that."
She grew somewhat more calm as she unburdened her heart. She told me George had praised the place, and said how much he had always liked it. He confessed that it was his wife who first suggested the purchase: she wanted a house where she could entertain and which would be of more importance than the one in which she lived.
"He said," Miss Charlotte went on with a strange mingling of pride and sorrow, "his wife felt that the house in itself would give any family social standing. I don't know how pleased his wife would be if she knew he told me, but he said it. He told me she meant to have repairs and improvements. She must feel as if she owned it already. He said she had an iron dog stored somewhere that she meant to put on the lawn. Think of it, Ruth, an iron dog on our old lawn!"
Then suddenly all the sorrow of her lot seemed to overwhelm her at once, and she broke down completely. She sobbed so unrestrainedly and with so complete an abandonment of herself to her grief that I cried with her, even while I was trying to stop her tears.
"It isn't just George Weston's coming to ask me to sell the place," she said; "it is all of it: it's my being so poor I can't keep up the name, and the family's ending with me, and none of my kin even to bury me. It's all of the hurts I've got from life, Ruth; and it's growing so old I've no strength any longer to bear them. Oh, it's having to keep on living when I want to be dead!"
I threw my arms about her, and kissed the tearsfrom her wrinkled cheeks, though there were about as many on my own.
"Don't," I begged her, "don't, dear Miss Charlotte. You break my heart! We are all of us your kin, and you know we love you dearly."
She returned my embrace convulsively, and tried to check her sobbing.
"I know it's cowardly," she got out brokenly. "It's cowardly and wicked. I never broke down so before. I won't, Ruth dear. Just give me a little time."
Dear Miss Charlotte! I made her stay with me all day; and indeed she was in no condition to do anything else. I got her to take a nap in the afternoon, and when she went home she was once more her own brave self. She said good-night with one of her clumsy joking speeches.
"Good-by, my dear," she said; "the next time I come I'll try not to be so much like the waterworks girl that had a creek in her back and a cataract in each eye."
She is always facetious when she does not quite trust herself to be serious. And I, who do not dare to trust myself to think about George and his wife, had better stop writing.
June 17. Deacon Richards presented himself at twilight, and found me sitting alone out on the doorsteps. I watched his tall figure coming up the driveway, bent with age a little, but still massive and vigorous; and somehow by the time he was near enough to speak, I felt that I had caught his mood. He smiled broadly as he greeted me.
"Where's the baby?" he demanded. "I supposed I should find you giving it its supper."
"There isn't any 'it' in this house," was my retort; "and as for baby's supper, you are just as ignorant as a man always is. Any woman would know that babies are put to bed long before this."
He grinned down upon me from his height.
"How should I know what time it went to bed?" he asked, with a laugh in his voice. "I never raised a baby. I've come to talk about it, though."
"Look here, Deacon Daniel," I cried out, with affected indignation, "I will not have my baby called 'it,' as if she were a stick or a stock!"
He laughed outright at this; then at my invitation sat down beside me. We were silent for a time, looking at the color fading in the west, and the single star swimming out of the purple as the sky changed into gray. The frogs were working at their music with all the persistence of a child strumming five-finger exercises, but their noise only made the evening more peaceful.
"How restful it is," I said to him at last; "it almost makes one feel there can never be any fretting again about anything."
Deacon Daniel did not answer for a moment, then he said with the solemnity of one who seldom puts sentiment into words,—
"It is like the Twenty-third Psalm."
I simply assented, and then we were silent again, until at last he moved as if he were waking himself, and sighed. I always wonder whether somewhere in the past Deacon Richards has had his romance, and if so what it may have been. If he has, a night like this might well bring it up to his memory. I am glad if it comes to him with the peace of a psalm.
"Have you thought, Miss Ruth," the Deacon askedat length in the growing dark, "what a responsibility you are taking upon yourself in having that baby?"
It was like the dear old man to have considered me and to look at the moral side of the question. He wanted to help me, I could see; and of course he cannot understand how entirely religious one may be without theology. I told him I had thought of it very seriously; and it seemed to me sometimes that it was more than I was equal to. But I added that I could not help thinking I could do better by baby than Mrs. Webbe.
"Mrs. Webbe is no sort of a woman to bring up a child," he agreed. Then he added, with a shrewdness that surprised me a little: "Babies have got to be given baby-treatment as well as baby-food."
"Of course they have," was my reply. "Babies have a right to love as well as to milk, and poor little Thomasine would get very little from her grandmother."
Deacon Daniel gave a contemptuous snort.
"That woman couldn't really love anything," he declared; "or if she did she'd show it by being hateful."
I said she certainly loved Tom.
"Yes," he retorted; "and she's nagged him to death. For my part I can't more than half blame Tom Webbe as I ought to, when I think of his having had his mother to thorn him everlastingly."
"Then you do think it's better for baby to be with me than with her grandmother?" I asked him.
"It's a hundred times better, of course; but I wondered if you'd thought of the responsibility of its—of her religious instruction."
We had come to the true kernel of the Deacon'serrand. I really believe that in his mind was more concern for me than for baby. He is always unhappy that I am not in the fold of the church; and I fancy that more or less consciously he was making of Thomasine an excuse for an attempt to reach me. It is not difficult to understand his feeling. Mother used to affirm that believers are anxious to proselyte because they cannot bear to have anybody refuse to acknowledge that they are right. This is not, I am sure, the whole of it. Of course no human being likes to be thought wrong, especially on a thing which, like religion, cannot be proved; but there is a good deal of genuine love in the attempt of a man like Deacon Daniel to convert an unbeliever. He is really grieved for me, and I would do anything short of actual dishonesty to make him suppose that I believed as he would have me. I should so like him to be happy about my eternal welfare. When the future does not in the least trouble me, it seems such a pity that he should be disturbed.
I told him to-night I should not give baby what he would call religious instruction, but I should never interfere if others should teach her, if they made what is good attractive.
"But you would tell her that religion isn't true," he objected.
"Oh, no;" I answered. "I should have to be honest, and tell her if she asked that I don't believe we know anything about another life; but of course as far as living in this one goes I shouldn't disagree with religion."
He tried to argue with me, but I entirely refused to be led on.
"Deacon Daniel," I told him, "I know it is allin your kindness for me that you would talk, but I refuse to have this beautiful summer evening wasted on theology. You couldn't convince me, and I don't in the least care about convincing you. I am entirely content that you should believe your way, and I am entirely satisfied with mine. Now I want to talk with you about our having a reading-room next winter."
So I got him to another subject, and what is better I think I really interested him in my scheme of opening a free library. If we can once get that to working it will be a great help to the young men and boys. "The time seems to have come in human development," I remember Father's saying not long before he died, "when men must be controlled by the broadening instead of by the narrowing of their minds."
June 18. I have been considering why it is that I have had so much said to me this spring about religion. People have not been in the habit of talking to me about it much. They have come to let me go my own way. I suppose the fact of Mother's death has brought home to them that I do not think in their way. How a consistent and narrow man can look at the situation I have had a painful illustration in Mr. Thurston. If Kathie had not pushed him into a corner by asking him about Mother, I doubt if he could have gone to the length he did; but after all any really consistent believer must take the view that I am doomed to eternal perdition. I am convinced that few really do believe anything of the sort, but they think that they do, and so baby and I have been a centre of religious interest.
Another phase of this interest has shown itself inMr. Saychase's desire to baptize Thomasine. I wonder if I had better put my preferences in my pocket, and let the thing be done. It offends my sense of right that a human being should have solemn vows made for her before she can have any notions of what all this means; but if one looks at the whole as simply promises on the part of adults that they will try to have the child believe certain things and follow certain good ways of living, there is no great harm in it. I suppose Deacon Webbe and his wife would be pleased. I will let Tom decide the matter.
June 21. I met Tom in the street to-day, and he absolutely refuses to have baby christened.
"I'll have no mummeries over any child of mine," he declared. "I've had enough of that humbug to last me a lifetime."
I could not help saying I wished he were not so bitter.
"I can't help it, Ruth," was his retort. "I am bitter. I've been banged over the head with religion ever since I was born, and told that I was 'a child of the covenant' till I hate the very thought of the whole business. Whatever you do, don't give anybody the right to twit Thomasine with being 'a child of the covenant.' She has enough to bear in being the child of her parents."
"Don't, Tom," I begged him. "You hurt me."
Without thinking what I did I put my hand on his arm. He brushed it lightly with his fingers, looking at it in a way that almost brought tears to my eyes. I took it off quickly, but I could not face him, and I got away at once. Poor Tom! He is so lonely and so faithful. I am so sorry that he will keep on caringfor me like that. No woman is really good enough not to tremble at the thought of absorbing the devotion of a strong man; and it seems wicked that I should not love Tom.
June 25. The rose I transplanted to Mother's grave is really, I believe, going to bloom this very summer. I am glad the blossoms on Father's should have an echo on hers.
June 29. Babies and diaries do not seem to go very well together. There is no tangible reason why I should not write after the small person is asleep, for that is the time I have generally taken; but the fact is I sit working upon some of Tomine's tiny belongings, or now and then sit in the dark and think about her. My journal has been a good friend, but I am afraid its nose is out of joint. Baby has taken its place. I begin to see I made this book a sort of safety-valve for poor spirits and general restlessness. Now I have this sweet human interest in my life I do not need to resort to pen and ink for companionship. The dear little rosy image of Thomasine is with me all the time I seem to be sitting alone.
June 30. Last night I felt as if I was done with relieving my mind by writing in an unresponsive journal; to-night I feel as if I must have just this outlet to my feelings. Last night I thought of baby; to-night I am troubled about her father.
I saw Tom this afternoon at work in the hayfield, looking so brown and so handsome that it was a pleasure to see him. He had the look of a man who finds work just the remedy for heart-soreness, and I washappy in thinking he was getting into tune with wholesome life. I was so pleased that I took the footpath across the field as a mere excuse to speak to him, and I thought he would have been glad to see me. I came almost up to him before he would notice me, although I think he must have seen me long before. He took off his hat as I came close to him, and wiped his forehead.
"Tom," I said at once, "I came this way just to say how glad I am to see you look as if you were getting contented with your work. You were working with such a will."
I do not know that it was a tactful speech, but I was entirely unprepared for the shadow which came over his face.
"I was trying to get so completely tired out that I should sleep like a log to-night," he answered.
Before anything else could be said Deacon Daniel came up, and the talk for the rest was of the weather, and the hay, and nothings. I came away as sad as I had before been pleased. I can understand that Tom is sore in his heart. He is dominant, and his life is made up of things which he hates; he is ambitious, and he is fond of pleasure. He has no pleasure, and he can see nothing before him but staying on with his father. It is true enough that it is his own fault. He has never been willing to stick to work, and the keenest of his regrets must be about his own ill-doing. He is so generous, however, and so manly and kind that I cannot bear to see him grow hard and sad and bitter. Yet what can I do to help it? Certainly this is another case for asking if I am my brother's keeper. I am afraid that I was resigned not to be the keeper of Mrs. Weston, but with Tom it is different. Poor Tom!
July 2. Thomasine is legally my daughter. It gives me an odd feeling to find myself really a parent. George and Tom met here this forenoon with the papers, and all necessary formalities were gone through with. It was not a comfortable time for any of us, I fancy; and I must own that George acted strangely. He was out of spirits, and was but barely civil to Tom. He has never liked the idea of my having Thomasine, and has tried two or three times to persuade me to give her up. I have refused to discuss the question with him, because it was really settled already. To-day he came before Tom, and made one more protest.
"You can keep the child if you are so determined," he said, "though why you should want to I can't conceive; but why need you adopt it? It hasn't any claim on you."
I told him that she had the claim that I loved her dearly. He looked at me with an expression more unkind than I had ever seen in his face.
"How much is it for her father's sake?" he burst out.
The words, offensive as they were, were less so than the manner.
"A good deal," I answered him soberly. "I have been his friend from the time we were both children."
He moved in his chair uneasily.
"Look here, Ruth," he said; "you've no occasion to be offended because I hint at what everybody else will say."
I asked what that was.
"You are angry," was his response. "When you put on your grand air it is no use to argue with you; but I've made up my mind to be plain. Everybody says you took the baby because you are fond of him."
I could feel myself stiffening in manner with every word, but I could not help it. I had certainly a right to be offended; but I tried to speak as naturally as I could.
"I don't know, George," was my reply, "what business it is of everybody's; and if it were, why should I not be fond of Tom?"
He flushed and scowled, and got up from his seat.
"Oh, if you take it that way," he answered, "of course there's nothing more for me to say."
I was hurt and angry, but before anything more could be said Rosa showed Tom in. He said good-morning to George stiffly, but Tom is always instinctively polite, I think. George had toward him an air plainly unfriendly. I do not understand why George should feel as he does about my adopting Thomasine, but in any case he has no right to behave as he did. I felt between the two men as if I were hardly able to keep the peace, and as if on the slightest provocation, George would fly out. It was absurd, of course, but the air seemed to be full of unfriendliness.
"I suppose we need not be very long over business," I said, trying with desperation to speak brightly. "I've been over the papers, Tom, and I can assure you they are all right. I'm something of a lawyer, you know."
George interposed, as stiffly as possible, that he must urge me to have the instrument read aloud, in order that I might realize what I was doing. I assured him I knew perfectly what the paper was, even if it were called an instrument.
"Ruth is entirely right," Tom put in emphatically. "There is not the slightest need of dragging things out."
"I can understand that you naturally would not want any delay," George retorted sharply.
Tom turned and looked at him with an expression which made George change color, but before anything worse could be said, I hurried to ask Tom to ring for Rosa to act as a witness. I looked in my turn at George, and I think he understood how indignant I was.
"It's outrageous for you to burden yourself with his brat," George muttered under his breath as Tom went across the room to the bell-rope.
"You forget that you are speaking of my daughter," I answered him, with the most lofty air I could manage to assume.
He turned on his heel with an angry exclamation, and no more objections were made. George never showed me this unpleasant side of his character before in all the years I have known him. For the moment he behaved like a cad, like nothing else than a cad. Something very serious must have been troubling him. He must have been completely unstrung before he could be so disagreeable.
Rosa came in, and the signing was done. After the business was finished George lingered as if he wished to speak with me. Very likely he wished to apologize, but my nerves were not in tune for more talk withhim, and in any case it was better to ignore all that had been unpleasant.
"You have no more business, have you, George?" I asked him directly. "Tom of course will want to see the daughter he has given away. I didn't let him see her first for fear he'd refuse to part with her."
George had no excuse for staying after that, and he was just leaving the room when Rosa reappeared with Tomine. The darling looked like a cherub, and was in a mood truly angelic. George scowled at her as if the dear little thing had done him some wrong, and hurried away. I do not understand how he could resist my darling, or why he should feel so about her. It is, I suppose, friendship for me; but he should realize a little what a blessing baby is to my lonely life.
Tom stood silent when Rosa took Thomasine up to him. He did not offer to touch the tiny pink face, and I could fancy how many thoughts must go through his mind as he looked. While he might not regret the dead woman, indeed, while he could hardly be other than glad that Julia was not alive, he must have some feeling about her which goes very deep. I should think any man who was not wholly hard must have some tenderness toward the mother of his child, no matter who or what she was. It moves even me, to think of such a feeling; and I could not look at Tom as he stood there with the living child to remind him of the dead mother.
It seemed a long time that he looked at baby, and we were all as quiet as if we had been at prayer. Then Tom of his own accord kissed Tomine. He has never done it before except as I have asked him. He came over to me and held out his hand.
"I must go back to haying," he said. Then he held my hand a minute, and looked into my eyes. "Make her as much like yourself as you can, Ruth," he added; "and God bless you."
The tears came into my eyes at his tone, and blinded me. Before I could see clearly, he was gone. I hope he understood that I appreciated the generosity of his words.
July 3. I am troubled by the thought of yesterday. George went away so evidently out of sympathy with what I had done, and very likely thinking I was unfriendly, that it seems almost as if I had really been unkind. I must do something to show him that I am the same as ever. Perhaps the best thing will be to have his wife to tea. My mourning has prevented my doing anything for them, and secretly, I am ashamed to say, this has been a relief. I can ask them quietly, however, without other guests.
July 8. I feel a little as if I had been shaken up by an earthquake, but I am apparently all here and unhurt. Day before yesterday Cousin Mehitable descended upon me in the wake of her usual telegram, determined to bear me away to Europe, despite, as she said, all the babies that ever were born. She had arranged my passage, fixed the date, engaged state-rooms, and cabled for a courier-maid to meet us at Southampton; and now I had, she insisted, broken up all her arrangements.
"It's completely ungrateful, Ruth," she declared. "Here I have been slaving to have everything ready so the trip would go smoothly for you. I've done absolutely every earthly thing that I could think of,and now you won't go. You've no right to back out. It's treating me in a way I never was treated in my whole life. It's simply outrageous."
I attempted to remind her that she had been told of my decision to stay at home long before she had made any of her arrangements; but she refused to listen.
"I could bear it better," she went on, "if you had any decent excuse; but it's nothing but that baby. I must say I think it's a pretty severe reflection on me when you throw me over for any stray baby that happens to turn up."
I tried again to put in a protest, but the tide of Cousin Mehitable's indignation is not easily stemmed.
"To think of your turning Cousin Horace's house into a foundling hospital!" she exclaimed. "Why don't you put up a sign? Twenty babies wouldn't be any worse than one, and you'd be able to make a martyr of yourself to some purpose. Oh, I've no patience with you!"
I laughed, and assured her that there was no sort of doubt of the truth of her last statement; so then she changed her tone and begged me not to be so obstinate.
Of course I could not yield, for I cannot desert baby; and in the end Cousin Mehitable was forced to give me up as incorrigible. Then she declared I should not triumph over her, and she would have me know that there were two people ready and just dying to take my place. I knew she could easily find somebody.
The awkward thing about this visit was that Cousin Mehitable should be here just when I had asked the Westons to tea. I always have a late dinner for Cousin Mehitable, although Hannah regards such aperversion of the usual order of meals as little less than immoral; and so George and his wife found a more ceremonious repast than I had intended. I should have liked better to have things in their usual order, for I feared lest Mrs. Weston might not be entirely at her ease. I confess I had not supposed she might think I was endeavoring to impress her with my style of living until she let it out so plainly that I could not by any possibility mistake her meaning. She evidently wished me to know that she saw through my device; and of course I made no explanations.
It was an uncomfortable meal. Cousin Mehitable refused to be conciliating. She examined the bride through her lorgnette, and I could see that Mrs. Weston was angered while she was apparently fascinated. George was taciturn, and I could not make things go smoothly, though I tried with all my might. By the time the guests went, I felt that my nerves were fiddlestrings.
"Well," Cousin Mehitable pronounced, as soon as the door had closed behind them, "of all the dowdy frumps I ever saw, she is the worst. I never saw anybody so overdressed."
"She was overdressed," I assented; "but you behaved horribly. You frightened her into complete shyness."
"Shyness! Humph!" was her response. "She has no more shyness than a brass monkey. That's vulgar, of course, Ruth. I meant it to be to match the subject."
I put in a weak defense of Mrs. Weston, although I honestly do find her a most unsatisfactory person. She is self-conscious, and somehow she does not seem to me to be very frank. Very likely, moreover, shehad been disconcerted by the too evident snubs of my unmanageable cousin.
"If I snubbed her," was the uncompromising rejoinder with which a suggestion of this sort was met, "I'm sure I am not ashamed of it. To think of her saying that you evidently wanted to show Tuskamuck how to do things in style! Does she think any person with style would let her into the house?"
I thanked her for the compliment to me.
"Oh, bother!" she retorted. "You are only a goose, with no sense at all. To think you once thought of marrying that country booby yourself!"
I was too much hurt to reply, and probably my face showed my feeling, for Cousin Mehitable burst into a laugh.
"You needn't look so grumpy about it," she cried. "All's well that ends well. You're safely out of that, thank heaven!"
I felt that loyalty to George required that I should protest, but she interrupted me.
"Don't be a humbug, Ruth," she said; "and for pity's sake don't be such a fool as to try to humbug yourself. You're not a sentimental schoolgirl to moon after a man, especially when he's shown what his taste is by taking up with such a horror as Mrs. Weston."
"I am fond of him," I asserted, stubbornly enough.
She seized me by the shoulders, and looked with her quick black eyes into mine so that I felt as if she could see down to my very toes.
"Can you look me in the face, Ruth Privet, and tell me you really care for a man who could marry that ignorant, vulgar, dowdy woman just for her pretty face? Can you fool yourself into thinking that you haven'thad a lucky escape from a man that's in every way your inferior? You know you have! Why, can you honestly think now for a moment of marrying him without feeling your backbone all gooseflesh?"
Fortunately she did not insist upon my answering her, but shook me and let me go. I doubt if I could have borne to have her press her questions. I was suddenly conscious that George has changed or that my idea of him has altered; and that if he were still single, I could not marry him under any circumstances.
Cousin Mehitable went home this morning, but her talk has been in my mind all day.
It comes over me that I have lost more than George. His loving another did not deprive me of the power or the right to love him, and his marriage simply set him away from my life. In some other life, if there be one, I might have always been sure he would come back to me. I cannot help knowing I fed his higher nature, and I helped him to grow, while his wife appeals to something lower, even if it is more natural and human. I felt that in some other possible existence he would see more clearly, and she would no longer satisfy him. Now I begin to feel that I have lost more than I knew. I have lost not only him, but I have lost—no, I cannot have lost my love for him. It is only that to-night I am foolish. It is rainy, dreary, hopeless; and seeing Mrs. Weston through Cousin Mehitable's eyes has put things all askew.
Yet why not put it down fearlessly, since I have begun? If I am to write at all it should be the truth. I am beginning to see that the man I loved was not George Weston so much as a creature I conjured up in his image. I see him now in a colder,a more sane light, and I find that I am not looking at the man who filled my heart and thought. He has somehow changed. This would be a comfort to some, I suppose. I see now how Mother felt about him. She never thought him what he seemed to me, and she always believed that sooner or later I should be disappointed in him. I should not have been disappointed if I had married him—I think! Yet now I see how he is under the influence of his wife—But no, it is not her influence only; I see him now, I fear, as he is when he is free to act his true self, unmoved by the desire to be what I would have had him. He was influenced by me. I knew it from the very first, and I see with shame how proud of it I was. Yet it gave me a chance to help him, to grow with him, to feel that we were together developing and advancing. Oh, dear, how cold and superior, and conceited it sounds now it is on paper! It truly was not that I thought I was above him; but it is surely the part of a woman to inspire her lover and to grow into something better with him. Now it seems as if whatever George did he did for me, and not because of any inner love for growth. He appears now less worthy by just so much as what he was seems to me higher than what he is. I have lost what he was. It is cruel that I cannot find the George I cared for. It is hard to believe he existed only in my mind.
July 9. I have been reading over what I wrote last night. It troubles me, and it has a most self-righteous flavor; but I cannot see that it is not true. It troubles me because it is true. I remember that I wondered when George tired of me if the same would havecome about if we had married. Am I so changeable that if I had been his wife I should have tried him by my severe standards, and then judged him unworthy? I begin to think the Pharisees were modest and self-distrustful as compared to self-righteous me. It is terribly puzzling. If I were his wife I should surely feel that my highest duty was to help him, to bring out whatever is best in him. I think I should have been too absorbed in this ever to have discovered that I was idealizing him. Now I am far enough away from him to see him clearly. The worse part of him has come out; and very likely I am not above a weak feminine jealousy which makes me incapable of doing him justice. I believe if I had been his wife I might have kept him—Yet he was already tired of my influence!
Such speculations are pretty unprofitable work. The only thing to keep in mind now is that he is my friend, and that it is for me to do still whatever I can for him. I confess that Cousin Mehitable is right. I am no longer sorry I did not marry George, but I still care for him sincerely, and mean to serve him in every way possible.
July 12. Miss Charlotte came in this morning while I was playing with Tomine, and hailed me as a mother in Israel. She is a great admirer of baby, but she declines to touch her.
"I'm too big and too rough," she says. "I know I should drop her or break her, or forget she isn't a plant, and go to snipping her with my pruning-shears. You'd better keep her. You've the motherly way with you."
It must please any woman to be told that she hasthe motherly way, and just now I certainly need it. Miss Charlotte came to talk with me about Kathie. The poor child has been growing more and more morbid all summer, and I do not see what is to be done for her. I have tried to comfort and help her, but as her troubles are religious I am all but helpless.
Miss Charlotte went over the Cove yesterday on one of her roving tramps in the woods,—"bushwhacking," as she calls it,—and found Kathie roaming about in Elder's Cut-down, wringing her hands and crying aloud like a mad thing.
"You can't tell what a start it gave me, Ruth," she said. "I heard her, and I thought of wild beasts and wild Indians, and all sorts of horrors. Then when I saw her, I didn't know her at first. Her hair was all tousled up, and she wrung her hands in the craziest way."
"Did you speak to her?" I asked.
"I couldn't. She ran away as soon as I called to her. She'll end in a lunatic asylum if you don't get hold of her."
I could only shake my head.
"What can I do, Miss Charlotte?" I asked her. "The trouble is she is half crazy about sin and judgment, and things of that sort that I don't even believe in at all. What can I say? You don't want me to tell her her father's religion is a mistake, I suppose."
Miss Charlotte smiled serenely, and regarded me with a look of much sweet kindliness.
"You're a fearful heathen, Ruth," was her response, "but you have a fine wheedling way with you. Couldn't you persuade her she's too young to think about such things?"
"I've tried something of the kind, but she says she is not too young to die. She is like a child out of an old memoir. She isn't of our time at all. We read of that sort of a girl, but I supposed they all died a hundred years ago."
"I doubt if there ever were such girls," Miss Charlotte returned with candor; "except once in a very great while. I think the girls of the memoirs were very much like the rest of us most of the time. They probably had spells of being like Kathie. The difference is that she is at boiling point all the time."
"Of course it's her father," I said thoughtfully.
"Yes," she assented. "He's such a rampant Methodist."
I could not help the shadow of a smile, and when she saw it Miss Charlotte could no more help smiling in her turn.
"Of course you think it's a case of the pot's calling the kettle black," she said, "but the Methodists do make such a business of frightening folks out of their wits. We don't do that."
I let this pass, and asked if she couldn't make some practical suggestion for the treatment of Kathie.
"I can't tell you how to dilute her Methodism," she returned with a shrewd twinkle in her eye. "You must know the way better than I do."
I am troubled and perplexed. I have so many times wondered what I ought to do about talking to Kathie. I have always felt that the fact her father trusted her with me put me on my honor not to say things to her of which he would not approve. It seemed unwise, too, for the child to have any more turmoil in her brain than is there already; and I know that to make her doubt would be to drive herhalf distracted. The question is whether she has not really begun to doubt already, and needs to be helped to think fearlessly. She is a strange survival from another century. Our grandmothers used to agonize over sin, it is claimed, although I think Miss Charlotte is probably right when she says they were after all a good deal like us. At any rate they were brought up to dread eternal punishment, but it is astonishing to find anybody now who receives this as anything but a theory. Belief in the old creeds would seem impossible in these days except in a conventional and remote fashion; and yet Kathie takes it all with the desperation of two hundred years ago. If she were to listen to a suggestion of using her creed less like a hair-shirt, she would feel she had committed an appalling transgression. She is only a baby after all, and heaven knows what business she has with creeds anyway. I would as soon think of giving Tomine dynamite bombs to play with.
I said something of this sort to Miss Charlotte, and she agreed with me that Kathie ought not to brood over theologic questions, but she thought even a child ought, as she put it, instinctively falling into the conventional phraseology of the church, to make her peace with God. I am so glad that nobody ever put it into my childish head that I could ever be at war with God.
Peter has made a leap to the table, and set his foot on my wet writing. Evidently he thinks it foolish to waste time in this sort of scribbling; but I do wish I knew what I can do and what I ought to do.
July 15. Deacon Daniel Webbe came this afternoon to see his granddaughter. Mrs. Webbe—hadforbidden him, I was about to write, but perhaps that is not fair. He only said she thought he had better not come, and he tried clumsily to hint that he hoped I would not betray him. It was touching to see him, he was so much moved by the beauty and the daintiness of baby, and by all the thoughts he must have had about Tom. He said little, only that he spoke with a good deal of feeling of how good it is in Tom to stay at home and take charge of the farm; but tears were in his patient eyes, and he looked at Tomine with a glance so pathetic that I had to go away to wipe my own.
I find that having baby here naturally keeps my thoughts a good deal on Tom and his possible future. I can't help the feeling that I owe him some sort of reparation for the devotion he has given me all these years. Surely a woman owes a man something for his caring for her so, even if she cannot feel in the same way toward him. Tom has always been a part of my life. We were boy and girl together long before I knew George. When the Westons moved here, I must have been ten or twelve years old; and I never knew George until Father took him into the office. It was the winter Father had first been ill, and he had to have an assistant at once. I remember perfectly the excellent reports Father got from some office in Boston where George had been, and these decided him. He had been inclined not to like George at the beginning. I think I first became interested in George through defending him.
George always seemed rather to prefer that I should not know his people, and this struck me as strange. The less admirable they were the more Tom would have insisted upon my knowing them. Dear oldTom! How many times he has told me of his own faults, and never of his good deeds. He is certainly one of the most stubbornly honest creatures alive.
Tom and George are about as different as two mortals could be. George has very little of Tom's frankness, and he has not much of Tom's independence. Father used to declare that George would always be led by a woman, but would never own it to himself. I wonder if this is true. He is being led now by his wife. I fancy, though, he has no idea of such a thing. Tom would lead wherever he was.
I have rambled far enough away from Deacon Daniel and the baby. I do hope Tomine will have her father's honesty. If she have that, other things may be got over. Deacon Daniel spoke of her having her father's eyes, and she could hardly have Tom's eyes and not be straightforward.
July 20. Mr. Saychase has taken to frequent pastoral visitations of late. He probably feels now that the moral welfare of baby is involved he must be especially active. I wish he did not bore me so, for he comes often, and I do wish to be friendly.
To-night he seemed rather oddly interested in my plans for the future.
"I hope that you mean to remain in Tuskamuck," he said. "Some folks think you are likely to move to Boston."
I told him that I had no such intention, and reminded him that baby made a new bond between me and the place.
"Oh, the baby," he responded, it seemed to me rather blankly. "You mean, I presume, that you contemplate keeping the infant."
"Keeping her?" I responded. "Why, I have adopted her."
"I heard so," Mr. Saychase admitted; "but I did not credit the report. I suppose you will place her in some sort of a home."
"Yes," I answered; "in my home."
He flushed a little, and as he was my guest I set myself to put him at his ease. But I should like to understand why everybody is so determined that Tomine shall be sent to a "Home."
July 21. I went to see old lady Andrews to-day. She was as sweet and dear as ever, and as immaculate as if she had just been taken out of rose-leaves and lavender. She never has a hair of her white curls out of place, and her cheeks are at seventy-five pinker than mine. I like to see her in her own house, for she seems to belong to the time of the antique furniture, so entirely is she in harmony with it. I get a fresh sense of virtue every time I look at her beautiful old laces. I wonder if the old masters ever painted angels in thread laces; if not it was a great oversight. Dear old lady Andrews, she has had enough sorrow in her life to embitter any common mortal; her husband, her two sons, and her near kin are all dead before her; but she is too sweet and fine to degenerate. When sorrow does not sour, how it softens and ennobles.
Old lady Andrews was greatly interested about baby, and we gossiped of her in a delightful way for half an hour.
"It pleases me very much, Ruth," she said at last, "to see how motherly you are. I never had any doubt about you at all except that I wondered whether youcould really mother a baby. I knew you would love it, and be kind, of course; but babies ought to have motherliness if they are really to thrive."
I flushed with pleasure, and asked if she meant that she had thought me cut out for an old maid.
"If I did," she answered, with that smile of hers which always makes me want to kiss her on the spot, "I shall never think so again. You've the genuine mother-instinct."
She looked at me a moment as if questioning with herself.
"The truth is," she went on, as if she had made up her mind to say the whole, "you have been for years making an intellectual interest do instead of real love, and of course your manner showed it."
I could not ask her what she meant, though I only half understood, and I wished to hear more. She grew suddenly more serious, and spoke in a lower tone.
"Ruth," she asked, "I am an old woman, and I am fond of you. May I say something that may sound impertinent?"
Of course I told her she might say anything, and that I knew she could not be impertinent. I could not think what was coming. She leaned forward, and put her thin hand on mine, the little Tennant hand with its old-fashioned rings.
"It is just this, Ruth. Be careful whom you marry. I'm so afraid you'll marry somebody out of charity. At least don't think of being a parson's wife."
"A parson's wife?" I echoed stupidly, not in the least seeing what she meant.
"That would be worse than to take up with theprodigal son," she added, not heeding my interrogation; "though it does seem to me, my dear, that you are too good to be just served up like a fatted calf in honor of his return."
I stared at her with bewilderment so complete that she burst into a soft laugh, as mellow as her old laces.
"I am speaking parables, of course, and it's no matter now about the prodigal. I only wanted to suggest that you are not just the wife for Mr. Saychase, and"—
"Mr. Saychase!" I burst out, interrupting her, I think, for the first time in my life. "Why, who ever thought of anything so preposterous?"
"Oh, you innocent!" she laughed. "I knew you'd be the last one to see it, and I wanted to warn you so that he need not take you entirely by surprise. He is my pastor, and a very good man in his way; but he isn't our kind, my dear."
I sat staring at her in a sort of daze, while I suddenly remembered how much Mr. Saychase has been to see me lately, and how self-conscious he has seemed sometimes. I had not a word to say, even in protest, and old lady Andrews having, I suppose, accomplished all she wished in warning me, dropped the subject entirely, and turned back to Thomasine's doings and welfare.
The idea that Mr. Saychase has been thinking of me as a possible helpmate is certainly ludicrous. I believe thoroughly any girl should "thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love," but in this case I do not see how love comes into the question at all. I cannot help feeling that he would intellectually be the sort of a husband to put into a quart-pot, there to bid him drum, and at least he will lose no sleep from a blightedpassion for me. Certainly I should be intellectually starved if I had to live with him. He is not naturally a man of much power of thinking, I suppose, and he has never cultivated the habit. One cannot help seeing that whatever his original capabilities they have been spoiled by his profession. A minister, Father said to me once, must either be so spiritual that his creed has no power to restrain him, or a poor crippled thing, pathetic because the desire of rising has made him hamper himself with vows. I think I understand what he meant, and I am afraid Mr. Saychase is of the latter sort: a man who meant well, and so pledged himself always to cling to the belief the church had made for him, no matter what higher light might come into his life. He is to be pitied,—though he would not understand why. He could hardly care for anybody so far from his way of thinking as I am, so old lady Andrews cannot be right there.