"Orlando's never given me a moment's worry in his life, ma'am—not even when he was teething," replied Mrs. Mullen, who looked sharper and more withered than ever in the broad daylight. "If you'll believe me, he wasn't more than six months old when I said to his father that I could tell by the look of him he was intended for the ministry. Such sweetness, such self-control even as an infant."
"How happy he must make you! And then, to have the privilege of hearing his beautiful sermons! But you'll lose him some day, as I was just saying to Kesiah. It won't be long before some fortunate woman takes him away from you. We can only hope she will be worthy of the ideal he has for her."
"Ah, that's just it, Mrs. Gay, I sometimes tell myself there isn't a woman in the world that's fit for him."
She spoke as fast as she could, eager to dilate on the subject of the embarrassed Orlando's virtues, flattered in her motherly old heart by the praise of his sermons, and yet, all the time, while her peaked chin worked excitedly, thinking about the roasted young pig that waited for her to attend to the garnishing.
The delay was short; Orlando silenced her at last by a gentle admonitory pressure of her elbow, and the two ladies drove off in their carriage, while Molly walked sedately out of the churchyard between the clergyman and his mother. The girl was pleasantly aware that the eyes of the miller and of Jim Halloween followed her disapprovingly as she went; and she thought with complacency that she had never looked better than she did in her white felt hat with its upturned brim held back by cherry-coloured ribbon. It was all very well for the rector to say that beauty was of less importance than visiting the sick, but the fact remained that Judy Hatch visited the sick more zealously than she—and yet he was very far, indeed, from falling in love with Judy Hatch! The contradiction between man and his ideal of himself was embodied before her under a clerical waistcoat.
"I believe," remarked the Reverend Orlando, thrusting his short chin as far as possible over his collar, which buttoned at the back, "I believe that the elder Doolittle nourishes some private grudge against me. He has a most annoying habit of shaking his head at me during the sermon as though he disagreed with my remarks."
"The man must be an infidel," observed Mrs. Mullen, with asperity, as she moved on in front of him.
"He doesn't know half the time what he is doing," said Molly, "you know he passed his ninetieth birthday last summer."
"But surely you cannot mean that you consider age an excuse for either incivility or irreligion," rejoined her lover, pushing aside an impertinent carrot flower that had shed its pollen on his long coat, while he regarded his mother's back with the expression of indignant suspicion he unconsciously assumed on the rare occasions when his opinions were disputed. "Age should mellow, should soften, should sweeten."
"I suppose it should, but very often it doesn't," retorted Molly, a trifle tartly, for the sermon had bored her and she looked forward with dread to the dinner.
At her words Mrs. Mullen, who was walking a little ahead, with her skirts held up to avoid the yellow stain of the golden-rod, glanced sharply back, as she had done in church when old Adam had coughed at the wrong time and spoiled the full effect of a period.
"One reason that Orlando is so helpful to people is that he always sees so clearly just what they ought to be," she observed. "I don't believe there's a man in the ministry or out, who has a higher ideal of woman and her duty."
"But do women ever live up to his ideal of them?"
"It isn't his fault if they don't. All he can do is to point it out to them earnestly and without ceasing."
They had reached the rectory gate, where she hesitated an instant with her hand on the latch, and her head bent toward the house in a surprised and listening attitude. "I declare, Orlando, if I didn't go off and leave that cat locked up in the parlour!" she exclaimed in horror as she hurried away.
"Yes," observed Mr. Mullen in his tenderest and most ministerial manner, "my ideal is a high one, and when I look into your face, I see reflected all the virtues I would have you reach. I see you the perfect woman, sharing my sorrows, easing my afflictions—-"
Intoxicated by his imagination, he turned toward her as though he beheld the living embodiment of his eloquence.
For a minute Molly smiled up at him; then, "I wonder if your mother really locked the cat in the parlour," she rejoined demurely.
After the birthday dinner, at which Mrs. Mullen talked ceaselessly of Orlando's excellencies, while she reserved the choicest piece of meat and the fattest dumpling for his plate, Molly tied her cherry-coloured strings under her chin, and started home, with a basket of apple tarts for Reuben on her arm. At the crossroads Mr. Mullen left her to return to an afternoon Sunday school, and she was about to stop at the ordinary to ask William to see her safely over the pasture, when Abel Revercomb, looking a trifle awkward in his Sunday clothes, came out of the house and held out his hand for the basket.
"I thought you'd be coming home this way after dinner," he said, turning his throat when he moved. His hair was brushed flat on his head as was his habit on Sundays, and he wore a vivid purple tie, which he had bought on his last journey to Applegate. He had never looked worse, nor had he ever felt quite so confident of the entire correctness of his appearance.
As Molly made no reply, but merely fell into step at his side, he inquired, after a moment's pause, "How did you enjoy the sermon?"
"Oh, I don't like to be preached at, and I'm sorry for Mr. Mullen's wife if he expects her to ease everybody's pains in the parish. He looked very handsome in church," she added, "didn't you think so?"
"I didn't notice," he answered ruefully. "I never pay any attention to the way a man looks, in church or out of it."
"Well, I do—and even Judy Hatch does. She asked me the other day whom I thought the handsomest man in the neighbourhood, and I'm sure she expected me to say Mr. Mullen."
She dimpled, and his arm went out impulsively toward her.
"But you didn't, Molly?" he returned.
"Why, of course not—did you imagine that I should? I said I thought Mr.Jonathan Gay was the best looking."
His arm fell to his side, and for a minute or two he walked on in silence.
"I wish I didn't love you, Molly," he burst out at last. "I sometimes almost believe that you're one of the temptresses Mr. Mullen preached against this morning. I've tried again and again to tear you out of my heart, but it is useless."
"Yes, it's useless, Abel," she answered, melting to dimples.
"I tell myself," he went on passionately, "that you're not worth it—that you're perfectly heartless—that you're only a flirt—that other men have held your hands, kissed your lips even—-"
"And after telling yourself those dreadful truths, what happens?" she inquired with interest.
"What happens? Well, I go to work and don't think of you for at least three hours. Then, when I am dead tired I stop for a minute to rest, and as soon as my eyes fall on a bit of green grass, or a flower growing by the road, or the blue sky, there you are again, popping in between them with your big eyes and your mouth that was made for kisses. I forget how heartless and light you are, and remember only the times you've crept up to me and put your hand on my arm and said, 'Abel, I'm sorry.' Most of all I remember the one time you kissed me, Molly."
"Don't, Abel," she said quickly, and her voice broke and died in her throat.
As he drew close to her, she walked faster until her steps changed into a run.
"If you only knew me as I am, you wouldn't care so, Abel," she threw back at him.
"I don't believe you know yourself as you are, Molly," he answered. "It's not you that leads men on to make love to you and then throws them over—as you have thrown me—as you will throw Mr. Mullen." His tone grew suddenly stern. "You don't love Mr. Mullen, and you know it," he added. "If you love any man on earth to-day, you love me."
At his first change from tenderness to accusation, her face hardened and her voice returned to her control.
"What right have you to judge me, Abel Revercomb?" she asked angrily. "I've had one sermon preached at me to-day, and I'll not listen to another."
"You know I'm not preaching at you, Molly, but I'm a man of flesh and blood, not of straw. How can I have patience?"
"I never asked you to have patience, did I?"
"No, and I don't believe you want it. If I'd catch hold of you and shake you, you'd probably like me better."
"It's just as well that you don't try it to see how I'll take it."
"Oh, I shan't try it. I'll go on still believing in you against yourself, like the born fool I am."
"You may believe in me or not just as you please—but it isn't my fault if you won't go off and marry Judy Hatch, as I have begged you to. She's everything on earth that Mr. Mullen preached about to-day in his sermon."
"Hang Judy Hatch! You are bent on starting a quarrel with me, that is the trouble. As soon as you mentioned Jonathan Gay I knew what you were in for."
"As if I couldn't say a man was good looking without putting you into a rage."
"I'm not in a rage, but I hate a flirt. Every sensible man does."
"Judy Hatch isn't a flirt."
"Leave Judy Hatch out of it—though I've more than half a mind to walk off and ask her to marry me."
"That's just what I've advised you to do for the last six months, isn't it?"
"Ah, no, you haven't, Molly, no, you haven't—and you'd be just as sorry as I the minute after I had done it. You've got some small foolish childish notions in your head about hating men—but you're much nearer loving me than hating me at this moment, and that's why you're afraid!"
"I'm not afraid—how dare you say so?"
"Oh, my pretty, how foolish we are, both of us! I'd work my fingers to the bone for you, Molly, I'd lie down and let your little feet walk over me if they wanted to—I'd shed my life's blood for you, day by day, if it could help you."
"Every one of you say this in the beginning, but it isn't true in the end," she answered.
"Not true—not true? Prove it. Why do you think I've struggled and raised myself except to keep equal with you? Why did I go to school and teach myself and make money enough to take classes in Applegate? Just for you. All those winter afternoons when I drove over there to learn things, I was thinking of you. Do you remember that when you were at school in Applegate, you'd tell me the names of the books you read so that I might get them?"
"Don't," she cried fiercely, "don't tell me those things, for I'll never believe them! I'm hard and bitter inside, there's no softness in me. If I went on my knees and prayed to love, I couldn't do it. Oh, Abel, there isn't any love in my heart!"
"Do you remember when you kissed me?"
"No, I have forgotten."
"It was only three weeks ago."
"Yes, that was three weeks ago."
The light died slowly out of his eyes as he looked at her.
"When you speak like that I begin to wonder if any good can ever come to us," he returned. "I've gone on breaking my heart over you ever since you were a little girl in short dresses, and I can't remember that I've ever had anything but misery from you in my life. It's damnable the things I've stood and yet I've always forgotten them afterwards, and remembered only the times you were soft and gentle and had ceased to be shrewish. Nobody on earth can be softer than you, Molly, when you want to, and it's your softness, after all, that has held me in spite of your treatment. Why, your mouth was like a flower when I kissed you, and parted and clung to me—-"
"I wish you wouldn't talk about it. I hate to hear such things after they are over."
"Such things!" He stood flicking hopelessly with a small branch he carried at the carrot flowers in the field. "If you will tell me honestly that you were playing with me, Molly, I'll give you up this minute," he said.
The colour was high in her face and she did not look at him.
"I was playing with you, and I told you so the day afterwards," she replied.
"Yes, but you didn't mean it. I can't go any further because this is Mr.Jonathan's land."
His eyes had in them the hurt reproachful look of a wounded dog's, and his voice trembled a little.
"I meant always—always to lead you on until I could hurt you—as I did the others—and then throw you over."
"And now that you can hurt me, you throw me over?" he asked.
Without speaking, she held out her hand for the basket, which he was about to fling from him.
"Then I'll never forgive you, Molly, so help me God," he added harshly; and turning away from her, struck out across the pasture in the direction of the mill.
For a moment she stood looking after him, her lips parted, her eyes wide and bright as if she were asking a question.
"I am hard—hard and cruel," she thought as she went slowly up the witch-hazel path that led by the Poplar Spring, "but I wonder—oh, I wonder if I treat Abel worst because I like him best?"
When Abel had flung himself over the fence, he snatched the collar from his neck and threw it away from him into the high grass of the meadow. The act was symbolical not only of his revolt from the power of love, but, in a larger measure, of his rebellion against the tyranny of convention. Henceforth his Sunday clothes might hang in the closet, for he would never again bend his neck to the starched yoke of custom. Everything had been for Molly forever. Her smiles or her frowns, her softness or her cruelty, would make no difference to him in the future—for had not Molly openly implied that she preferred Mr. Mullen? So this was the end of it all—the end of his ambition, of his struggle to raise himself, of his battle for a little learning that she might not be ashamed. Lifting his head he could see dimly the one great pine that towered on the hill over its fellows, and he resolved, in the bitterness of his defeat, that he would sell the whole wood to-morrow in Applegate. He tried to think clearly—to tell himself that he had never believed in her—that he had always known she would throw him over at the last—but the agony in his heart rose in his throat, and he felt that he was stifling in the open air of the pasture. His nature, large, impulsive, scornful of small complexities, was stripped bare of the veneer of culture by which its simplicity had been overlaid. At the instant he was closer to the soil beneath his feet than the civilization of his race.
As he neared the brook, which divided his pasture from the fields belonging to Jordan's Journey, the sound of angry voices came to his ears, and through the bared twigs of the willows, he saw Archie and Jonathan Gay standing a little apart, while the boy made threatening gestures with a small switch he carried.
"I've told him he was not to come on our land and he's laughed in my face!" cried Archie, turning to his brother.
"I'm not laughing, I merely said that the restriction was absurd," replied Jonathan in a friendly tone. "Why this pasture of yours juts in between my field and the road, and I'm obliged to cross it. I told you before I was awfully sorry about the quarrel when I first came, but as long as you leave my birds alone, you may walk over my land all day if you like and I shan't care a copper."
"Damn your birds! I don't take a blow from any man without paying him back," retorted Archie.
"Hold your tongue, Archie," said Abel sternly. "It's my farm, I reckon, and I manage it. I'm sorry, Mr. Jonathan," he added, "that you started the trouble, but we aren't people to sit down tamely and take a thrashing from you just because you happen to own Jordan's Journey. I'll stand by Archie because he's right, though if he were not right, I'd still stand by him because he's my brother. The best we can do is to keep clear of each other. We don't go on your place and you'd just as well take care to keep off ours."
A frown contracted Gay's brow, while he glanced anxiously over his shoulder at the crooked path which led in the direction of the mill.
"Do you mean to say that you object to my taking a stroll through your meadows?" he asked.
"Why on earth do you want to stroll over here when you've got two thousand acres on every other blessed side of you?"
When the other's reply came there was a curious hesitation about it.
"Well, a man has his fancies, you know. I've taken a liking to this path through the willows."
"All the same I warn you that if you keep it up, you'll very likely run into trouble. If Archie sets the dogs on you, I'll be obliged to stand by him."
Without waiting for a response, he put his hand on the boy's shoulder, and pushed him over the brook into the path on the opposite side. To his surprise Blossom, dressed as though for church, appeared there at the instant.
"Why, where in thunder are you going?" he demanded, releasing Archie, who staggered back at the sudden withdrawal of the powerful grasp. He had always known that his niece was a handsome girl, but the bloom, the softness of her beauty came to him while he stood there, as vividly as if for the first time.
"I—I—have you seen grandma's cat?" she returned after the breathless suspense of a minute.
"No, I don't think you'll find her down there. Archie and Mr. Jonathan have quarreled loud enough to frighten her away."
"Quarreled again!" she said. "Oh, why have they quarreled again?"
"He must keep off our place," replied Archie, angrily. "I warned him I'll set the dogs on him the next time I find him on this side the fence!"
"How—how can you be so uncivilized?" she returned, and there were tears in her eyes.
"Uncivilized or not, he'll find he can't split my lip open for nothing," growled Archie, like a sullen child.
"You'd as well come back with us," said Abel, "the cat isn't down there—I'd take a look in the mill."
She turned her face away, stooping to pluck the withered frond of a fern that grew in the path. When she looked up at him again all the bloom and radiance had flown.
"Yes, I'll come back with you," she answered, and falling into step between them, walked languidly up the hill to the kitchen garden at the top. In his own misery Abel was hardly aware of her, and he heard as from a distance, Archie's muttered threats against Gay, and Blossom's palpitating responses. When they reached the house, Sarah's yellow and white cat squeezed herself through the door and came purring toward them.
"Why, the cat's got back!" exclaimed Archie.
"It must have been in the store-room all the time," returned Blossom quickly. "I forgot to look there. Now, I must go and pour out the butter milk for dinner before grandma scolds me."
She turned away, glanced back an instant later to make sure that they had entered the house, and then gathering up her Sunday skirt of blue Henrietta cloth, started in a rapid run back along the path to the willows. When she reached a sheltered nook, formed by a lattice of boughs, she found Gay walking impatiently back and forth, with his hands in his pockets and the anxious frown still on his forehead. At sight of her, his face cleared and he held out his arms.
"My beauty!—I'd just given you up. Five minutes more by my watch, and I should have gone."
"I met Abel and Archie as I was coming and they made me go back with them," she answered, placing her hand on her bosom, which rose and fell with her fluttering breath. It was characteristic of their different temperaments that, although he had seen her every day for three weeks, he still met her with outstretched arms, which she still evaded. Since that first stolen kiss, she had held off from him, alluring yet unapproachable, and this gentle, but obstinate, resistance had inflamed him to a point which he admitted, in the cold grey morning before he had breakfasted, to have become positively dangerous. Ardently susceptible to beauty, the freedom of his life had bred in him an almost equal worship of the unattainable. If that first kiss had stirred his fancy, her subsequent repulse had established her influence. The stubborn virtue, which was a part of the inherited fibre of her race, had achieved a result not unworthy of the most finished coquette. Against his desire for possession there battled the instinctive chastity that was woven into the structure of Sarah Revercomb's granddaughter. Hardly less violent than the natural impulse against which it warred, it gave Blossom an advantage, which the obvious weakness of her heart had helped to increase. It was as though she yearned toward him while she resisted—as though she feared him most in the moment that she repulsed him.
"Good God! how beautiful you are and how cold!" he exclaimed.
"I am not cold. How can you say so when you know it isn't true?"
"I've been waiting here an hour, half dead with impatience, and you won't so much as let me touch you for a reward."
"I can't—you oughtn't to ask me, Mr. Jonathan."
"Could a single kiss hurt you? I kissed you once."
"It's—it's because you kissed me once that you mustn't kiss me again."
"You mean you didn't like it?"
"What makes you so unkind? You know it isn't that."
"Then why do you refuse?" He was in an irritable humour, and this irritation showed in his face, in his movements, in the short, abrupt sound of his words.
"I can't let you do it because—because I didn't know what it was like until that first time," she protested, while two large tears rolled from her eyes.
Softened by her confusion, his genial smile shone on her for an instant before the gloom returned to his features. The last few weeks had preyed on his nerves until he told himself that he could no longer control the working of his emotions. The solitude, the emptiness of his days, the restraint put upon him by his invalid mother—all these engendered a condition of mind in which any transient fancy might develop into a winged fury of impulse. There were times when his desire for Blossom's beauty appeared to fill the desolate space, and he hungered and thirsted for her actual presence at his side. In the excitement of a great city, he would probably have forgotten her in a month after their first meeting. Here, in this monotonous country, there was nothing for him but to brood over each trivial detail until her figure stood out in his imagination edged by the artificial light he had created around it. Her beauty, which would have been noticeable even in a crowd, became goddess-like against the low horizon in the midst of the November colours.
"If you only knew how I suffer from you, darling," he said, "I haven't slept for nights because you refused to kiss me."
"I—I haven't slept either," she faltered.
"Because of me, Blossom?"
"I begin to think and it makes me so unhappy."
"Oh, damn it! Do you love me, Blossom?"
"What difference does it make whether I do or not?"
"It makes all the difference under Heaven! Would you like to love me,Blossom?"
"I oughtn't to let myself think of it, and I don't when I can help it."
"But can you help it? Tell me, can you help it?"
Turning away from him, she cast a startled glance under the willows in the direction of the house.
"I must be going back. They will miss me."
"Don't you think I shall miss you, Beauty?"
"I don't know. I haven't thought."
"If you knew how miserable I'll be after you have left me, you'd kiss me once before you go."
"Don't ask me, I can't—I really can't, Mr. Jonathan."
"Hang Mr. Jonathan and all that appertains to him! What's to become of me, condemned to this solitude, if you refuse to become kind to me? By Jove, if it wasn't for my mother, I'd ask you to marry me!"
"I don't want to marry you," she responded haughtily, and completed her triumph. Something stronger than passion—thatsomethingcompounded partly of moral fibre, partly of a phlegmatic temperament, guided her at the critical moment. His words had been casual, but her reception of them charged them with seriousness almost before he was aware. A passing impulse was crystallized by the coldness of her manner into a permanent desire.
"If I were free to do it, I'd make you want to," he said.
She moved from him, walking rapidly into the deeper shelter of the willows. The autumn sunlight, shining through the leafless boughs, cast a delicate netting of shadows over the brilliant fairness of her body. He saw the rose of her cheek melting into the warm whiteness of her throat, which was encircled by two deliciously infantile creases of flesh. To look at her led almost inevitably to the desire to touch her.
"Are you going without a word to me, Blossom?"
"I don't know what to say—you never seem to believe me."
"You know well enough what I want you to say—but you're frozen all through, that's what's the matter."
"Good-bye, Mr. Jonathan."
"At what hour to-morrow, Blossom?"
She shook her head, softly obstinate.
"I mustn't meet you again. If grandma—or any of the others found out they would never forgive me—they are so stern and straight. I've gone too far already, and besides—-"
"Besides what?"
"You make me feel wicked and underhand."
"Do you mean that you can walk off like this and never see me again?"
Tears came to her eyes. "You oughtn't to put it like that!"
"But that's just what it means. Now, darling, do you think you can do it?"
"I won't think—but I'll have to do it."
His nervous irritability became suddenly violent, and the muscles of his face contracted as if from a spasm of physical pain.
"Confound it all! Why shouldn't I marry you, Blossom?" he burst out. "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen and you look every inch a lady. If it wasn't for my mother I'd pick you up to-day and carry you off to Washington."
"Your mother would never give in. There's no use talking about it."
"It isn't her giving in, but her health. You see, she has heart disease, and any sudden shock brings on one of these terrible attacks that may kill her. She bears everything like an angel—I never heard a complaint from her in my life—not even when she was suffering tortures—but the doctors say now that another failure of her heart would be fatal."
"I know," she admitted softly, "they said that twenty years ago, didn't they?"
"Well, she's been on her back almost all the time during those twenty years. It's wonderful what she's borne—her angelic patience. And, of course her hopes all hang on me now. She's got nobody else."
"But I thought Miss Kesiah was so devoted to her."
"Oh, she is—she is, but Aunt Kesiah has never really understood her. Just to look at them, you can tell how different they are. That's how it is Blossom—I'm tied, you see—tied hand and foot."
"Yes, I see," she rejoined. "Your uncle was tied, too. I've heard that he used to say—tied with a silk string, he called it."
"You wouldn't have me murder my mother, would you?" he demanded irritably, kicking at the twisted root of a willow.
"Good-bye, Mr. Jonathan," she responded quietly, and started toward the house.
"Wait a minute,—oh, Blossom, come back!" he entreated—but without pausing she ran quickly up the crooked path under the netting of shadows.
"So that's the end," said Gay angrily. "By Jove, I'm well out of it," and went home to dinner. "I won't see her again," he thought as he entered the house, and the next instant, when he ascended the staircase, "I never saw such a mouth in my life. It looks as if it would melt if you kissed it—-"
The dinner, which was pompously served by Abednego and a younger butler, seemed to him tasteless and stale, and he complained querulously of a bit of cork he found in his wine glass. His mother, supported by cushions in her chair at the head of the table, to which he had brought her in his arms, lamented his lack of appetite, and inquired tenderly if he were suffering? For the first time in his life he discovered that he was extinguishing, with difficulty, a smouldering resentment against her. Kesiah's ugliness became a positive affront to him, and he felt as bitterly toward her as though she had purposely designed her appearance in order to annoy him. The wine she drank showed immediately in her face, and he determined to tell his mother privately that she must forbid her sister to drink anything but water. By the dim gilt framed mirror above the mantel he discovered that his own features were flushed, also, but a red face was not, he felt, a cause of compunction to one of his sex.
"You haven't eaten your mutton, dear," said Mrs. Gay anxiously. "I ordered it especially because you like it. Are you feeling unwell?"
"I'm not hungry," he replied, rather crossly. "This place gets on my nerves, and will end by driving me mad."
"I suppose you'd better go away," she returned, plaintively wounded. "I wouldn't be so selfish as to want to keep you by me if you are unhappy."
"I don't want to leave you, mother—but, I ought to get back to the stock market. It's no good idling around—I don't think I was cut out for a farmer."
"Try this sherry. Your uncle brought if from Spain, and it was buried during the war."
He filled his glass, drained it quickly, and with an effort recovered his temper.
"Yes, I'd better go," he repeated, and knew while he spoke that he could not leave as long as the thought of Blossom tormented him. Swift half visions of her loveliness—of certain delectable details of her face or figure flitted always before him. He saw her eyes, like frosted periwinkles under their warm white lids, which appeared too heavy to open wide; the little brown mole that played up and down when she laughed; and the soft, babyish creases that encircled her throat. Each of these memories set his heart to a quicker beating and caused a warm sensation, like the caress of a burning sun, to pass over his body.
"The Revercombs over at the mill are kicking up a row, mother," he said suddenly, again filling his wine glass and again putting it down empty, "have they any sort of standing in the county, do you suppose?"
"I've heard they call themselves connections of the Revercombs higher in the State, dear—but I don't know and I've never come into contact with any of the country people about here. Kesiah may be able to tell you."
Until then neither of them had alluded to Kesiah, whom they accepted by ignoring much as if she had been one of the familiar pieces of furniture, at which they never glanced because they were so firmly convinced that it stood in its place. She had eaten her dinner with the relish of a person to whom food, taken at regular hours three times a day, has become the prime consolation in life; and when the question was put to her, she was obliged to ask them to repeat it because she had been thoughtfully regarding a dish of baked tomatoes and wondering if a single yielding to temptation would increase a tendency to the gout that had lately developed.
"What do you know of the Revercombs, Kesiah? Are they in any degree above the common people about here?"
"The miller is a rather extraordinary character, I believe," she answered, lifting the spoon out of the dish of tomatoes as it was handed to her, and then shaking her head with a sigh and letting it fall. "Mr. Chamberlayne says he is quite well educated, but the rest of them, of course, are very primitive and plain. They have always been strait-laced and honest and I hear that the mother—she came from Piping Tree and was one of the Hawtreys—is violently opposed to her son's marriage with Molly Merryweather. There is a daughter, also, who is said to be beautiful though rather dull."
"Yes, I've seen the girl," observed Mrs. Gay, "heavy and blond, isn't she? The mother, I should say, is decidedly the character of the family. She has rather terrible convictions, and once a great many years ago, she came over here—forced her way into my sick-room to rebuke me about the behaviour of the servants or something. Your Uncle Jonathan was obliged to lead her out and pacify her—she was quite upset, I remember. By the way, Kesiah," she pursued, "haven't I heard that Mr. Mullen is attentive to the daughter? It seems a pity, for he is quite a superior young man—his sermons are really remarkable, and he might easily have done better."
"Oh, that was when he first came here, Angela, before he met Molly Merryweather. It's singular the fascination that girl possesses for the men around here."
Gay laughed shortly. "Well, it's a primitive folk, isn't it?" he said, "and gets on my nerves after a while."
Through the afternoon he was restless and out of humour, tormented less by the memory of Blossom's face than by the little brown mole on her cheek. He resolved a dozen times a day that he would not see her, and in the very act of resolving, he would begin to devise means of waylaying her as she went down to the store or passed to and from the pasture. A certain sex hatred, which is closely allied to the mere physical fact of love, asserted itself at times, and he raged hotly against her coldness, her indifference, against the very remoteness that attracted him. Then he would soften to her, and with the softening there came always the longing not only to see, but to touch her—to breathe her breath, to lay his hand on her throat.
The next day he went to the willow copse, but she did not come. On the one following, he took down his gun and started out to shoot partridges, but when the hour of the meeting came, he found himself wandering over the fields near the Revercombs' pasture with his eye on the little path down which she had come that rimy October morning. The third afternoon, when he had watched for her in a fury of disappointment, he ordered his horse and went for a gallop down the sunken road to the mill. At the first turn, where the woods opened into a burned out clearing, he came suddenly upon her, and the hunger at his heart gave place to a delicious sense of fulfilment.
"Blossom, how can you torture me so?" he exclaimed when he had dismounted at her side and flung his arm about her.
She drew slowly away, submissive even in her avoidance.
"I did not mean to torture you—I'm sorry," she answered humbly.
"It's come to this!" he burst out, "that I can't stand it another week without losing my senses. I've thought till I'm distracted. Blossom, will you marry me?"
"O Mr. Jonathan!" she gasped while her breast fluttered like a bird's.
"Not openly, of course—there's my mother to think of—but I'll take you to Washington—we'll find a way somehow. Can't you arrange to go to Applegate for a day or two, or let your people think you have?"
"I can—yes—" she responded in the same troubled tone. "I've a school friend living there, and I sometimes spend several days with her."
"Then go on Saturday—no, let's see—this is Tuesday. Can you go onFriday, darling?"
"Perhaps. I can't tell—I think so—I must see."
As he drew her forward, she bent toward him, still softly, still humbly, and an instant later, his arms were about her and his lips pressed hers.
The following Friday Abel drove Blossom in his gig to the house of her school friend in Applegate, where she was to remain for a week. On his way home he stopped at the store for a bottle of harness oil, and catching the red glow of the fire beyond the threshold of the public room, he went in for a moment to ask old Adam Doolittle about a supply of hominy meal he had ready for him at the mill. As the ancient man crouched over the fire, with his bent hands outstretched and his few silvery hairs rising in the warmth, his profile showed with the exaggeration of a twelfth century grotesque, the features so distorted by the quivering shadows that his beaked nose appeared to rest in the crescent-shaped silhouette of his chin. His mouth was open, and from time to time he shook his head and muttered to himself in an undertone—a habit he had fallen into during the monotonous stretches of Mr. Mullen's sermons. Across from him sat Jim Halloween, and in the middle of the hearth, Solomon Hatch stood wiping the frost from his face with a red cotton handkerchief.
"It's time you were thinkin' about goin' home, I reckon, old Adam," remarked Mrs. Bottom. "You've had yo' two glasses of cider an' it ain't proper for a man of yo' years to be knockin' around arter dark. This or'nary is goin' to be kept decent as long as I keep it."
"To be sure, to be sure," replied old Adam, nodding cheerfully at the fire, "I ain't all I once was except in the matter or corn-shuckin'—an' a cold-snap like this goes clean to the bones when they ain't covered."
"Did you carry any of yo' winesaps into Applegate, Abel?" inquired Jim Halloween. "I'm savin' mine till Christmas, when the prices will take a jump."
"No, I only drove Blossom over. She's to spend a few days in town."
"Mr. Jonathan's gone off, too, I see," observed Solomon. "He went by at the top of his speed while I was haulin' timber this mornin'. Thar's bad blood still betwixt you an' him, aint' thar, Abel?"
"Oh, I'm not seekin' a quarrel. The trouble is in Archie's hands an' he'll have to keep it there."
"Well, he's a fine shape of a man," declared Betsey Bottom. "Some women try to make out that they ain't got an eye for the shape as long as the sense is all square and solid—but I ain't never been one of 'em. Sense is all right in its place, no doubt, but thar're times when a fine figger is mo' convincin' than any argyment that ever was uttered."
"It's a thing that beats me," pondered Solomon Hatch, "why a sensible woman should care how a man is made on the outside so long as the proper stuffin' is inside of him. With a man now, of course, it is different, seein' as natur made 'em with a sharp eye for the beauty in the opposite sex, an' they're all for natur an' al'ays have been. But I'll be blest if I can understand it in women."
"Well, I've noticed that they have a particular likin' for the worthless over the hardworkin' sort," remarked old Adam, "an' when it comes to that, I've known a woman to git clear set against a man on o'count of nothin' bigger than a chaw of tobaccy."
"It's the way of the sex," said Solomon Hatch. "When I was courtin' my wife I was obleeged to promise her I'd give up the habit befo' she'd keep company with me."
"An' you began agin, I low, after the ceremony was spoken."
"To be sure—'twas a courtin' promise, not a real one."
"It happened the same in my case, some sixty years or mo' ago," said old Adam. "Thar was two of us arter Minnie—for the matter of that, it never entered my head to court her till I saw that Jacob Halloween—yo' grandpa, Jim—had begun to git soft on her. It's safer to trust another man's jedgment than yo' own I said to myself, an' I started into the race. Well, Jacob was the pious, churchgoin' sort that she liked—but he would chaw in season an' out of it—thar was some as said he chawed even when he was sleepin'—an' a woman so out an' out with tobaccy you never set eyes on. Sez she to me, 'Adam, you will give up the weed for me, won't you?' An' sez I, 'Why, to be sartin sure, I will,' meanin' of course, while I was courtin'. Then she answered, 'Well, he's a Christian an' a churchgoer an' you ain't, but if he was the Angel Gabriel himself, Adam, an' was a chawer, I wouldn't marry him. The men may make their habits, Adam,' she said, 'but it takes the women to break 'em.' Lord! Lord! durin' that courtin' season my mouth would water so for a wad of tobaccy that I'd think my tongue was goin' to ketch fire."
"I shouldn't like to have stood in yo' shoes when you began agin," remarked Betsey Bottom.
"Oh, she larned, she larned," chuckled the elder, knocking the ashes out of his pipe on the hearth and then treading them under his boot. "'Tis amazin' what a deal of larnin' women have to do arter they're married."
"If they'd done it befo' thar's precious few of 'em that would ever set foot into the estate!" retorted Betsey. "Thar ain't many men that are worth the havin' when you git close up to 'em. Every inch of distance betwixt 'em is an inch added to thar attractions."
"Now, I've noticed that in my own case," observed Jim Halloween sadly, "no woman yet has ever let me come with kissin' distance—the nearer I git, the further an' further they edges away. It's the curse of my luck, I reckon, for it seems as if I never open my mouth to propose that I don't put my foot in it."
"You may comfort yo'self with the thought that it runs in yo' family," rejoined old Adam. "'Tis a contrariness of natur for which you're not to be held accountable. I remember yo' grandpa, that same Jacob, tellin' me once that he never sot out to make love that his tongue didn't take a twist unbeknownst to him, an' to his surprise, thar'd roll off 'turnips' an' 'carrots' instid of terms of endearment. Now, with me 'twas quite opposite, for my tongue was al'ays quicker than my heart in the matter of courtin'. It used to go click! click! click! quite without my willin' it whenever my eyes lit on a pretty woman."
"Ah, you were a gay young bird, but it's over now," commented Solomon.
"I ain't regrettin' it since I've lived long enough to repent of it," responded the ancient sinner.
"What worries me," said young Adam, pursuing his habitual train of despondency, "is that my life is just one long repentance with naught in it worth repentin' of. 'Tain't for lack of ch'ice I've never tasted, but for lack of opportunity."
"Well, thar's some that even sinners can't suffer," commented his father. "You are short of words, miller."
"I was thinkin'," replied Abel roughly, draining his glass, and rising to his feet while he drew on his sheepskin gloves, "that when the thought of a woman once gets into the brain it's worse than a maggot."
"The best way is to get her," retorted Solomon, "but that ain't so easy a matter as it looks, unless you are a parson. Was thar ever a parson, Mr. Doolittle, that couldn't get married as often as he'd take the notion?"
"Thar may be sech, but I've never seed him an' never heard on him," responded old Adam. "'Tis kind of professional work with 'em an' they've got the advantage of the rest of us bein' so used to pulpit speakin'."
"I suppose our Mr. Mullen might have whomsoever he'd set his eyes on," pursued Solomon.
"Without a doubt he might. If all else failed him he'd but to ax her in his pulpit gown an' his prayin' voice, an' thar'd be no gainsayin' him for a female. Let him boom out 'Dearly Beloved,' as he does in church an' ten chances to one she'd answer 'Amen' just out of the habit. I'm a bold man, suh, an' I've al'ays been, but I ain't one to stand up ag'inst a preacher when thar's a woman in the race."
Wrapping his blue knitted comforter about his throat, Abel nodded, good-humoredly to the group, and went out to his gig, which he had left under a shed in the yard. As he removed the blanket from his mare, his mind dwelt stubbornly on the remarks old Adam had let fall concerning clergymen and women. He had already convinced himself that the Reverend Mr. Mullen was the object of Molly's preference, and his nature was big enough to rejoice that she should have chosen so good a man. At least, if this were true, Jonathan Gay would not be his rival.
It was the season of the year when the sunny days gave place to frosty nights, and all the changes of the autumn—the reddening of the fruit, the ripening of the nuts, the falling of the leaves—appeared to occur in the hours between sunset and sunrise. A thin and watery moon shed a spectral light over the meadows, which seemed to float midway between the ashen band of the road and the jagged tops of the pines on the horizon. There was no wind, and the few remaining leaves on the trees looked as if they were cut out of velvet. The promise of a hoar-frost was in the air—and a silver veil lay already over the distance.
When he had turned into the branch road that led from the turnpike to the mill, a gig passed him, driven rapidly, and Reuben Merryweather called "good-night," in his friendly voice. An instant later a spot of white in the road caught Abel's glance, and alighting, he picked up a knitted scarf, which he recognized even in the moonlight as one that Molly had worn. Looking back he saw that the other gig had stopped at the turnpike, and as he hastened toward it with the scarf in his hand, he was rewarded by a flash of bright eyes from the muffled figure at Reuben's side.
"I found this in the road," he said, "you must have dropped it."
"Yes, it fell out—thank you," she answered, and it seemed to him that her hand lingered an instant in his before it was withdrawn and buried beneath the rugs.
The pressure remained with him, and a little later as he drove over the frosted roads, he could still feel, as in a dream, the soft clinging touch of her fingers. Essentially an idealist, his character was the result of a veneering of insufficient culture on a groundwork of raw impulse. People and objects appeared to him less through forms of thought than through colours of the emotions; and he saw them out of relation because he saw them under different conditions from those that hold sway over this planet. The world he moved in was peopled by a race of beings that acted under ideal laws and measured up to an impossible standard; and this mixture of rustic ignorance and religious fervor had endowed him with a power of sacrifice in large matters, while it rendered him intolerant of smaller weaknesses. It was characteristic of the man that he should have arranged for Molly in his thoughts, and at the cost of great suffering to himself, a happiness that was suited to the ideal figure rather than to the living woman.
When he entered the kitchen, after putting the mare into her stall, the familiar room, with its comfortable warmth, dragged him back into a reality in which the dominating spirit was Sarah Revercomb. Even his aching heart seemed to recognize her authority, and to obtrude itself with a sense of embarrassment into surroundings where all mental maladies were outlawed. She was on her knees busily sorting a pile of sweet potatoes, which she suspected of having been frost-bitten; and by sheer force of character, she managed to convince the despairing lover that a frost-bitten potato was a more substantial fact than a broken heart.
"I declar' if the last one of 'em ain't specked! I knew 'twould be so when they was left out thar in the smoke-house that cold spell. Abel, all those sweet potatoes you left out in the smoke-house have been nipped."
"Well, I don't care a hang!" retorted Abel, as he unwrapped his muffler. "If it isn't one thing, it's another. You're enough to drive a sober man to drink."
"If you don't care, I'd like to know who ought to," responded Sarah, whose principal weapon in an argument was the fact that she was always the injured person. "It seems that 'twas all yo' fault since you put 'em thar."
"You'd better give him some supper—he looks almost played out," observed Abner from a corner of the hearth, where he sat smoking with his head hanging on his chest.
Though she might harrow her son's soul, Sarah was incapable of denying him food, so rising from her knees, she unpinned her skirt, and brought him coffee and broiled herring from the stove where they had been keeping hot.
"Where's Archie?" asked Abel, while she plied him with corn muffins.
"Courtin', I reckon, though he'd best be down yonder in the swamp settin' old hare traps. I never saw sech courtin' as you all's anyhow," she concluded. "It don't seem to lead nowhar, nor to end in nothin' except itself. That's what this here ever-lastin' education has done for you, Abel—if you hadn't had those books to give you something to think about, you'd have been married an' settled a long time befo' now. Yo' grandpa over thar was steddyin' about raisin' a family before he was twenty."
On either side of the stove, grandfather and grandmother nodded like an ancient Punch and Judy who were at peace only when they slept. Grandfather's pipe had gone out in his hand, and from grandmother's lap a ball of crimson yarn had rolled on the rag carpet before the fire. Twenty years ago she had begun knitting an enormous coverlet in bright coloured squares, and it was still unfinished, though the strips, packed away in camphor, filled a chest in Sarah's store closet.
"You wouldn't like any girl I'd marry," he retorted with a feeble attempt at mirth. "If I tried to put your advice into practice there'd be trouble as sure as shot."
"No, thar wouldn't—not if I picked her out," she returned.
"Great Scott! Won't you let me choose my own wife even?" he exclaimed, with a laugh in which there was an ironic humour. The soft pressure of Molly's fingers was still on his hand, and he saw her face looking up at him, gentle and beseeching, as she had looked when she offered her lips to his kiss. Above the yearning of his heart there rose now the decision of his judgment—and this had surrendered her to Mr. Mullen! Some rigid strain of morality, inherited from Sarah and therefore continually at war with her, caused him to torture himself into a mental recognition that her choice was for the best.
"That man never walked that had sense enough to pick out a wife," rejoined Sarah. "To think of a great hulkin' fellow like you losin' yo' sense over a half mad will-o'-the-wisp that don't even come of decent people. If she hadn't had eyes as big as saucers, do you reckon you'd ever have turned twice to look at her?"
"For God's sake don't talk about her—she's not going to marry me," he responded, and the admission of the truth he had so often repeated in his own mind caused a pang of disbelief.
"I'd like to know why she ain't?" snorted Sarah indignantly, "does she think she's goin' to get a better catch in this neighbourhood?"
"Oh, it's all one. She doesn't want to, that is enough."
"Well, she's a fool if she doesn't want to, an' I'll say it to her face. If thar's a better lookin' man around here, I'd like to see him, or a better worker. What have the Merryweathers to be so set up about, I'd like to know? And that gal without even a father to her name that she can call her own!"
"You mustn't—I won't stand it any longer."
"Well, it's for yo' good, I reckon. If yo' own mother can't take yo' side, I'd like to know who's goin' to do it?"
"I don't want anybody to take my side. She's got a right not to marry me."
"I ain't saying' she ain't, an' it's a mighty good thing for you that she's sech a plum fool as not to want to. 'Twould be the worst news I'd ever heard if she'd been minded to have you. I'd move heaven an' earth to keep you from marryin' her, an' if the good Lord has done it instead of me, I'm thankful enough to Him for His trouble."
Rising from the table, Abel pushed his untasted food aside with a gesture of loathing. A week ago he had been interested in the minor details of life; to-night he felt that they bored him profoundly.
"If you knew what you were saying you'd hold your tongue," he retorted angrily.
"Ain't you goin' to eat yo' supper?" inquired Sarah anxiously, "that herrin' is real nice and brown."
"I don't want anything. I'm not hungry."
"Mebbe you'd like one of the brandied peaches I'm savin' for Christmas?"
"No, I'm dead beat. I'll go up to sleep pretty soon."
"Do you want a fire? I can lay one in a minute."
He shook his head, not impatiently, but as one to whom brandied peaches and wood fires are matters of complete indifference.
"I've got to see about something in the stable first. Then I'll go to bed."
Taking down a lantern from a nail by the door, he went out, as was his nightly habit, to look at his grey mare Hannah. When he came in again and stumbled up the narrow staircase to his room, he found that Sarah had been before him and kindled a blaze from resinous pine on the two bricks in the fireplace. At the sound of his step, she entered with an armful of pine boughs, which she tossed to the flames.
"I reckon the cracklin' will make you feel mo' comfortable," she observed. "Thar ain't anything like a lightwood fire to drive away the misery."
"It does sound friendly," he responded.
For a moment she hesitated, groping apparently for some topic of conversation which would divert his mind from one subject that engrossed him.
"Archie's just come in," she remarked at last, "an' he walked up with old Uncle Toby, who said he'd seen a ha'nt in the dusk over at Poplar Spring. I don't see how Mrs. Gay an' Miss Kesiah can endure to live thar."
"Oh, they're just darkies' tales—nobody believes in them any more than in conjuring and witches."
"That's true, I reckon, but I shouldn't like to live over thar all the same. They say old Mr. Jonathan comes out of his grave and walks whenever one of 'em is to be buried or married."
"Nobody's dead that I've heard of, and I don't suppose either Mr.Jonathan or Miss Kesiah are thinking of getting married."
"Well, I s'pose so—but I'm might glad he ain't taken the notion to walk around here. I don't believe in ha'nts, but I ain't got no use for 'em."
She went out, closing the door after her; and dropping into a chair by the fire, he buried his face in his hands, while he vowed in his heart that he would stop thinking of Molly.
A warm, though hazy, sun followed the sharp night, and only the blackened and damaged plants in the yard bore witness to the frost, which had melted to the semblance of rain on the grass. On the dappled boughs of the sycamore by the mill-race several bronze leaves hung limp and motionless, as if they were attached by silken threads to the stems, and the coating of moss on the revolving wheel shone like green enamel on a groundwork of ebony. The white mist, which had wrapped the landscape at dawn, still lay in the hollows of the pasture, from which it floated up as the day advanced to dissolve in shining moisture upon the hillside. There was a keen autumn tang in the air—a mingling of rotting leaves, of crushed winesaps, of drying sassafras. As Abel passed from the house to the mill, his gaze rested on a golden hickory tree near the road, where a grey squirrel sported merrily under the branches. Like most of his neighbours, he had drawn his weather predictions from the habits of the wild creatures, and had decided that it would be an open winter because the squirrels had left the larger part of the nuts ungarnered.
At the door of the mill, as he turned the big rusty key in the lock, he told himself doggedly that since he was not to have Molly, the only sensible thing was to surrender the thought of her. While he started a blaze in the stove, and swept the floor with the broomsedge broom he kept for the purpose, he forced his mind to dwell on the sacks of grist that stood ready for grinding. The fox-hound puppy, Moses, had followed him from the house, and sat now over the threshold watching a robin that hopped warily in the band of sunlight. The robin was in search of a few grains of buckwheat which had dropped from a measure, and the puppy had determined that, although he was unable to eat the buckwheat himself, he would endeavor to prevent the robin from doing so. So intent was he upon this resolve, that he forgot to bark at an old negro, who drove up presently in an ancient gig, the harness of which was tied on a decrepit mule with pieces of rope. The negro had left some corn to be ground, and as he took his sack of meal from the miller, he let fall a few lamentations on the general forlorn state of human nature.
"Dish yer livin' is moughty hard, marster, but I reckon we'se all got ter come ter hit."
"Well, you manage to raise a little good corn anyway, so you ought to be thankful instead of complaining."
"Dar ain' nuttin' 'tall ter be thankful fur in dat, suh, case de Lawd He ain' had no mo' ter do wid dat ar co'n den ole Marse Hawtrey way over yonder at Pipin' Tree. I jes' ris dat ar con' wid my own han' right down de road at my f'ont do', an' po'd de water on hit outer de pump at my back un. I'se monst'ous glad ter praise de Lawd fur what He done done, but I ain' gwine ter gin 'im credit fur de wuk er my own fis' en foot."
"Are you going by Jordan's Journey, uncle? I'd like to send ReubenMerryweather's buckwheat to him."
"Naw, boss, I ain't a-gwine by dar, caze dat ar Jerdan's Jerney ain got a good name ter my years. I ain't a-feard er ha'nts by daylight, but I'se monst'ous feared er badness day er nightime, en hit sutney do pear ter me like de badness er ole Marse Jonathan done got in de a'r er dat ar Jerdan's Jerney. Hit's ha'nted by badness, dat's what 'tis, en dar ain nobody cep'n Gawd A'mought Hisse'f dat kin lay badness."
He went out, stooping under the weight of his bag, and picking up a grey turkey's wing from the ledge, Abel began brushing out the valve of the mill, in which the meal had grown heavy from dampness.
"The truth is, Moses," he remarked, "you are a fool to want what you can't have in life." The puppy looked up at him inquiringly, its long ears flapping about its soft foolish face. "But I reckon we're all fools, when it comes to that."
When the grinding was over for the day, he shut down the mill, and calling Moses to heel, went out on the old mill-race, where the upper gate was locked by a crude wooden spar known as the "key." He was standing under the sycamore, with this implement in his hand, when he discerned the figure of Molly approaching slowly amid the feathery white pollen which lay in patches of delicate bloom over the sorrel waste of the broomsedge. Without moving he waited until she had crossed the log and stood looking up at him from the near side of the stream.
"Abel, are you still angry with me?" she asked, smiling.
Dropping the key into the lock, he walked slowly to the end of the mill-race, and descended the short steps to the hillside.
"No, I'm not angry—at least I don't think I am—but I've taken your advice and given you up."
"But, Abel—-"
"I suppose you meant to take Mr. Mullen all the time that you were making a fool of me. He's a better man for you, probably, than I am."
"Do you really think that?" she asked in a tone of surprise. "Would you like to see me married to him?"
He hesitated an instant and then answered: "I honestly believe that it is the best thing for you to do."
Instead of producing the effect he had foreseen his advice brought a luminous moisture to her eyes.
"I suppose you think it would do me good to be preached to three times a day?" she rejoined.
"Well, I believe it wouldn't hurt you, Molly," he responded with a smile.
His attitude of renouncement drew her suddenly nearer.
"It wasn't about Mr. Mullen that I came to talk to you—there is something else."
"Surely you aren't thinking of Jim Halloween?"
"No, no, it isn't a man. Why do you seem to think that the beginning and middle and end of my existence is a man? There are times when I find even a turkey more interesting."
"It is about a turkey, then, that you have come to see me?"
"Oh, no, it's a man, after all, but not a lover—he's Mr. Chamberlayne, the lawyer, from Applegate. Yesterday when he was spending the day at the big house, he came over to see me."
"Had he never seen you before?"
"Of course, when I was little—and later he took me to school in Applegate. I was to stay there until I was twenty-one you know, but I ran away the second year because grandfather fell ill with pneumonia and there was no one to look after him. You remember that, don't you?"
"Yes, I remember. I picked you up on the road and brought you home in my gig. There was a heavy snow storm."
"It seems that I was meant to be educated as a lady. Old Mr. Jonathan left a letter about it."
"He did?—damn him! Why didn't he save himself the trouble by acting decently in the beginning?"
"That was because of Mrs. Gay—he had promised her, when he thought she was dying, some dreadful thing. And after that he was afraid—afraid of her all his life. Isn't it terrible that such a saintly person should have caused so much sin?"
"But what was she to him that he should have been such a coward about her?"
"Oh, he loved her more than anything on earth—for he loved my mother only a little while. When Mrs. Gay first came to live with him, she was so beautiful and so delicate, that she looked as if a wind would blow her away—so soft that she could smother a person like a mass of feathers. He felt after that that he had entangled himself, and it was only at the last when he was dying that he had any remorse. With all his wickedness there was a terrible kind of religion in him—like a rock that is buried under the earth—and he wanted to save his soul alive before he passed on to judgment. As ifthatdid any good—or hecouldmake amends either to me or to God."
"I rather hope he was as unsuccessful in the last case as in the first.But, tell me, Molly, how does it affect you?"
"Not at all—not at all—if he has left me money, I shall not touch it. He wasn't thinking of mother, but of his own soul at the end, and can you tell me that God would wipe out all his dreadful past just because of one instant's fear?"
Her passion, so unlike the meekness of Janet Merryweather, made him look at her wonderingly, and yet with a sympathy that kept him dumb. It took the spirit of a Gay to match a Gay, he thought, not without bitterness.
"But why does Mr. Chamberlayne come to you now?" he asked, when he had regained his voice.
"It is Mrs. Gay—it has always been Mrs. Gay ever since Mr. Jonathan first saw her. She smothered his soul with her softness, and wound him about her little finger when she appeared all the time too weak to lift her hand. That's just the kind Mr. Mullen preaches about in his sermons—the kind that rules without your knowing it. But if she'd been bold and bad instead of soft and good, she couldn't have done half the harm!"
"And Miss Kesiah?" he asked, "had she nothing to do with it?"
"She? Oh, her sister has drained her—there isn't an ounce of red blood left in her veins. Mr. Jonathan never liked her because she is homely, and she had no influence over him. Mrs. Gay ruled him."
"I always thought her so lovely and gentle," he said regretfully, "she seems to me so much more womanly than Miss Kesiah."
"I suppose she is as far as her face goes, and that's what people judge by. If you part your hair and look a certain way nothing that you can do will keep them from thinking you an angel. When I smile at Mr. Mullen in church it convinces him that I like visiting the sick."
"How can you laugh at him, Molly, if you are going to marry him?"
"Have you positively decided," she inquired, "that I am going to marry him?"
"Wasn't that what you meant when you threw me over?"
She shook her head, "No, it wasn't what I meant—but since you've made up your mind, I suppose there's no use for me to say a word?"
"On the whole I don't think there is—for your words are not honest ones."
"Then why do you judge me by them, Abel?" she asked very softly.
"Because a man must judge by something and I can't look into your heart.But if I'm not to be your lover," he added, "I'll not be your plaything.It's now or never."