"Why, Abel!" she exclaimed in mock astonishment.
"It's the last time I shall ever ask you—Molly, will you marry me?"
"You've forgotten poor Mr. Mullen."
"Hang Mr. Mullen! I shall ask you just three times, and the third time will be the last—Now, Molly will you marry me? That's the second."
"But it's so sudden, Abel."
"If ten years can't prepare you, ten minutes will be no better. Here goes the third and last, Molly—-"
"Abel, howcanyou be so silly?"
"That's not an answer—will you—-"
"Do you mean if I don't promise now, I'll never have the chance again?"
"I've told you—listen—-"
"Oh, wait a minute. Please, go slowly."
"—Marry me?"
"Abel, I don't believe you love me!" she said, and began to sob.
"Answer me and I'll show you."
"I didn't think you'd be so cruel—when—-"
"When? Remember I've stopped playing, Molly."
"When you know I'm simply dying for you," she responded.
He smiled at her without moving. "Then answer my question, and there's no drawing back this time remember."
"The question you asked me? Repeat it, please."
"I've said it three times already, and that's enough."
"Must I put it into words? Oh Abel, can't you see it?"
Lifting her chin, he laughed softly as he stooped and kissed her. "I've seen it several times before, darling. Now I want it put into words—just plain ones."
"Then, Mr. Abel Revercomb," she returned demurely, "I should like very much to marry you, if you have no objection."
The next instant her mockery fled, and in one of those spells of sadness, which seemed so alien to her, and yet so much a part of her, she clung to him, sobbing.
"Abel, I love you so, be good to me," she entreated.
"Good to you!" he exclaimed, crushing her to him.
"Oh, those dreadful days since we quarrelled!"
"Why did you do it, darling, since you suffered as well as I?"
"I can't tell—there's something in me like that, I don't know what it is—but we'll quarrel again after this, I suppose."
"Then we deserve to be punished and I hope we shall be."
"How will that help? It's just life and we can't make it different." She drew gently away from him, while a clairvoyance wiser than her years saddened her features. "I wonder if love ever lasts?" she whispered half to herself.
But there was no room in his more practical mind for the question. "Ours will, sweetheart—how can you doubt it? Haven't I loved you for the last ten years, not counting the odd days?"
"And in all those years you kissed me once, while in the last five minutes you've kissed me—how many times? You are wasteful, Abel."
"And you're a dreadful little witch—not a woman."
"I suppose I am, and a nice girl wouldn't talk like this. I'm not the wife you're wanting, Abel."
"The first and last and only one, my darling."
"Judy Hatch would suit you better if she wasn't in love with the rector."
"Confound Judy Hatch! I'll stop your mouth with kisses if you mention her again."
At this she clung to him, laughing and crying in a sudden passion of fear.
"Hold me fast, Abel, and don't let me go, whatever happens," she said.
When he had parted from her at the fence which divided his land from Gay's near the Poplar Spring, he watched her little figure climb the Haunt's Walk and then disappear into the leafless shrubbery at the back of the house. While he looked after her it seemed to him that the wan November day grew radiant with colour, and that spring blossomed suddenly, out of season, upon the landscape. His hour was upon him when he turned and retraced his steps over the silver brook and up the gradual slope, where the sun shone on the bare soil and revealed each separate clod of earth as if it were seen under a microscope. All nature was at one with him. He felt the flowing of his blood so joyously that he wondered why the sap did not rise and mount upward in the trees.
In the yard Sarah was directing a negro boy, who was spreading a second layer of manure over her more delicate plants. As Abel closed the gate, she looked up, and the expression of his face held her eyes while he came toward her.
"What has happened, Abel? You look like Moses when he came down from the mountain."
"It was all wrong—what I told you last night, mother. Molly is going to marry me."
"You mean she's gone an' changed her mind jest as you'd begun to git along without her. I declar', I don't know what has got into you to show so little sperit. If you were the man I took you to be, you'd up an' let her see quick enough that you don't ax twice in the same quarter."
"Oh, all that's over now—she's going to marry me."
"You needn't shout so. I ain't deaf. Samson, sprinkle another spadeful of manure on that bridal-wreath bush over thar by the porch."
"Won't you say you're pleased?"
"I ain't pleased, Abel, an' I ain't going to lie about it. When I git down on my knees to-night, I'll pray harder than I ever prayed in my life that you'll come to yo' senses an' see what a laughing-stock that gal has made of you."
"Then I wish I hadn't told you."
"Well, I'd have knowed it anyhow—it's burstin' out of you. Where're you goin' now? The time's gittin' on toward dinner."
"For my axe. I want to cut a little timber."
"What on earth are you goin' to cut timber at this hour for?"
"Oh, I feel like it, that's all. I want to try my strength."
Going into the kitchen, he came out a minute later with his axe on his shoulder. As he crossed the log over the mill-stream, the spotted fox-hound puppy waddled after him, and several startled rabbits peered out from a clump of sassafras by the "worm" fence. Over the fence went Abel, and under it, on his fat little belly, went Moses, the puppy. In the meadow the life-everlasting shed a fragrant pollen in the sunshine, and a few crippled grasshoppers deluded themselves into the belief that the summer still lingered. Once the puppy tripped over a love-vine, and getting his front paws painfully entangled yelped sharply for assistance. Picking him up, Abel carried him in his arms to the pine wood, where he place him on a bed of needles in a hollow.
Through the slender boles of the trees, the sunlight fell in bars on the carpet of pine-cones. The scent of the living forest was in his nostrils, and when he threw back his head, it seemed to him that the blue sky was resting upon the tree-tops. Taking off his coat, he felt the edge of his blade, while he leaned against the great pine he had marked out for sacrifice. In the midst of the wood he saw the walls of his house rising—saw the sun on the threshold—the smoke mount from the chimney. The dream in his brain was the dream of the race in its beginning—for he saw the home and in the centre of the home he saw a woman and in the arms of the woman he saw a child. Though the man would change, the dream was indestructible, and would flow on from the future into the future. The end it served was not individual, but racial—for it belonged not to the soul of the lover, but to the integral structure of life.
Moving suddenly, as if in response to a joyous impulse, he drew away from the tree, and lifting his axe swung it out into the sunlight. For an instant there was silence. Then a shiver shook the pine from its roots upward, the boughs rocked in the blue sky, and a bird flying out of them sailed slowly into the west.
When Abel had gone, Sarah folded her grey woollen shawl over her bosom, and ordered the boy with the wheelbarrow to return to the barnyard. Left alone her eyes followed her son's figure as it divided the broomsedge in the meadow, but from the indifference of her look she might have gazed on the pine tree toward which he was moving. A little later, when her glance passed to the roof of the mill there was no perceptible change in her expression; and she observed dispassionately that the shingles which caught the drippings from the sycamore were beginning to rot. While she stood there she was in the throes of one of the bitterest sorrows of her life; yet there was no hint of it either in her quiet face or in the rigid spareness of her figure. Her sons had resisted her at times, but until to-day not one of them had rebelled openly against her authority in the matter of marriage. Years ago, in the period of Abner's reaction from a blighted romance, she had chosen, without compunction, a mild-mannered, tame-spirited maiden for his wife. Without compunction, when the wedding was over, she had proceeded, from the best possible motives, to torment the tame-spirited maiden into her grave.
"He's layin' up misery for himself and for all concerned," she said aloud, after a moment, "a girl like that with no name and precious little religion—an idle, vain, silly hussy, with a cropped head!"
A small coloured servant, in a girl's pinafore and a boy's breeches, came to the door, and whispered that the old people were demanding a snack of bread and molasses.
"Tell 'em it ain't the day for sweets an' they ain't goin' to have meat an' molasses the same day," she remarked as she entered the kitchen. "If I didn't watch you every minute, you'd make yo'selves sick with overeatin'."
"I reckon you're right, Sary," piped grandfather in angry tones, "butI ain't so sure I wouldn't rather have the sickness than the watchin'.It's hard on a man of my years an' experience that he shouldn't beallowed to project with his own stomach."
"You'd have been dead long ago but for me, an' you ought to be ashamed of yo'self for talkin' such foolishness. As if I hadn't wo' myself out with waitin' on you, an' no blood relation."
"No blood relation!" chimed in grandmother maliciously, "no blood relation!"
"Well, you hurry up an' get ready for dinner, for I'm goin' out afterwards."
"Whar on earth are you goin', Sary? It ain't Sunday."
"It don't matter to you whar I'm goin'—you jest set right up an' eat yo' soup."
When she had poured the contents of the pot into the two earthenware bowls, she crumbled a piece of bread into each, and gave the dinner into the trembling hands which were stretched out eagerly to receive it. Then taking the red-and-white cloth from the cupboard, she set the table for five, and brought the dish of turnips and boiled beef from the stove. Every detail was carefully attended to as if her thoughts were not on the hillside with Abel, but she herself could not eat so much as a mouthful. A hard lump rose in her throat and prevented her swallowing.
The men did not appear, so leaving their dinner in the stove, she went upstairs and put on the black poke bonnet and the alpaca mantle trimmed with bugles which she wore on Sundays and on the occasional visits to her neighbours. As it was her custom never to call without bearing tribute in the form of fruit or preserves, she placed a jar of red currant jelly into a little basket, and started for her walk, holding it tightly in her black worsted gloves. She knew that if Molly divined her purpose she would hardly accept the gift, but the force of habit was too strong for her, and she felt that she could not start out to make a visit with empty hands.
Her chief anxiety was to be gone before Abel should return, and for this reason she left the house by the back door, and chose the small, descending path that led through the willows to Jordan's Journey. As she neared the brook a bow of blue ribbon hanging on a branch caught her eye, and she recognized a bit of the trimming from Blossom's Sunday dress. Releasing it she put it into her pocket, with the resolve that she would reprove her granddaughter for wearing her best clothes in such unsuitable places. Then her thoughts returned to the immediate object of her visit, and she told herself sternly that she would let Molly Merryweather know her opinion of her while there was yet time for the girl to withdraw from the marriage. That she was wronging her son by exerting such despotic authority was the last thought that would have occurred to her. A higher morality than that of ordinary mortals had guided her in the past, and she followed it now.
When she reached the rail fence, she found some difficulty in climbing it, since her legs had grown rheumatic with the cold weather; but by letting the basket down first on a forked stick, she managed to ease herself gently over to the opposite side. Here she rested, while she carefully brushed away the dried pollen from the golden-rod, which was staining her dress. Then regaining her strength after a minute, she pushed on under the oak trees, where the moist, dead leaves made a soft, velvety sound, to the apple orchard and the sunken flagged walk that led to the overseer's cottage.
In the sunshine on the porch Reuben Merryweather was sitting; and at sight of his visitor, he rose, with a look of humble surprise, and invited her into the house. His manner toward her was but a smaller expression of his mental attitude to the universe. That he possessed any natural rights as an individual had never occurred to him; and the humility with which he existed gave place only to the mild astonishment which filled him at any recognition of that existence by man or Providence.
"Walk in an' sit down, ma'am," he said hospitably leading the way into the little sitting-room, where the old hound dozed on the rug. "Molly's jest gone down to the spring-house, but she'll be back in a minute."
"Reuben Merryweather—" began Sarah, and then she stopped, "you ain't lookin' over sprightly," she said after a pause.
"I've got a weak chest, an' the cold settles on it."
"Did you ever try mutton suet laid over it on a piece of red flannel?'Tis the best cure I know of."
"Molly makes me a plaster for it at night." The feeling that he had engrossed the conversation for his selfish ends led him to remark after a minute, "You have changed but little, Sarah, a brave woman you are."
"Not so brave, Reuben, but I'm a believer an' that helps me. I'd have broken down under the burden often enough if my faith hadn't supported me. You've had yo' troubles, too, Reuben, an' worse ones."
"It's true, it's true," said the old man, coughing behind his hand, "to see my po' gal suffer so was worst—but however bad things seemed to us on top, I've al'ays believed thar was a hidden meanin' in em' that our eyes couldn't see."
"Ah, you were al'ays a soft natured man, Reuben, too soft natured for yo' own good, I used to think."
"'Twas that that stood against me with you, Sarah, when we were young. Do you remember the time you refused to drive back with me from that picnic at Falling Creek because I wouldn't give Jacob Bumpass a hiding about something? That was a bitter pill to me, an' I've never forgot it."
Sarah had flushed a little, and her stern face appeared to have grown ten years younger. "To think that you ain't forgot all that old foolishness, Reuben!"
"Well, thar's been time enough an' trouble enough, no doubt," he answered, "but seein' you lookin' so like yo' old self put me in mind of it."
"Lord, Reuben, I ain't thought of all that for forty years!"
"No mo' have I, Sarah except when I see you on Sundays sittin' across the church from me. You were a beauty in yo' day, though some folks use to think that that little fair thing, Mary Hilliard, was better lookin'. To me 'twas like settin' a dairy maid beside a queen."
"Even my husband thought Mary Hilliard, was prettier," said Sarah, and her tone showed that this tribute to her youthful vanity had touched her heart.
"Well, I never did. You were al'ays too good for me an' I never begrudged you to Abner. He was a better man."
For an instant she looked at him steadily, while living honesty struggled in her bosom against loyalty to the dead.
"No, Reuben, Abner was not a better man," she said presently, as if the words were thrust out of her by a chastening conscience. "My pride kept me up after I had married him; but he was born shiftless an' he died shiftless. He never did a day's work in his life that I didn't drive him to. His children have never known how it was, for I've al'ays made 'em think he was a hard worker an' painstakin' to keep back his laziness from croppin' out in 'em, if I could."
"You've brought 'em up well. That's a fine son of yours that comes courtin' my gal, Sarah. I've hoped she'd fancy him for the sake of old times."
"I never thought of yo' recollectin' that feelin', Reuben. It makes me feel almost young again, an' I that old an' wo' out. I've had a hard life—thar's no disputin' it, marriage is mostly puttin' up with things, I reckon, when it ain't makin' believe."
"Thar's mighty few that gits the one that's meant for 'em," said Reuben, "that's sure enough. If we did we'd stop movin' forward, I suppose, an' begin to balk. I haven't much life now, except in Molly, an' it's the things that pleases or hurt her that I feel the most. She's got a warm heart an' a hot temper like you used to have, Sarah, an' the world ain't easy generally to yo' sort."
For a time Sarah was silent, her hands in their black woolen gloves gripping the handle of the basket.
"Well, I must be goin', Reuben," she said presently, rising from her chair. "I'm sorry about yo' chest, an' I jest stepped over to bring you this glass of currant jelly I made last summer. It goes well with meat when yo' appetite ain't hearty."
She held out her hand, shook his with a hurried and awkward movement, and went out of the front door and down the flagged walk as Molly's steps were heard in the kitchen at the back.
"Sarah Revercomb has been here, honey," said Reuben. "She brought me over this glass of currant jelly, and said she was sorry to miss you."
"Why, what could she have meant?" asked Molly. "She hates me and she knows I've never liked her."
"Like most folks it ain't Sarah but the way you take her that matters. We've all got the split somewhar in our shell if you jest know how to find it. I reckon she's given in about Abel an' came over to show it."
"I'm glad she brought you the jelly, and perhaps she is getting softer with age," rejoined Molly, still puzzled.
"Don't worry, honey, she's a good woman at bottom, but mortal slow of larnin', and thar's a lot of Sarah in that boy of hers."
"I suppose there is, grandfather, for all their fierce quarrelling. They have the kind of love that will die for you and yet will not so much as suffer you to live. That's the way Mrs. Revercomb loves, and it's the way Abel is loving me now."
"Let him larn, pretty, let him larn. He'll be worth twice as much at fifty as he is to-day, an' so will you for that matter. They're fools that say love is for the young, Molly, don't you believe 'em."
Sarah, meanwhile, passed slowly down the flagged walk under the gnarled old apple trees in the orchard. A few heavy-winged insects, awaking from the frost of the night, droned over the piles of crushed winesaps, and she heard the sound as though it came to her across a distance of forty years. They were not easy years; she was worn by their hardness, crippled by their poverty, embittered by their sorrows. "I've had a hard life," she thought. "I've had a hard life, an' it warn't fair." For the first time it occurred to her that the Providence she had served had not used her honourably in return. "Even Abner al'ays thought that Mary Hilliard was the prettiest," she added, after a minute.
As she crossed the lawn at Jordan's Journey, Uncle Abednego, the butler, appeared at the back door, and detained her with an excited wave of the hand.
"Lawd A'mighty, dar's bad times yer, Miss Sary!" he cried, "Miss Angela she's been mos' dead fur goin' on two hours, en we all's done sont Cephus on de bay horse arter Marse Jonathan!"
Three days later the bay horse returned at a gallop with Jonathan Gay in the saddle. At the head of the steps Kesiah was standing, and she answered the young man's anxious questions with a manner which she tried to make as sympathetic as the occasion required. This effort to adjust her features into harmony with her feelings had brought her brows together in a forbidding scowl and exaggerated the harsh lines between mouth and chin.
"Am I in time?" he asked in a trembling voice, and his hand reached out to her for support.
"The immediate danger is over, Jonathan," she answered, while she led him into the library and closed the door softly behind them. "For hours we despaired of her recovery, but the doctors say now that if there is no other shock, she may live on for months."
"I got your note last night in Washington," he returned. "It was forwarded by mail from Applegate. Is the doctor still with her?"
"No, he has just gone. The rector is there now. She finds him a great comfort."
"It was so sudden, Aunt Kesiah—she appeared well when I left her. What caused the attack?"
"A talk she had had with Mr. Chamberlayne. It seems he thought it best to prepare her for the fact that your Uncle Jonathan left a good deal of his property—it amounts to an income of about ten thousand a year, I believe, to Reuben Merryweather's granddaughter when she comes of age. Of course it wasn't the money—Angela never gave that a thought—but the admission that the girl was his illegitimate daughter that struck so heavy a blow."
"But surely she must have suspected—-"
"She has never suspected anything in her life. It is a part of her sweetness, you know, that she never faces an unpleasant fact until it is literally thrust on her notice. As long as your uncle was so devoted to her and so considerate, she thought it a kind of disloyalty to inquire as to the rest of his life. Once I remember, twenty years ago, when that poor distraught creature came to me—I went straight to Angela and tried to get her to use her influence with her uncle for the girl's sake. But at the first hint, she locked herself in her room and refused to let me come near her. Then it was that I had that terrible quarrel with Mr. Gay, and he hardly spoke to me again as long as he lived. I believe, though, he would have married Janet after my talk with him except for Angela's illness, which was brought on by the shock of hearing him speak of his intention." She sighed wonderingly, her anxious frown deepening between her eyebrows. "They both seemed to think that in some way I was to blame for the whole thing," she added, "and your uncle never forgave me. It's the same way now. Mr. Chamberlayne spoke quite angrily to me when he saw the effect of his interview. He appeared to think that I ought to have prevented it."
"Could it have been kept from her, do you suppose?"
"That looked impossible, and of course, he broke it to her very gently. He also, you know, has all his life had a sentiment about Angela, and that, I think is why he never married. He told me once that she came nearer than any woman he had ever seen to representing every man's ideal."
"What I can't understand is why she should have been so upset by the discovery?"
"Well, she was very fond of your uncle, and she has cherished quite romantically the memory of his affection for her. I think—for that is Angela's way—that he means much more to her dead than he did living—and this, she says, has blackened the image."
"But even then it seems incomprehensible that it should have made her really so ill."
"Oh, you don't know her yet, Jonathan. I remember your uncle used to say that she was more like a flower than a woman, and he was always starting alarms about her health. We lived in a continual panic about her for several years, and it was her weakness, as much as her beauty, that gave her her tremendous power over him. He was like wax in her hands, though of course he never suspected it."
The tread of Mr. Mullen was heard softly on the staircase, and he entered with his hand outstretched from the starched cuff that showed beneath the sleeve of his black broadcloth coat. Pausing on the rug, he glanced from Kesiah to Jonathan with a grave and capable look, as though he wished them to understand that, having settled everything with perfect satisfaction in the mind of Mrs. Gay, he was now ready to perform a similar office for the rest of the household.
"I am thankful to say that I left your dear mother resting peacefully," he observed in a whisper. "You must have had a distressing journey, Mr. Gay?"
"I was very much alarmed," replied Gay, with a nervous gesture as if he were pushing aside a disagreeable responsibility. "The note took three days to find me, and I didn't know until I got here whether she was alive or dead."
"It is easy to understand your feelings," returned the rector, still whispering though Gay had spoken in his natural voice. "Such a mother as yours deserves the most careful cherishing that you can give her. To know her has been an inspiration, and I am never tired of repeating that her presence in the parish, and occasional attendance at church, are privileges for which we should not forget to be thankful. It is not possible, I believe, for any woman to approach more closely the perfect example of her sex."
"Perhaps I had better go up to her at once. We are deeply grateful to you, Mr. Mullen, for your sympathy."
"Who would not have felt?" rejoined the other, and taking up his hat from the table, he went out, still treading softly as though he were walking upon something he feared to hurt.
"Poor mother! It's wonderful the way she has with people!" exclaimedGay, turning to Kesiah.
"She's always had it with men—there's something so appealing about her.You'll be very careful what you say to her, Jonathan."
"Oh, I'll not confess my sins, if that's what you mean," he responded as he ascended the staircase.
The room was fragrant with burning cedar, and from the dormer-windows, latticed by boughs, a band of sunlight stretched over the carpet to the high white bed in which his mother was lying. Her plaintive blue eyes, which clung to him when he entered, appeared to say; "Yes, see how they have hurt me—a poor frail creature." Above her forehead her hair, which was going grey, broke into a mist, and spread in soft, pale strands over the pillow. Never had her helpless sweetness appealed so strongly to his emotions, as when she laid her hand on his arm and said in an apologetic whisper:
"Dear boy, how I hated to bring you back."
"As if I wouldn't have come from the end of the world, dearest mother," he answered.
He had fallen on his knees by her bed, but when Kesiah brought him a chair, he rose and settled himself more comfortably.
"I wanted you, dear, but if you knew how I dreaded to become a drag on you. Men must be free, I know—never let me interfere with your freedom—I feel such a helpless, burdensome creature."
"If you could only see how young and lovely you look even when you are ill, you would never fear becoming a burden. In spite of your grey hairs, you might pass for a girl at this minute."
"You wicked flatterer!—but, oh, Jonathan, I've had a blow!"
"I understand. It must have been rough."
"And to think how I always idealized him!—how I had believed in his love for me and cherished his memory! To discover that even at the last—on his deathbed—he was thinking of that woman!"
She wept gently, wiping her eyes with a resigned and suffering gesture on the handkerchief Kesiah had handed her. "I feel as if my whole universe had crumbled," she said.
"But it was no affront to you, mother—it all happened before he saw you, and was only an episode. Those things don't bite into a man's life, you know."
"Of course, I knew there had been something, but I thought he had forgotten it—that he was faithful to his love for me—his spirit worship, he called it. Then to find out so long after his death—when his memory had become a part of my religion—that he had turned back at the end."
"It wasn't turning away from you, it was merely an atonement. Your influence was visible even there."
"I am sorry for the child, of course," she said sadly, after weeping a little—"who knows but she may have inherited her mother's character?"
"The doctor said you were to be quiet, Angela," remarked Kesiah, who had stood at the foot of the bed in the attitude of a Spartan. "Jonathan, if you begin to excite her, you'd better go."
"Oh, my boy, my darling boy," sobbed Mrs. Gay, with her head on his shoulder, "I have but one comfort and that is the thought that you are so different—that you will never shatter my faith in you. If you only knew how thankful I am to feel that you are free from these dreadful weaknesses of men."
Cowed by her helplessness, he looked down on her with shining eyes.
"Remember the poor devil loved you, mother, and be merciful to his memory," he replied, touched, for the first time, by the thought of his uncle.
"I shall try, Jonathan, I shall try, though the very thought of evil is a distress to me," she replied, with a saintly look. "As for the girl, I have only the tenderest pity for the unfortunate creature."
"That's like you, mother."
"Kesiah says that she has behaved very well. Didn't you say so, Kesiah?"
"Yes, Mr. Chamberlayne told me that she appeared perfectly indifferent when he spoke to her. She even remarked, I believe, that she didn't see that it concerned her."
"Well, she's spirit enough. Now stop talking, mother, I am going."
"God bless you, my darling boy—you have never failed me."
Instead of appeasing his conscience, the remark completed his descent into the state of disenchantment he had been approaching for hours. The shock of his mother's illness, coming after three days of marriage, had been too much for his unstable equilibrium, and he felt smothered by an oppression which, in some strange way, seemed closing upon him from without. It was in the air—in the faded cretonne of the room, in the grey flashes of the swallows from the eaves of the house, in the leafless boughs etched delicately against the orange light of the sky. Like most adventurers of the emotions, he was given to swift despondencies as well as to vivid elations, and the tyranny of a mood was usually as absolute as it was brief. The fact was there while it lasted like the physical sensation of hunger or gratification. When it departed he seldom spurred his imagination to the pursuit of it.
"So it's over," he said under his breath, as he looked through the lacework of ivy on the small greenish panes to the desolate November fields, "and I've been a damn fool for the asking!"
At the end of the week Blossom returned to the mill, and on the afternoon of her arrival, Gay met her in the willow copse by the brook. To the casual observer there would have appeared no perceptible change in his manner, but a closer student of the hearts of lovers might have drawn an inference from the fact that he allowed her to wait five minutes for him at the place of meeting. True, as he explained passionately, his mother had asked for him just as he was leaving the house, and it was clearly impossible that he should refuse his mother! That he was still ardent for Blossom's embraces was evident to her glance, but the affair was settled, the mystery solved, and there was no longer need that he should torment himself. That the love of his kind is usually a torment or nothing had not, at this stage, occurred to either of the lovers. He was feeling strongly that, having conducted himself in so honourable a manner there was nothing more to be expected of him; while she assured her heart that when his love had proved capable of so gallant a sacrifice, it had established the fact of its immortality. The truth was that the fire still burned, though the obstacles, which had supplied fuel to the flames, were consumed, and a pleasant warmth rather than a destroying blaze was the result. Had Gay sounded the depths of his nature, which he seldom did, he would have discovered that for him passion was a kind of restlessness translated into emotion. When the restlessness was appeased, the desire in which it had revealed itself slowly evaporated.
"How is your mother?" was Blossom's first eager question, "oh, I do hope she is better!"
"Better, yes, but we're still awfully anxious, the least shock may kill her—Aunt Kesiah and I are walking on pins and needles. How are you, Beauty? Did you enjoy your visit?"
He kissed her lips, and she clung to him with the first expression of weakness she had ever shown.
"How could I when it ended like that?"
"Well, you're married anyway—that ought to satisfy you. What does it feel like?"
"I can't believe it—and I haven't even any ring."
"Oh, the ring! If you'd had it, you'd have dropped it about somewhere and let out the secret."
"I wish it had been in church and before a clergyman."
"Are you trying to make me jealous again of the Reverend Orlando? I'm an old married man now, and it is hopeless."
"Do you really feel married, Jonathan?"
"The deuce I don't! If I did I'd be galloping down the turnpike."
"I wonder why you did it?" she questioned a little wistfully, "you take it so lightly."
"I could only take it lightly after I'd done it—that's why, darling."
"If I could believe in it I shouldn't mind the secrecy," she said, "but I feel so wicked and underhand that I hardly dare hold up my head before the folks at home. Jonathan, when do you think we may come out and confess?"
For a moment he did not answer, and she watched the frown gather slowly between his eyebrows.
"There, there, Blossom, don't begin that already," he responded irritably, "we can't make it public as long as my mother lives—that's out of the question. Do you think I could love you if I felt you had forced me to murder her? Heaven knows I've done enough—I've married you fair and square, and you ought to be satisfied."
"I am satisfied," she replied on the point of tears, "but, oh, Jonathan,I'm not happy."
"Then it's your own fault," he answered, still annoyed with her. "You've had everything your own way, and just because I get in trouble and come to you for sympathy, you begin to nag. For God's sake, don't become a nagging woman, Blossom. A man hates her worse than poison."
"O Jonathan!" she cried out sharply, placing her hand on her breast as though he had stabbed her.
"Of course, I'm only warning you. Your great charm is poise—I never saw a woman who had so much of it. That's what a man wants in a wife, too. Vagaries are all right in a girl, but when he marries, he wants something solid and sensible."
"Then you do love me, Jonathan?"
"Don't be a goose," he rejoined—for it was a question to which he had never in his life returned a direct answer.
"Of course, I know you do or you wouldn't have married me—but I wish you'd tell me so—just in words—sometimes."
"If I told you so, you'd have no curiosity left, and that would be bad for you. Come, kiss me, sweetheart, that's better than talking."
She kissed him obediently, as mildly complaisant as she had once been coldly aloof. Though the allurement of the remote had deserted her, she still possessed, in his eyes, the attraction of the beautiful. If the excitement of the chase was ended, the pleasure of the capture was still amply sufficient to make up the difference. He laughed softly as he kissed her, enjoying her freshness, her surrender, her adoration, which she no longer attempted to hide.
When he parted from her several hours afterwards, he had almost recovered the casual gaiety which had become his habit of mind. Life was too short either to wonder or to regret, he had once remarked, and a certain easy fatalism had softened so far the pricks of a disturbing conscience.
The walk from the pasture to the house led through a tangle of shrubbery called by the negroes, the Haunt's Walk, and as he pushed the leafless boughs out of his way, a flitting glimpse of red caught his eye beyond a turn in the path. An instant later, Molly passed him on her way to the spring or to the meadows beyond.
"Good day, Mr. Jonathan," she said, while her lips curved and she looked up at him with her arch and brilliant smile.
"Good day to yourself, cousin," he responded gaily, "what is your hurry?"
As he made a movement to detain her, she slipped past him, and a minute afterwards her laugh floated back.
"Oh, there's a reason!" she called over her shoulder.
A sudden thought appeared to strike him at her words, and turning quickly in the path, he looked after her until she disappeared down the winding path amid the tangle of shrubbery.
"Jove, she is amazingly pretty!" he said at last under his breath.
The winter began in a long rain and ended in a heavy snow which lay for a week over the country. In the chill mornings while she dressed, Molly watched the blue-black shadows of the crows skimming over the white ground, and there was always a dumb anxiety at her heart as she looked after them.
On Christmas Eve there had been a dance at Piping Tree, and because she had danced twice with Gay (who had ridden over in obedience to a whim), Abel had parted from her in anger. For the first time she had felt the white heat of his jealousy, and it had aroused rebellion, not acquiescence, in her heart. Jonathan Gay was nothing to her (though he called her his cousin)—he had openly shown his preference for Blossom—but she insisted passionately that she was free and would dance with whomsoever she pleased. To Abel's demand that she should give up "round dances" entirely, she had returned a defiant and mocking laugh. They had parted in an outburst of temper, to rush wildly together a few days later when they met by chance in the turnpike.
"You love him, but you don't love him enough, honey," said Reuben, patting her head. "You love yourself still better than him."
"Three months ago he hardly dared hope for me—he would have kissed the dust under my feet—and now he flies into fits of jealousy because I dance with another man."
"'Tis human natur to go by leaps an' starts in love, Molly."
"It's a foolish way, grandfather."
"Well, I ain't claimin' that we're over-wise, but thar's al'ays life ready to teach us."
When the snow thawed, spring appeared so suddenly that it looked as if it had lain there all winter in a green and gold powder over the meadows. Flashes of blue, like bits of fallen sky, showed from the rail fences; and the notes of robins fluted up from the budding willows beside the brook. On the hill behind Reuben Merryweather's cottage the peach-trees bloomed, and red-bud and dogwood filled the grey woods with clouds of delicate colour. Spring, which germinated in the earth, moved also, with a strange restlessness, in the hearts of men and women. As the weeks passed, that inextinguishable hope, which mounts always with the rising sap, looked from their faces.
On the morning of her birthday, a warm April day, Molly smiled at herself in the mirror, and because the dimples became her, wondered how she could manage to keep on smiling forever. Blushing and paling she tried a ribbon on her hair, threw it aside, and picked up another.
"I am thankful for many things," she was thinking, "and most of all I am thankful that I am pretty. I suppose it's better to be good like Judy Hatch, but I'd rather be pretty."
She was at the age when the forces of character still lie dormant, and an accident may determine the direction of their future development. It is the age when it is possible for fortune to make a dare-devil of a philosopher, a sceptic of a worshipper, a cynic of a sentimentalist.
When she went down the flagged walk a little later to meet Abel by the blazed pine as she had promised, she was still smiling to herself and to the blue birds that sang joyously in the blossoming trees in the orchard. At the end of the walk her smile vanished for she came face to face with Jim Halloween, who carried a new-born lamb in his arms.
"Many happy returns of the day," he began with emotion. "I thought a present like this would be the most acceptable thing I could bring to you—an' ma agreed with me when I asked her advice."
"It's very good of you—and how darling it is! I'll take it back and make it comfortable before I start out."
Taking the lamb into her arms, she hid her face in its wool while they returned to the house.
"It ain't so young as it looks, an will begin to be peart enough befo' long," he remarked. "Something useful as well as ornamental, was what I had in mind to bring you. 'Thar's nothin' mo' suitable all round for the purpose than a lamb,' was what I said to ma. 'She can make a pet of it at first, an' then when it gets too big to pet, she can turn it into mutton.'"
"But I wouldn't—I'd never let it be killed—the little darling!"
"Now, that's foolishness, I reckon," he returned admiringly, "but thar's something downright takin' in foolishness as long as a woman is pretty. I don't mind it, an' I don't reckon ma would unless it turned to wastefulness. Is thar' any hope you've changed yo' mind since the last time I spoke about marriage?"
"No, I haven't changed, Mr. Halloween."
He sighed not passionately, but with a resigned and sentimental regret.
"Well, in that case, it's a pity I've wasted so much time wantin' you, I reckon," he rejoined. "It ain't sensible to want what you can't have, an I've always tried to be sensible, seein' I'm a farmer. If I hadn't set my fancy on you I'd have waited on Blossom Revercomb as likely as not."
They had reached the house, and she did not reply until she had entered the living-room and placed the lamb in a basket. Coming out again, she took up the thread of the conversation as she closed the door behind her.
"I wonder all of you don't turn your eyes on Blossom," she observed.
"Yes, she's handsome enough, but stiff-mouthed and set like all the rest of the Revercombs. I shouldn't like to marry a Revercomb, when it comes to that."
"Shouldn't you?" she asked and laughed merrily.
"They say down at Bottoms," he went on, "that she's gone moonstruck about Mr. Jonathan, an' young Adam Doolittle swears he saw them walkin' together on the other side of old orchard hill."
"I thought she was too sensible a girl for that."
"They're none of 'em too sensible. I'm the only man I ever saw who never had a woman moonstruck about him—an' it makes me feel kind of lonesome to hear the others talk. It's a painful experience, I reckon, but it must be a fruitful source of conversation with a man's wife, if he ever marries. Has it ever struck you," he inquired, "that the chief thing lackin' in marriage is conversation?"
"I don't know—I've never thought about it."
"Now, I have often an' over again, ma bein' sech a silent person to live with. It's the silence that stands between Blossom Revercomb an' me—an' her brother Abel is another glum one of the same sort, isn't he?"
"Do you think so? I hadn't noticed it."
"An' you seein' so much of him! Well, all folks don't observe things as sharply as I do—'twas a way I was born with. But I passed him at the fork as I came up, an' he was standin' just as solemn an' silent while Mr. Chamberlayne, over from Applegate, was askin' him questions."
"What questions? Did you hear them?"
"Oh, about his mother an' prospects of the grist-mill. The lawyer went on afterward to the big house to do business with Mr. Jonathan."
They had reached the point in the road where a bridle path from the mill ran into it; and in the centre of the field, which was woven in faint spring colours like an unfinished tapestry, Molly descried the figure of Abel moving rapidly toward her. Dismissing her companion, she ran forward with her warm blood suffusing her face.
"Abel," she said, "tell me that you are happy," and lifted her mouth to his kiss.
"Something in the spring makes me wild for you, Molly. I can't live without you another year, and hear the blue birds and see the green burst out so sudden. There is a terrible loneliness in the spring, darling."
"But I'm here, Abel."
"Yes, you're here, but you aren't near enough, for I'm never sure of you. That's the cause of it—shall I ever be sure of you even after we are married? You've got different blood in you, Molly—blood that doesn't run quiet,—and it makes me afraid. Do you know I've been to look at the pines this morning, and I am all one big ache to begin on the house."
"But you're happy—say you're happy."
"How can I be happy, when I'm wanting you with every drop of my blood and yet never certain that I shall have you. The devil has a lot to do with it, I reckon—for there are times when I am half blind with jealousy and doubt of you. Did you ever kiss a man before me, Molly?"
She laughed, moved by an instinct to torment him. "You wouldn't have asked me that three months ago, and you wouldn't have cared."
"It's different now. I've got a right to know."
"You'll never know anything because you have the 'right' to," she returned impatiently. "I hate the word—how silly you are, Abel."
"If you'd call me mad you'd come nearer to it, I reckon. It's the way of the Hawtreys—we've always gone neck and crop over the fences without giving a thought to the damage we've done by the way. My mother went like that at religion—she's gone over so hard to religion that she hasn't left a piece of her for common humanity. All the world is divided for her between religion and damnation. I believe she thinks the very eggs in the hen-house are predestined to be saved or damned. And with me it's the same, only it isn't religion, but you. It's all you to me, Molly, even the spring."
"You're so wholehearted, and I'm so lightminded. You ought to have loved a staid, sober woman. I was born passionate and changeful just as you were born passionate and steady."
"Don't, Molly, if you only knew how you hurt me when you talk like that. You've flown into my heart like a little blue bird into a cage, and there you'll beat and flutter, but you can't get out. Some day you'll rest there quiet, sweetheart."
"Don't call it a cage, and never, never try to hold me or I'll fly away."
"Yet you love me, Molly?"
She threw her arms about his neck, rising on tiptoe while she kissed his mouth. "I love you—and yet in my heart I don't really believe in love," she answered. "I shouldn't be surprised to wake up any morning and find that I had dreamed it."
"It makes me want to curse those that put your mind out of joint when you were little and innocent."
"I don't believe I was ever little and innocent—I was born out of bitterness."
"Then I'll cure you, darling. I'll love you so hard that you'll forget all the terrible things you knew as a child."
She shook her head, gaily and yet with a touch of scorn for his assurance. "You may try with all your strength, but when a sapling has been bent crooked you can't pull it straight."
"But you aren't crooked, Molly," he answered, kissing her throat above her open blouse.
She glowed at his kiss, and for one instant, it seemed to them that their spirits touched as closely as their bodies, while the longing and the rapture of spring drew them together.
"You're mine now, Molly—I've got you close," he said as he held her.
At his words the rosy waves upon which they had floated broke suddenly on the earth, and turning slowly they walked hand in hand out of the field into the turnpike. A strange shyness had fallen over them, for when Molly tried to meet his eyes, she found that her lashes trembled and fell;—yet this shyness was as delicious as the ecstasy from which it had come.
But Nature seldom suffers such high moments to pass before they have been paid for in physical values. As the lovers passed into the turnpike, there came the sound of a horse at a trot, and a minute later Jonathan Gay rode toward them, leaning slightly over the neck of his bay. Seeing them, he lifted his hat and brought down his horse to a walk, as if prompted by a sudden desire to look closer in Molly's face. Her rapture evidently became her, for after his first casual glance, he turned again quickly and smiled into her eyes. Her look met his with the frankness of a child's and taken unawares—pleased, too, that he should so openly admire her—she smiled back again with the glow of her secret happiness enriching her beauty.
In a moment Gay had passed on, and turning to Abel, she saw that a frown darkened his features.
"He had no right to look at you like that, and you oughtn't to have smiled back, Molly," he said sternly.
Her nature leaped instantly to arms. "I suppose I've a right to my smiles," she retorted defiantly.
"No you haven't—not now. An engaged woman ought to be proper and sober—anybody will tell you so—ask Mr. Mullen. A girl may flirt a little and nobody thinks any harm of it, but it's different afterwards, and you know it."
"I know nothing of the kind, and I refuse to be preached to. I might as well marry Mr. Mullen."
The taunt, though it was uttered half in jest, appeared to torment him beyond endurance.
"How can you talk to me like this, after what you said five minutes ago?" he demanded.
His tone approached, unfortunately, the ministerial, and as he spoke, her anger flamed over her as hotly as her happiness had done a few minutes earlier.
"That was five minutes ago," she retorted with passion.
Stopping in the road, he caught her arms and held them to her sides, while the thunder cloud blackened his forehead. Two playthings of Nature, swept alternately by the calm and the storm of elemental forces, they faced each other in the midst of mating birds and insects that were as free as they.
"Do you mean that you've changed, and in five minutes?" he asked.
"I've always told you I could change in three," she retorted.
"I don't believe it—you are behaving foolishly."
"And you are wise, I suppose—preaching and prating to me as if you stood in the pulpit. When you were begging me so humbly for a kind word, I might have known that as soon as you got the kind word, you'd begin to want to manage me body and soul—that's a man all over."
"I merely said that an engaged woman ought not to smile too free at other men—and that you ought not to even more than others, because there is something so inviting about you. Mr. Mullen would say the same thing from the pulpit—and what one man can say in the pulpit, I reckon, another may repeat in the road."
"No, he mayn't—not if he wants to marry me."
"If I promise not to say a word more about it, will you get over your temper?"
"If you keep your promise, but how am I to know that you won't burst out again the next time I look at a man?"
"Only try to look at them a little differently, Molly, not quite so wide-eyed and red-lipped—but primmer and with lowered lashes, just a bit contemptuous, as if your were thinking 'you might as well be a stick or a stone for all the thought I am giving you.'" The mental picture appeared to afford him satisfaction, for he resumed after a moment. "I believe if you'd practise it a while before the glass you could do it—you are so clever."
"Why on earth should I make myself ugly just to please you?"
"It wouldn't be making yourself ugly—I can't endure an ugly woman. AllI want you to be is sober."
"Then what made you fall in love with me? It certainly was not for soberness."
He shook his head hopelessly, puzzled for the first time by the too obvious contradiction between the ideal and the actual—between the phantom of a man's imagination and the woman who enthralls his heart.
"To save my life I couldn't tell you why I did," he replied. "It does seem, a bit foolish to fall in love with a woman as she is and then try to make her over into something different."
"Judy Hatch was the person God intended for you, I'm sure of it."
"Well, I'm not, and if I were I'd go ahead and defeat his intentions as I'm doubtless doing this minute. Let's make up now, so you'd as well stop talking silliness."
"It's you that talks silliness, not I—as if I were going through life lowering my lashes and looking contemptuous! But you're your mother all over again. I've heard her say a dozen times that a girl who is born homely ought to get down on her knees and thank the Lord for protecting her from temptation."
"You never heard me say it, did you?"
"No, but I shall yet if I live long enough—and all because of your ridiculous jealousy."
The humour of this struck him, and he remarked rather grimly:
"Good God, Molly, what a vixen you are!" Then he broke into a laugh, and catching her to him, stopped her mouth with kisses.
"Well, we're in it," he said, "and we can't get out, so there's no use fighting about it."
Old Reuben, seated in his chair on the porch, watched Molly come up the flagged walk over the bright green edgings of moss. Her eyes, which were like wells of happiness, smiled at him beneath the blossoming apple boughs. Already she had forgotten the quarrel and remembered only the bliss of the reconciliation.
"I've had visitors while you were out, honey," said the old man as she bent to kiss him. "Mr. Chamberlayne and Mr. Jonathan came up and sat a bit with me."
"Was it on business, grandfather?"
"'Twas on yo' business, Molly, an' it eased my mind considerable about what's to become of you when I'm dead an' gone. It seems old Mr. Jonathan arranged it all befo' he died, an' they've only been waitin' till you came of age to let you into the secret. He left enough money in the lawyer's hands to make you a rich woman if you follow his wishes."
"Did they tell you his wishes?" she asked, turning from Reuben to Spot as the blind dog fawned toward her.
"He wants you to live with Miss Kesiah and Mr. Jonathan when I'm taken away from you, honey, an' you're to lose all but a few hundred if you ever marry and leave 'em. Old Mr. Jonathan had sharp eyes, an' he saw I had begun to fail fast befo' he died. It's an amazin' thing to think that even after all the morality is wrung out of human natur thar'll still be a few drops of goodness left sometimes at the bottom of it."
"And if I don't do as he wished? What will come of it, then, grandfather?"
"Then the bulk goes to help some po' heathens over yonder in China to the Gospel. He was a strange man, was old Mr. Jonathan. Thar warn't never any seein' through him, livin' or dead."
"Why did he ever come here in the beginning? He wasn't one of our people."
"The wind blew him this way, pretty, an' he was never one to keep goin' against the wind. When the last Jordan died childless an' the place was put up to be sold, Mr. Jonathan read about it somewhar, an' it looked to him as if all he had to do was to come down here an' bury himself alive to git rid of temptation. But the only way to win against temptation is to stand square an' grapple with it in the spot whar it finds you, an' he came to know this, po' sinner, befo' he was done with it."
"He was a good soldier, wasn't he?" asked Molly.
"So good a soldier that he could fight as well on one side as on t'other, an' 'twas only an accident that sent him into the army with me instead of against me. I remember his telling me once when I met him after a battle that 'twas the smell of blood, not the cause, that made him a fighter. Thar's many a man like that on both sides in every war, I reckon."
"I wonder how you can be so patient when you think of him!" she said passionately as he stopped.
"You'll understand better when you're past seventy," he answered gently. "Thar's a softness like a sort of green grass that springs up an' covers you when you begin to git old an' worn out. I've got it an' Spot's got it—you can tell by the way he won't trouble to git mad with the chickens that come peckin' around him. As soon as it's safely spread over you, you begin to see that the last thing to jedge anybody by is what you've known of the outside of 'em."
"I can't feel about him as you do, but I don't mind takin' his money as long as you share it," returned the girl in a softer voice.
"It's a pile of money such as you've never heard of, Molly. Mr. Chamberlayne says thar'll be an income of goin' on ten thousand dollars a year by the time you're a little older."
"Ten thousand dollars a year just for you an' me!" she exclaimed, startled.
"Thar warn't so much when 'twas left, but it's been doublin' on itself all the while you were waitin'."
"We could go everywhere an' see everything, grandfather."
"It ain't for me, pretty. Mr. Jonathan knew you wouldn't come into it till I was well on my way to the end of things."
Kneeling at his side, she caught his hands and clung to him sobbing.
"Don't talk of dying! I can't bear to think of your leaving me!"
His trembling and knotted hands gathered her to him. "The young an' the old see two different sides of death, darlin'. When you're young an' full of spirit, it looks powerful dark an' lonely to yo' eyes, but when you're gittin' along an' yo' bones ain't quite so steady as they once were, an' thar seem to be mo' faces you're acquainted with on the other side than on this one—then what you've been so terrible afeared of don't look much harder to you than settlin' down to a comfortable rest. I've liked life well enough, but I reckon I'll like death even better as soon as I've gotten used to the feel of it. The Lord always appears a heap nearer to the dead, somehow, than He does to the livin', and I shouldn't be amazed to find it less lonely than life after I'm once safely settled."
"You've seen so many die that you've grown used to it," said Molly through her tears.
For a moment he gazed wistfully at the apple boughs, while his face darkened, as if he were watching a procession of shadows. In his seventy years he had gained a spiritual insight which penetrated the visible body of things in search of the truth beneath the ever-changing appearance. There are a few blameless yet suffering beings on whom nature has conferred a simple wisdom of the heart which contains a profounder understanding of life than the wisdom of the mind can grasp—and Reuben was one of these. Sorrow had sweetened in his soul until it had turned at last into sympathy.
"I've seen 'em come an' go like the flakes of light out yonder in the orchard," he answered almost in a whisper. "Young an' old, glad an' sorry, I've seen 'em go—an' never one among 'em but showed in thar face when 'twas over that 'twas the best thing had ever happened. It's hard for me now to separate the livin' from the dead, unless it be that the dead are gittin' closer all the time an' the livin' further away."
"And you're never afraid, grandfather?"
"Well, when it comes to that, honey, I reckon if I can trust the Lord in the light, I can trust him in the darkness. I ain't as good a Christian as my ma was—she could beat Sarah Revercomb when it came to sayin' the Bible backwards—but I've yet to see the spot of natur, either human or clay, whar we couldn't find the Lord at work if we was to dig deep enough."
He stopped at sight of a small figure running under the apple trees, and a minute later Patsey, the Gay's maid, reached the flagged walk and panted out a request that Miss Molly should come to the house for a birthday present which awaited her there.
"Won't you go with me, grandfather?" asked the girl, turning to Reuben.
"I ain't at home thar, Molly," answered the old man. "It's well enough to preach equality an' what not when you're walking on the opposite side of the road, as Abel would say, but it don't ring true while yo' feet are slippin' an' slidin' over a parlour floor."
"Then I shan't go without you. Where you aren't welcome is a place I can stay away from."
"Thar, thar, honey, don't be runnin' arter Abel's notions till you find out whar they're leadin' you. Things are better as they are or the Lord wouldn't have made 'em so, an' He ain't goin' to step a bit faster or slower on o' count of our ragin'. Some folks were meant to be on top an' some at bottom, for t'otherwise God Almighty wouldn't have put 'em thar. Abel is like Sarah, only his generation is different."
"Do you really think he's like his mother?" asked Molly a little wistfully.
"As haw is like haw. They're both bent on doin' the Lord's job over again an' doin' it better, an' thar manner of goin' to work would be to melt up human natur an' pour it all into the same pattern. It ain't never entered Sarah's head that you can't fit the same religion to every man any mo' than you can the same pair of breeches. The big man takes the big breeches an' the little man takes the small ones, an' it's jest the same with religion. It may be cut after one pattern, but it's mighty apt to get its shape from the wearer inside. Why, thar ain't any text so peaceable that it ain't drawn blood from somebody."
"All the same I shan't go a step without you," persisted the girl.
"Then find my stick an' straighten my collar. Or had I better put on mySunday black?"
"No, I like you as you are—only let me smooth your hair a little. Run ahead, Patsey, and say we're both coming."
Slipping her arm in his, she led him through the orchard, where the bluebirds were fluting blissfully in the apple-trees. To the heart of each spring was calling—but to Molly it meant promise and to Reuben remembrance. Though the bluebirds sang only one song, they brought to the old man and to the girl a different music.
"I've sometimes thought Mr. Mullen better suited to you than Abel, Molly," said Reuben presently, uttering an idea that had come to him more than once. "If you'd been inclined to fancy him, I don't believe either Mrs. Gay or Miss Kesiah could have found any fault with him."
"But you know I couldn't care for him, grandfather," protested Molly impatiently. "He is like one of Mrs. Bottom's air plants that grow without any roots."
"Well, he's young yet an' his soul struts a trifle, but wait till he's turned fifty an' he'll begin to be as good a Christian as he is a parson. It's a good mould, but he congealed a bit too stiff when he was poured into it."
They reached the grape arbour as he finished, and a minute later Abednego lead them into the library, where Kesiah placed Reuben in a comfortable chair and hastened to bring him a glass of wine from the sideboard. At Molly's entrance, Gay and Mr. Chamberlayne came forward to shake hands with her, while Mrs. Gay looked up from her invalid's couch and murmured her name in a gentle, reproachful voice. The pale blue circles around the little lady's eyes and faintly smiling mouth were the only signs of the blighting experience through which she had passed. As she turned her angelic gaze on old Jonathan's daughter there was not an instant's doubt in the minds of those about her that she would accept the blow with the suffering sweetness that enhanced her beauty.