"I'll go, Mrs. Deans; I'll go," said Mr. Muir. "Think I'll just slip up by White's and see the lot first; nigh-hand to Warner's, ain't it?"
"Yes, nigh close to old man Warner's, which was filled when Ann Eliza was buried. Mr. White did say that Ann Eliza overlapped his lot. But there! it doesn't do to say them things; it ain't me to spread talk. She had a queer look, though, Ann Eliza did when she was laid out, hadn't she, Mr. Muir?" Here Mrs. Deans nodded with much sinister meaning at Mr. Muir.
"Yes, a very wretched-looking body she made. I like to see a cheerful-looking corpse; something more after the style of Jed Holder. Now, when he was ready, he was a real credit to me, though his pay was onsatisfactory—very onsatisfactory."
"Yes, Jed did smooth out most wonderful," agreed Mrs. Deans. "Then you'll go up to Mrs. Holder's? Better go soon, Mr. Muir; old Warner'll be after more lots some of these days."
"Yes, without a doubt, Mrs. Deans," said Mr. Muir. Mrs. Deans pulled the door open, again the harsh bell rang, and she heard its dying tinkle through Mr. Muir's farewells, for he came outside the door with her, and after she betook herself down the street, he still lingered, gloating critically over the arrangement of the coffin-plates in his window.
Mrs. Deans proceeded down the street, and soon reached the store. As she paused at the store door, she looked back and saw the undertaker just entering his shop.
"He'll never handle any job for me," Mrs. Deans said, recalling the rudeness of his interruption during their conversation. "I'll get Foster from Ovid for Henry."
She entered the store, purchased her dyestuffs quickly, and then, all business cares off her mind, set her face steadfastly to go to Mrs. Wilson's.
Now, Mrs. Deans was extremely eager to find out if Mrs. Wilson's anxiety about the naming of Myron Holder's child sprang from any knowledge or suspicion of the boy's parentage. As she trod heavily along the sandy footpath to the Wilson farm, she turned the matter over in her mind and considered the best means of getting at the truth, or at least all Mrs. Wilson knew of it. Gossip is something more, perhaps, than a vulgar propensity—there is art in it, as in everything else. There are several ways of inducing others to talk freely of their affairs. Mrs. Deans thoroughly appreciated the distinctions between the methods. One way which Mrs. Deans had found very effective in some cases is to assume high ground; treat the discussion with the careless condescension of one to whom it is an old story; acknowledge every tid-bit of information with a nod signifying thorough acquaintance with the whole matter; the victim, oftentimes irritated by your show of superior knowledge, goes on supplying detail after detail, in the hope of startling you out of your apathy. This plan has however, as Mrs. Deans knew, been known to miss fire, and when it fails, it fails completely. She hesitated to try it with Mrs. Wilson.
Another very seductive plan is to assume an air of great meekness and draw your subject out by seeming to believe she knows all about the mooted question—whilst lowly you know nothing. Few women can resist this—the desire to flaunt the knowledge imputed to them is too strong to be denied.
Mrs. Deans slowly entered the Wilson gate. The path from the road led up to the house between two rows of large stones, placed at regular intervals from each other, upon the grass at the side of the path. These stones were whitewashed every now and then by Mrs. Wilson, and were considered to give quite an "air" to the place. The spring house-cleaning being just over, they shone dazzlingly white from a fresh coat; their ranks were broken half-way up to the house by two small "rockeries," over which grew "Live Forever," "Old Man," "Winter Verbena," and "Lemon Balm;" they were each crowned by a geranium, the one a sweet-scented one, the other a single scarlet. Close to the house grew two plum trees, one on each side of the path. From the branches of one was suspended a hanging-basket made out of half of a cocoanut-shell, in which grew "Creeping Charlie," whilst the other tree was adorned by a tin pan filled with the luxuriantly-growing jointed stems of the "Wandering Jew." On each side of the steps—for Mrs. Wilson was fond of uniformity—stood a brown shilling crock, one almost hidden beneath a green mat of a trailing vine called "Jacob's Ladder," the other holding an upright and sturdy "Jerusalem Cherry Tree" (known to unimaginative botanists as Solanum), around whose roots were appearing the tiny rosettes of portulaca seedlings.
Mrs. Deans noted these things not altogether approvingly, Marian Wilson being in her estimation somewhat perilously given up to vanities.
Her knock brought a speedy answer in the person of Mrs. Wilson. "Well, Jane," she ejaculated, "come right in. I was jest expectin' you some of these days; come right into the setting room and lay off your things, and we'll visit together for a spell."
"Oh, I ain't come to stop," said Mrs. Deans, suffering herself to be led into the sitting-room. "I ain't come to stop, only as I was just at the store for dye, I thought I'd come on and see you."
"You done right," said Mrs. Wilson; "you done right there, and I'm real glad you've come. Got your rags all sewed?"
"Yes, forty-two pounds," replied Mrs. Deans, who all this time had been mechanically untying her bonnet-strings and affecting to be oblivious of the actions of Mrs. Wilson, who was unpinning her shawl. Presently, the bonnet-strings being unloosened, Mrs. Wilson dexterously switched away bonnet and shawl, and said triumphantly:
"Now, Jane, come and set down." Then, and not till then, Mrs. Deans awoke with a start to the fact that her outdoor garb had been removed.
"Why, Marian, I declare," she said, "you do beat all!"
Having suffered herself to be led to and installed in a rocking-chair, Mrs. Deans settled herself comfortably for a talk.
"What colors are you going to dye, Jane?" asked Mrs. Wilson.
"Well," said Mrs. Deans, checking off the list on her fingers, "I've got hickory bark for yellow, and walnut shucks that I saved last fall for brown, and barberry stems to mix with bluing for green; and I've bought red and magenta and blue, and I was thinking that, being as I didn't want much color, that would be enough."
"Yes," said Mrs. Wilson, "I never care for a carpet that is just a mess of colored rags. I like a good deal of yellow, though. I seen one in the market the other day; a woman from Ovid had it for sale, and it was real neat-looking. It had a brier twist of yellow and black in the middle of the pattern, and a stripe of red at each side; then there was a wide piece of purple and a narrow stripe of green; the filling up was mixed, with a lot of blue in it, and she had it wove with red warp."
"I didn't get any purple," said Mrs. Deans, "but I might get it——"
"Say, wouldn't red and blue mix for purple?" asked Mrs. Wilson.
"Why, I don't know but they would! Where did she have hers wove?"
"Up to Skinner's at the Pinewoods," said Mrs. Wilson. "They do say the Skinnerses keeps back the rags and helps themselves to the warp; but the way I do is to weigh the warp and the rags, and then when I get the carpet back I weigh that."
"A very good way, too," agreed Mrs. Deans. "I'd like to see the carpet-wearer that would cheat me!"
"Have to get up early in the morning, eh, Jane?" said Mrs. Wilson, approvingly.
"Yes, earlier than before night," chuckled Mrs. Deans. "Suppose you heard Dan Follett was gone?"
"Yes, Homer seen the funeral; 'twas a most terrible big one, and nothing would do Homer but he must follow on with it to the cemetery. It do seem hard to think how one's son'll go on doing sich things. The idea!" Mrs. Wilson concluded between a sniff and a snort.
"Yes," said Mrs. Deans, sympathetically. "Well, there's one good thing, no one would hold you responsible for Homer's doings now. I tell you when men gets his age, they're bound to go their own ways." Then abruptly, "I was at Mrs. Holder's to-day." Here Mrs. Deans looked full at Mrs. Wilson.
"You was?" said her hostess. "You was? Who did you see?"
"I seen old Mrs. Holder and the young one; it's named——"
"What?" asked Mrs. Wilson, breathlessly.
"Well, you'd never guess," said Mrs. Deans, maliciously prolonging her hostess' agony. "You'd never guess. I'm sure I never suspicioned she'd call it that. I suppose it's fitting, most fitting, I should say—but there! What's the odds what it's called? I wouldn't let it worry me, no matter what she called it."
"What is its name, Jane?" asked Mrs. Wilson, with such directness that Mrs. Deans could not disregard it.
"My," answered she, "My—short for Myron."
"Well, Jane," gasped Mrs. Wilson, in relief, and affecting that her exclamation was one of surprise; "well, it beats all!"
Mrs. Deans felt satisfied on one point: Mrs. Wilson had certainly had grave fears in regard to the naming of the child—too grave to be causeless, Mrs. Deans assured herself. Well, Mrs. Deans had never thought much of Homer Wilson—he was altogether too conceited, and he never spoke in revival meeting any more than that once; and he was too sure of himself, and too independent. So it was Homer Wilson, then! Why hadn't he married her? Why hadn't Myron told? Now, if she—Mrs. Deans—could only expose the two of them, how meritorious that would be! A hazy plan to attack Homer on the question flitted through her brain; to ask him suddenly, when he was unprepared, point-blank—would that startle him into a confession or a betrayal of the truth in spite of himself?
Mrs. Deans and Mrs. Wilson talked the afternoon away, peaceably and amicably, and in the twilight Mrs. Deans went home. She met Myron half way to the village and stopped her.
"I been in to see your grandmother to-day," she said. "I wonder at you, Myron Holder, that you ain't ashamed to show your face; she's failing fast, your grandmother is, and no wonder! Well, I wouldn't have your conscience for something. Poor old woman, slaving herself to death over a young one like that. But you'll be found out yet, Myron Holder; and when you do, don't look to me, thinking I'll back you up, for I won't; the time for that's past, unless you want to take your last chance and own up the whole of it now." Mrs. Deans paused—her very attitude an interrogation.
"Good-night, Mrs. Deans," said Myron, in her soft English voice, and passed on with down-bent head.
Mrs. Deans stood for quite a minute amazed, looking after the quiet form going wearily into the dusk of the gathering night—to be left thus was a trifle too much. "I'll take it out of her for that!" said Mrs. Deans, flushing with wrath. "I'll let her know what's what, or my name ain't Deans. The idea! She'll walk off and leave me standing talking to her, will she? Well,——"
Mrs. Deans resumed her irate way. Myron Holder held on her path to the village. She was numb alike in mind and body; the accumulated weariness of days of toil and nights of painful thought pressed upon her; it was marvellous how she endured the fatigues of her life without breaking down physically. "As thy days so shall thy strength be!" has hidden a germ of bane as well as blessing. Does it not often seem as if sorrow imbued life with its own bitter tenacity? Was ever such a fearful doom pictured as that of the Eternal Wanderer "mocked with the curse of immortality"?
So Myron Holder went home in the twilight, and Mrs. Deans went home revolving fresh schemes for her humiliation, inventing new burdens for her overtaxed shoulders. "God," they say, "builds the nest of the blind bird." Is it man who lines it with thorns?
"A sleepy land, where under the same wheel,The same old rut would deepen year by year."
"A life of nothings—nothing worthFrom that first nothing ere his birthTo that last nothing under earth."
\
The Jamestown people, in making a pariah of Myron Holder, were not urged to the step by any imperative feeling of hurt honor or pained surprise.
Such faults as hers were not uncommon there; but never before had the odium rested upon one only. Besides, there had always been some "goings on" and some "talk" indicative of the affair. In Myron Holder's case, the Jamestown people had been caught napping. In such cases a marriage and reinstatement into public favor was the usual sequel, arrived at after much exhilarating and spicy gossip, much enjoyable speculation, much mediation upon the part of the matrons, and much congratulation that all had ended so well.
For another thing, Myron Holder was an outsider, and there was no danger that a word spoken against her would provoke any one else to anger. The Jamestown people were all the descendants of some half-dozen families, the original settlers of the country. They had stagnated year after year, generation after generation marrying and intermarrying. The Jamestown people of Myron Holder's day bore a strange resemblance to one another. The descendants of the same families, subjected to the same mental influences, the same conditions of life, the same climate, the same religion—it was not to be wondered at that every prominent or individualized feature of mind and body had been obliterated and averaged down to a commonplace uniformity.
Distinct physical types were rare here, very dark or very fair people being seldom seen. The features were coarse and ill-defined, the nostrils merging into the cheeks, the chins into the necks, the pale lips into the dull-colored faces, with no clear line of demarcation, no pure curve to define form.
Certain peculiarities appertained to certain families, however. When one of the few—very few—Jamestown men who had gone forth to the outside world returned, he had not much difficulty in approximating at least the parentage of the children he encountered in the streets; for one had the Deans nose, a pinched-in, miserly, censorious feature, given to the smelling out of scandal; another had the Warner walk, a gait that in a horse would be termed racking; a third might have the Wilson scowl, a peculiar expression that seemed to emanate from sulkiness; a fourth was evidently a scion of the Disney stock, for he gazed out of the Disney eyes, always rheumy and without lashes.
There appeared in Jamestown families every now and then an imbecile, presenting, as in a terrible composite picture, the mental and moral weaknesses of his related ancestors.
Nearly every family counted, in some of its branches, one or more of these unfortunates.
Jamestown's attitude towards these maimed souls was characteristically utilitarian; they were fed and clothed until they arrived at an age when, if they were harmless, they became useful, or if they were violent, their mania became dangerous. In the former case they were given a full quota of work, and kept out of sight so far as possible, toiling early and late, horrible brownies, working unseen, unpaid, unthanked, unpitied. If they were violent, they were sent as paupers to the governmental institutions and forgotten.
Jamestown was stirred by no noble ambition, thrilled by no eager hope, excited by no generous impulse, moved by no patriotic enthusiasm, undisturbed by visions, unmoved by wars,—craved neither glory nor fame—
"Though fame is smoke,Its fumes are frankincense to human thought."
And how poor a potsherd the human temple is, when savored with no incense of endeavor! Better the bitter breath of failure than the dank vapor of stagnating faculties. The haloes of defeated effort are sweeter than the lotus of inaction.
Jamestown's religion? If the God of whom preachers prate so familiarly really exists, with what awful scorn mustHebehold such worship! As monkeys, mowing and moping, might mock a pageant, so did these people simulate religion. Old Eliza—Mrs. Wilson's mad cousin—worshipped better when she dabbled her hands in the wayside horse-trough, rejoicing in its coolness; when she smoothed with tender fingers the torn fur of a half-shot rabbit; when she replaced the unfledged birds in the nest from which they had fallen—nay, even when she sped across the sunlit fields, her sodden face irradiate with an inarticulate feeling of the warmth and freedom of the air.
Nature spread about and before these people all her beauties, unfolded to their gaze all the enchantment of her seasons, but in vain; their eyes were darkened, their hearts hardened; the magical mystery of Spring left them ineloquent; Summer came and lingered, and went reluctantly; Autumn browned, and Winter fulfilled its bitterness, and they were unmoved save by the effect upon the crops.
The site of Jamestown and the country surrounding it was historic ground. Here men had fought and bled and died. The fathers and mothers of the present generation told how, when children, they had been hurried off to the woods, to hide there whilst the soldiers ransacked the deserted houses, eating and appropriating all they fancied, and spitefully spilling milk, wantonly cutting holes in the cheeses, and throwing the frying-pans and flatirons down the wells for mischief. These leisurely warriors were not, however, the ones whose blood had darkened the soil in so many adjacent spots. The Jamestown people had no personal reminiscences or knowledge of these sterner fighters, but evidences of their existence and warfare were plentiful.
Year by year, the neighboring farmers, in tilling their land, found bullets, broken bayonets, portions of old-fashioned guns, military buttons, and Indian arrow heads of flint. These latter relics were often defaced, pointless, and chipped, but sometimes they had preserved in perfection their venomous pointed form, sharp to sting to the death when hurled through the air from a hostile bow. Year after year, these tokens of conflict were found in the fresh furrows; the supply seemed inexhaustible. It was as though the earth was determined to cast forth from her bosom those deadly fragments whose mission had been to maim and slay her children. Yet Mother Earth is but a cruel stepdame to some of us, less kindly than the bullet, more cruel than the flint arrowhead.
The people in Jamestown thought little enough of these relics, though in springtime they were to be found in the pockets of every ploughman; but little Bing White had a collection of some hundreds of them. They had a strange fascination for the little elfish boy. People said he had just escaped being an idiot: that was far from the truth.
A keen and acute intelligence shone from his eyes, but perverted by morbid and horrible cravings. He was of a Newtonian and speculative turn of mind also, and was perpetually pondering upon problems of weighty import, suggested to him by the simplest manifestations of every-day life: Why dogs barked at bakers? Why blacksmith-shops were never new? Why buttered bread falls butter-side down? were questions that he strove with. The wonder of the arrowheads appearing year after year in the furrows was to him a source of never-ceasing thought. How was it they came to the surface? What strange grinding went on below the grain and the grass, to produce that flinty grist each springtime? He brooded much over the matter, turning his many specimens over and over with lingering, affectionate touches.
Bing kept his treasures in the space between the lath and plaster of the second story and the roof of his father's house. There was no room for garrets there—but there was a space in which Bing's diminutive figure could stand erect. The ingress to this long, low, dark chamber was through a tiny trap-door, in the ceiling of one of the back rooms. Through this, he would wriggle swiftly, replace the trap-door (in reality only a broad board), speed like a cat from joist to joist across the whole length of the house to where, through the round panes of the little gable window, the light fell full upon his collection, laid out in rows upon boards placed across the joists.
Each arrowhead of the lot had an individuality for this boy; every misshapen fragment a story. Indeed he dwelt longer over the pointless and defaced specimens than over the others, for more fascinating than any perfection of curve or point was the speculation as to where the fragments of the broken ones rested. Could it be possible that the long tapering point of the arrowhead he held in his hand had pierced some red-clad bosom, some dusky naked breast brought low, some helmeted head, some feather-decked crown, and won a costly coffin for itself to be buried in? Those notches on the side of the heavy white flint one, were they the scars of a conflict between the arrow and armor?
Bing White was not an imbecile, but he had strange fancies in that dusky treasure chamber of his, gloating over his arrowheads, whispering to himself of bloody deeds wrought and cruel blows dealt by these flints he held in his palms.
There was one long, narrow arrowhead, sharp and keen-edged, that he had a great affection for. He used to take it up lovingly and, baring his forearm, draw it lightly—lightly—close to the skin, his eyes dilating, his nostrils quivering; now and then, his hand faltering, he let it touch the flesh, and the keen edge swiftly brought blood.
At the pain he would drop the flint, but at the crimson drops which showed its bite he would gaze hungrily, delightedly, tracing them out in tiny red lines upon the white flesh of his meagre arm until the last vestige had disappeared; and then he would start and tremble, his fingers twitching strangely, his eyes peering here and there through the dusky perspective of his refuge, as if hoping to see some blur of the crimson fluid he loved. Then he would kiss the vicious arrowhead, and fondle it, until, hearing his mother's call, he would lay it down gently and flee across the joists, surefooted and nimble, to the trap-door.
By the time he descended his face would have lost the wild irradiation of his hidden joy; but his eyes followed any small creature, the cats, the chickens, the self-satisfied ducks. He whispered to himself in his dreams of a day when he would not deny his desire for blood.
A strange impish development of character was his: dangerous by reason of the stubbornness of his race, and strangely blended and nurtured with and by a love of vivid and bright color. This latter characteristic was instilled into the White blood, when one of the far-back Whites, who had been to the war, returned, bringing with him a gypsy camp-follower as his wife, making her the great-grandmother of this boy, who cherished the flint arrowheads for the pain they could inflict, and who dreamt long dreams, the atmosphere of which was crimsoned with blood and vocal with cries of pain.
This unhealthy mental state found for itself plenty of sustenance, as all vile plants and animals do, sucking the virus of its unhealthy existence from every phase of nature, every homely incident in village life. He let no chance escape him to enjoy his ghoulish pleasure; the killing of the poultry twice a week for market was a festival he never missed.
At the village shambles he was a frequent guest; at a pig-sticking he was always on hand, interested, helpful; no scientist in a clinic ever watched with greater enthusiasm the performance of a new experiment than did Bing White the bleeding of a horse—of all these events he had accurate information. If all these failed him, he sped far down the margin of the lake, to where the gillnets were, and appeased his craving by watching the slow, turgid drops that fell when they prepared the fish.
In autumn, when the paths through the ample woods were overhung with crimson canopies of leaves, which the winds brought down like blots of blood to be trodden under foot; when the brambles clung red about the fences or trailed scarlet along the ground; when the bitter-sweet hung in vermilion clusters from its bare stems, and the Virginian creeper clothed the cedars in a fiery mantle—at this time Bing White's eyes were ever gleaming with unholy happiness, only no one ever noticed it.
It is from such material as this boy that those morbid murderers are evolved who do murder for murder's sake. Just where in his ante-natal history the love of color flamed into a love of blood, who shall say? But it burned within him, a consuming fire; if quenched, to be quenched only by the annihilation of the being that embodied it. If left to burn? ...
He had much knowledge of and liking for animals, but it was the liking of the instinctive vivisector. Inexplicable cases of maimed and killed animals attested his devotion to the gratification of his curiosity. The sudden elongation and apparent telescoping of a cat's paw was a subject that for hours had kept him sleepless.
He had solved the riddle first by putting it down to some trick of his eyesight, but the keenness of his vision was proverbial in Jamestown, and that did not long content him. Then he took a tape-line and measured a paw, and waited for the stretching process. It came. The huge Maltese stretched out his forepaws in languorous indolence. Bing promptly caught one and began to measure; the cat instantly contracted its muscles. Bing strove to hold the paw out by force, with the result that the cat (which was of the giant order, and no degenerate descendant of its wild progenitors) fixed its teeth through the fleshy part of his thumb, from which it was with difficulty disengaged. The wound inflamed and festered, but the symptoms disappeared in a week or two. Shortly after the cat died in a fit.
The dilation and contraction of the eyes of animals was a source of continual speculation to Bing; a matter he strove in horrid ways to elucidate. There was something hideously repulsive in this boy's secret cruelties, horrible to relate, sickening to contemplate. But the creatures he tormented, maimed, killed, knew neither anticipation nor remembrance; the "corporeal pang" was all.
There was a strange and horrible parallel between his nature and the nature of the women who tortured so ceaselessly the woman whom fate had made their victim; a little difference in method, a little divergence of application, a slight change from the physical to the mental world—that was all save a dreadful difference in the victim; but the instinct of cruelty was the same.
There is an organized society in one of our great cities for putting dumb animals out of pain—out of existence. It had been well for Myron Holder had she been one of those creatures to which a merciful death is vouchsafed. The lilied purity of her womanhood might be gone, but we do not rend the petals of even spent flowers. It is hard to tread upon even a crushed blossom, and painful to see a broken lily flung to smother in a sewer.
"Desolation is a delicate thing.It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air,But treads with killing footsteps, and fans with silent wing,The tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear;Who, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes above,And the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet,Dream visions of aerial joy, and call the monster Love,And wake, and find the shadow Pain...."
"The smoke is falling, the ducks and geese are flying about, the maple leaves are turned underside up, the cocks are crowing, the cat is eating grass, the gulls have left the lake and fly over the land, the flies sting, and the cement on the cellar floor is damp, so I think it's going to rain; and if it does, I ain't a-going to begin to color my rags," said Mrs. Deans, standing arms akimbo on the doorstep.
"Yes," said her husband, "it's a deal like rain; the moon had a shroud on it last night, and the frogs croaked terrible, and my rheumatics has just been ramping."
"Yes," went on Mrs. Deans, "my corns has ached intolerable, and the cows have been lowing since daybreak; there's no doubt but what it's going to rain. I wonder if Myron Holder is a-coming, or if she ain't!"
"Oh, she'll be here in time for breakfast!" said Mr. Deans, with would-be sarcasm. "How you can abide that girl and Liz I don't know, Jane; no mortal good's fur's I see. That Liz eats her head off every day she rises, and as for Myron Holder, she picks and pecks and turns up her nose as if the eatin' wasn't good enough for her; it beats me what's the good of 'em."
"Well," said his wife, sharply, "there ain't no great call, fur's I see, for you to see whether they're any good or not, an' no need for you to worry over the victuals, for that I'll make shift to attend to. I suppose you'd like me to slave myself to death, and git along without 'em? Well, if that's what's on your mind, just relieve your feelings of it right away—for be a slave to no man I won't, and that settles that!" with which Mrs. Deans betook herself out to the gate to look for further manifestations bearing upon the weather, and to see if Myron Holder was coming.
Mr. Deans shrunk up in his chair, blinking as he chewed, and taking his rebuff very philosophically. He was accustomed to his wife's "onsartainness," and when any of his remarks proved a boomerang, he simply consoled himself with the thought of "better luck next time" and subsided.
Mrs. Deans went out to the gate. It was early morning, and the sun was rising unseen behind heavy masses of water-charged clouds; there was a soft grayness of impending rain in the air, a fresh smell of springing grass, and new leaves, and newly turned earth; the gulls had deserted the lake, and were soaring in oblique circles through the gray, glisteningly white; the swallows from under the eaves of the barn were journeying forth to the pond for the clay to coat their nests; the sparrows were chirping saucily, as they robbed the young chicks of the grain scattered for them; from the field behind the barn came the bleating of the lambs, and now and then there sounded a distant voice as Gamaliel or the hired men shouted to their horses.
The bound girl, coming in from milking, paused to make grimaces at the unconscious back of her benefactress, an accomplishment at which Liz was an adept. After contorting her face horribly for a few moments, accompanying herself mentally with unflattering epithets addressed to the same unconscious back, Liz went on her way to the cellar, having very much enjoyed the relaxation of her facial muscles. Mrs. Deans stood looking down the road. Her eyes were red and watery this morning, and she wiped them on the corner of her apron. Far down towards the village she could descry a vehicle of some kind, but no one on the footpath. She returned to the house, and, satisfied that Myron Holder would not arrive for some time at least, went up to the garret to "sort over" the contributions that had been sent in for the mission-box that was going to the far West. First, however, she called to her husband to watch for Myron Holder's appearance, and rap on the wall with his stick when he saw her, so that she might come down and "be ready for her." Mrs. Deans always welcomed Myron Holder with sneers or rage in the morning, just as her grandmother greeted her with reproaches or revilings at night. There would have been something comic, had it not been so cruel and so sad, in the way these women played battledore with this girl as shuttlecock and tossed her from one to the other to be buffeted.
That morning Myron Holder had just got clear of the village, when she heard behind her the rumble of wheels; they drew nearer, and at last her down-cast eyes caught the image of a wagon, but she did not look up, and did not know whose it was until she heard Homer Wilson's voice.
"Good-morning, Myron," he said; "are you going out to Deans'?"
"Good-morning. Yes," she answered, blushing and ill at ease, for he had pulled up his horses.
"Then climb in and have a ride; I'm going to town," he said.
"Oh, no; no, thank you!" said Myron, hanging back.
"What for? Come, get in," he said.
Myron was so well used to being told what to do, and so little used to refusing, that she half made a step towards the wagon then—"No, I mustn't"—she paused—"you know—I——"
"Don't be a goose, Myron," returned he with decision. "Climb in here! I never see you these days, and we used to be good friends——" The infrequent tears rushed to her eyes. Without more ado, she went to the side of the wagon and set a foot on the step; the impatient horses started, and she felt herself half lifted in by Homer's strong arm. The horses sprang forward, to be soon checked, though, for Homer was evidently in no hurry that morning; indeed, the horses were restrained to an unwilling walk.
"How's things getting on with you, Myron?" asked Homer, trying to speak in a commonplace tone.
"Oh, just the same," she answered, unsteadily. "Mrs. Deans kindly keeps me on."
"Oh, she does, does she?" asked Homer. "Very good of her, I'm sure; she's a most charitable woman, Mrs. Deans is!"
Myron somehow felt her heart sink at this. Of late, aroused from the first bewilderment of her shame, she had wondered once or twice if Mrs. Deans was so wholly admirable in her life and intentions as she said she was; if she herself was so utterly vile. Homer's reply showed her, or so she thought, that she was wrong in doubting Mrs. Deans.
"Yes," went on Homer, "Mrs. Deans is what Ma calls a 'mother in Israel,' and no mistake. How many she's mothered! All these Home girls! And now struggling with you! Really, Myron, you might be thought most fortunate to get into such a household." Something in his voice gave Myron courage to look up. She did—but let her eyes fall before the bitter sneer that lurked on his lip, the scorn that shone in his eyes. In that instant she gathered, however, that none of it was for her; the next she was conscious of a desire to say something to Homer of Mrs. Deans' meanness, backbiting, insincerity, hypocrisy. Myron Holder had naturally a sweet disposition, but the happiest of us, even, have sometimes a longing desire to pull another down, and for a moment this temptation assailed her with almost irresistible strength. She was so inured to blame herself, that to hear another dispraised, and that other the woman who embittered each hour of the day for her, was perilously sweet. She half parted her lips, but the generous spirit that had survived so many blows, so much injustice, yet endured and stifled the impulse. She sat silent. A jingling of loose tires, a rattling of loose bolts, and the uneven beating of a lame horse's hoofs struck upon their ears; some one was coming from the village.
"Hullo," said Homer, without looking round, "here's old Crow Muir coming!" The young men of Jamestown had an irreverent habit of calling Mr. Muir "Crow"—due to the solemn hue of his garb. A poor compliment any self-respecting crow would have deemed it, at least, when Mr. Muir was attired, as he was this morning, in his oldest suit of black.
Mr. Muir's vocation compelling him to travel usually in a silent and slow way, he liked, when not bent upon an official errand, to go as swiftly and noisily as he could. He had an old piebald mare, the original plan of whose anatomy was so obscured by lumps and distorted by twists as to be almost obliterated; she was very lame in the nigh forefoot and had the stringhalt in her off hind leg, so that her gait was somewhat startling to behold; her neck was long and lean, her head heavy, her nose Roman, her eyes set close together in a bald face, her tail was more like a mule's than a horse's; but despite these peculiarities, which by some people might have been considered disabilities, she was the fastest animal in Jamestown, and her progeny was noted far and wide among the local sports. The vehicle behind this gallant steed was as direct a contradiction to the stately hearse as could be imagined. It was a light wagon, set upon ridiculously high wheels, which, being always adjusted loosely at the axle, had a lateral as well as an onward movement; the body of the wagon was not more than five inches deep and painted a bright green (the same paint that coated the undertaker's veranda made his wagon a thing of vernal beauty). The seat was uncushioned and had rungs in the back, like a chair—in fact, it was a section taken from one of the long, old-fashioned desks that had been removed from the school a few years before this time.
In this state and equipage, then, did Mr. Muir overtake Homer and Myron.
"Homer, good-morning!" said Mr. Muir, solemnly, as he came abreast of them; and then he was past, his wagon jingling crazily, his knees nearly touching his chin, each wheel running at a different angle and leaving wavering tracks in the dust.
"Oh, Homer," said Myron.
"Well," said Homer, "what's the matter?"
"Mr. Muir—he'll talk," she said.
"You're quite right there," said Homer, with a vicious tightening of the lips. "It'll do him good." He gave the restive horses a slap with the reins, but the next moment checked their sudden speed.
"Don't mind me, Myron," he said, flushing under his brown skin as he felt her nervous start. "I am in a bad temper this morning, and disgusted with the way people gabble about nothing." And then they drove on in silence again. As they passed the little cemetery, they saw the piebald mare, in a ridiculous "stand at ease" position, tied beside the gate.
"Hear of any one dead?" asked Homer.
"No, not a word," said Myron, her thoughts reverting painfully to her last visit to her father's grave.
"Well, maybe old Crow's gone to see if any of 'em are coming up," said Homer. Then, the thought suggested to him by the field of young springing grain opposite, he added, "Not much of a crop from old Crow's planting." After this grim speech there were no further words until they were opposite the wire fence of Deans' so-called garden.
"Myron," said Homer hastily, "any time you want a friend for anything, come to me, will you?"
"Yes," she said simply, looking at him with ineffable gratitude and wonder in her eyes. "But have you forgotten——"
"My memory's as good as most folks' is," said Homer gruffly; then, wishing once for all to let her see he accepted the facts of her life, he said: "What do you call your child, Myron?"
"My," she answered, with the indescribable mother-voice of love, "little My."
"A very good name, too," said Homer, with conviction. "I'm coming in to see him some day."
Myron fairly gasped in terror.
"Oh, no," she said, with entreaty in her tones and eyes; "oh, no, promise you won't think of such a thing—promise you won't"—he was drawing up the horses at the Deans' gate, and she clasped both hands over his arm in her urgency. "Promise," she urged. He looked down at her, his face sombre; he gathered the beauty of her face and pleading eyes, his old self awakened for an instant from its bath of bitterness, and his old natural smile made his stern face bright and gentle as he said:
"Of course, I won't, if you don't want me to. Is it your grandmother?"
"Yes, and——" she unclasped her hands and began to descend. "Thank you so much," she said.
"For not coming?" he asked. His face was dark again.
"No; for speaking to me," she answered, as she turned quickly to the house, and he went on to the city, as fast now as his horses could spurn the miles, and he had gone some distance before his face lost the expression caused by her last speech; but long ere he reached the town, the old gloom again settled upon his countenance.
From the high window Mrs. Deans had watched Myron and Homer as they drove from the foot of the garden; as they passed the corner of the house she sped to a more advantageous window, arriving in time to see Myron unclasp her hands from his arm and descend from the wagon. Mrs. Deans could hardly restrain herself from calling aloud to them, and proclaiming her discovery of their "brazenness," if not from the house-top, at least from the attic window; but with much strength of will she denied herself and kept silent until Homer's wagon vanished, and she heard a vigorous rap-rap down stairs. Then she collapsed upon a heap of winter quilts that were piled in the attic, and communed with herself.
"She was doin' some rare begging, but the Wilsons is strong set when they've made up their minds. But such cheek! To drive her up to my door as bold as brass, and in no hurry out of sight, either; at least," bethinking herself, "he did drive off mighty quick, when once she got out; wonder if she wanted me to see him! Well, if that's her idea, 'twon't do her no good! She should have told me when I asked her; I won't take no notice, now; she can't get me to back down from what I've said; it's a terrible disgrace on Marian Wilson—well, theydidtalk about Marian and that stonecutter one time, but he went away, and it was all smothered up, but I had my own thoughts. Well, this is a judgment on her now; she was too set up when Homer came back to the farm; like's not, he was druv to it! Fine goin's on, I warrant, he had in the city! Thank the Lord, Maley's not sich as Homer Wilson; but then he's been brought up different, and it's all in the bringin' up. And there was something very queer about that stonecutter business; that would account for Homer's being so bad."
Mrs. Deans went about her work dreamily, struggling with the problem of Homer's depravity; her philosophy—like some other philosophies—first created a result, and then strove to invent circumstances to justify and explain it.
Mrs. Deans was sorely tried to decide what course was best to pursue: she would have liked to go at once to Mrs. Wilson, and proclaim her son's iniquity to her and see "how she took it"; she longed to go to Mrs. Holder's and announce that she had discovered the secret which had so puzzled the village; she would have dearly loved to shower upon Myron Holder the new and expressive epithets that were trembling upon the tip of her tongue, but the peculiar view she had adopted of the situation suggested to her that Myron Holder wanted the secret she had kept so long and so well discovered; and greater than her desire to see her lifelong friend disgraced by the proof of her son's fault—greater than her desire to vindicate her own superior cunning—greater even than her desire to berate Myron Holder, was her determination to make Myron Holder suffer; so she decided to take no active step in the affair, no matter how hard the repression of her righteous wrath might prove.
She felt, however, there could be no harm in giving Mrs. White a hint of how things stood, for the Sunday before this Homer Wilson had tied up young Ann White's buggy shafts when he found her at a standstill on the way home from church. Here Mrs. Deans wandered a little from the main track, and dwelt a while on the enormity of Homer Wilson tearing along the roads, or through the woods, or along the lake shore, the whole Sabbath day, instead of going to church; here she recalled, with a shock, that Myron Holder never went to church either, and Mrs. Deans, putting two and two together, decided that not only of sin, but of sacrilege, were these two guilty.
Mrs. Deans felt fired with a great zeal for young Ann White's soul: if she should be led into marrying Homer Wilson, what a dreadful thing it would be! Not but what the Whites needed something to take them down a peg; still the pleasure of balking Homer, if he had any thoughts in Ann White's direction, would be something. Besides, although Mrs. Deans did not formulate this to herself, it would relieve the pressure of restraint to tell Mrs. White the circumstances, and Mrs. Deans concluded to herself: "It can't do no harm to let Ann White know. I miss my guess if she has her sorrows to seek; that Bing isn't ten removes off an idiot."
So Mrs. Deans contented herself all the forenoon by staring at Myron Holder with a concentrated glare of contempt and triumph, varied only by sudden calls to Liz to "come back from there" whenever she approached Myron, and when Liz "came back," which she did in a hasty and indefinite way, not knowing very well why Myron had suddenly become so dangerous, Mrs. Deans would say:
"Haven't you got enough evil in you, but what you must learn more bad off of her?" or, "There ain't no use my striving to bring you up decent, when your natural bent is to be bad," or some other remark to the same effect.
In the afternoon, the rain heralded by so many infallible signs made its appearance, and Mrs. Deans perforce remained at home. She took her sewing to the kitchen, and set Myron and the bound girl to work to mend the grain bags; and as the storm outside whipped the maples, and struggled with the oaks, and stripped the horse-chestnut trees of their brittle blossoms, so the storm of Mrs. Deans' vituperation raged over the heads of the two girls sitting on the floor surrounded by the dusty grain bags. Liz was in such a state of nervousness that she was sticking her needle into her fingers at every second stitch, when Myron Holder began to feel the floor rising with her—the bags whirled round and round in a circle of which she was the centre; the floor ceased to rise evenly and tilted up—up—on one edge—tilted until it was perpendicular, and flung Myron Holder off—a long distance off—into an abyss of darkness, through which whirled great wheels of light that rushed toward her as if they would utterly destroy her, but always passed by a hair's breadth; the last one passed, its light vanished, the whirring of its rapid flight died away, even the darkness disappeared—Myron Holder had fainted. She still sat, needle in one hand, bag in the other. Liz reached across for another bag and chanced to knock against her slightly; Myron fell over like a log.
"She's dead!" screamed Liz, and sprang up with hysterical cries.
Mrs. Deans' face blanched.
"You fool, get out of the way!" she said, and pushed Liz aside savagely, as she rushed toward Myron's prostrate figure. "Take hold of her," ordered Mrs. Deans, in a voice that quelled the bound girl's hysterics. Together they got her to the door; Mrs. Deans flung it wide, and Myron opened her eyes with the summer rain beating in her face and the waving masses of green trees and tossing branches before her eyes. To that blankness succeeded a quick memory of its approach, a shuddering recollection of that final plunge into darkness, to be obliterated by physical weakness and nausea; she clung to the door to support herself, and Mrs. Deans released her hold of her arms.
"You can go lie down on Liz's bed till you come to," said Mrs. Deans, "and then you can go home for the rest of the day."
"Thank you," said Myron, and Mrs. Deans went to the dining-room, while Myron crept to the tiny kitchen bedroom—each unaware of the horrible bathos of Myron's speech. Mrs. Deans did not come to the kitchen for some time, and when she did Myron was gone—out into the storm unseen of any, to struggle through rain and mud to the village, "a reed shaken by the wind" indeed.
"All things rejoiced beneath the sun—the weeds,The river, and the cornfields, and the reeds,The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze,And the firm foliage of the larger trees."
The rain that brought back sense and sound to Myron Holder lasted for three days, falling steadily during that time; it was succeeded by the most joyous of weather. The spring was past; the grass grew lush and green beside the little waterways that the rain had created by the roadside; these mimic rivers had in miniature all the diversities and beauties of their greater brethren. There was a gradual decline from the inland to the lake, and adown this many of these evanescent streams found their way.
The stream that passed the Deans farm was the very epitome of Life. Now a large stone obstructed its course and divided its shallow flood, which crept sadly round either side of this rocky islet, to gush gayly together beyond it; after a short space of calm it rushed against an upturned sod and, broken and ragged, fell in tatters over the brink into the little pool below, in whose tiny vortex floated twigs and bits of last year's grass, and perchance a glistening white feather from the breast of a gull; freed from its durance in the pool and not yet schooled to peace and patience, the stream sped on hastily and noisily, striving to find its way between the interlaced red roots of a cedar; its haste to get out into the sunlight defeated its object, and the close-knit fibres flung it back again and again, but it returned to the charge with tiny banners of foam and ripples of defiance; so the strife continued until the gathering ranks of water rose strong enough to toss the foremost clear over the barriers, and the stream went on its way cheerily until the dark culvert that took it across the road was reached, and as souls that plunge into the darkness of death leave all behind them, so this little stream left its foam, its ripples, its burden of twigs and wisps of grass and all its infinitesimal flotsam and jetsam, and essayed the darksome passage, a naked little stream; once out in the light again, it rippled on reflectively, until at last, its "tribute wave delivered," it merged its identity in the lake—losing (and here we cry with breathless lips, "Let it be like the soul in this also!") losing all puny consciousness of individual existence, only aware of being a part of that shining reservoir, dispensing beneficent gifts to air, and blessing and being blessed by the sun, that shone down more sweetly now upon it than when it was a vain and fretting brook.
The broad burdock leaves grew so rapidly in these days that their unstable stalks could not sustain them, and they trailed near the ground, bleached and unhealthy-looking, defacing the plant they should have adorned, like purposes unfulfilled for lack of will.
The wood violets spent all their surplus sap in leaves, and their later blooms were smothered in this luxuriance of foliage, as good resolves die 'mid many words.
In the maples, besides the singing of birds, there was now to be heard the "lisp of leaves" murmuring nature's alphabet. The swallows did not fly about so wildly, nor the bob-o-link, singing, soar so high—for the swallows hovered ever near the gray eaves of the barns, where, in their clay houses, the white eggs were being patiently warmed to life, and the bob-o-link (that slyest of birds) lingered ever in the grass meadows, where, upon a nest hid most cunningly, its mate sat listening to its singing. The ponds and the margins of the lake were alive with wriggling tadpoles, and Bing White hung enchanted over a pool left at the foot of his father's field where, when the sun was high, the water spiders darted hither and thither. It was not the insects Bing watched, but the shadows cast by them upon the sandy bottom of the pool; for, by a conspiracy between the water and the sun, the minute disks that form the feet of these creatures, and enable them to "walk upon the water" in very truth, were magnified a thousand times, and this enlarged refraction, like spots of gold, wavered through the water in consonance with the spiders' movements on the surface. When the sun shone brightly, the spiders came out in force, and darted about untiringly; it was as though the spiders wove a web of shining water, flinging round golden bobbins through the woof and weft of their fabric.
A little fawn-colored wild duck, belated in its journey to the north, came to this pool, a solitary but contented little bird, until Bing stoned it so persistently that it flew away one day, never to return. The spring grains were growing strongly, and the fall wheat was tall and vividly green, except that patches, bare save for knotty roots upthrown upon the surface, showed where, upon the high ground, it had been "winter killed," or spaces of bleached and yellowed blades indicated where, in the hollows, the heavy rains had "drowned it out." The blossoming of the fruit trees was past, that marvellous season of efflorescence and beauty, when the air is heavy with perfume and the paths strewn with petals—the rose and white of the apples, the mother-o'-pearl purity of the cherry, the fragrant ivory of the pears, loose-leaved plum flowers, and the hiding, faint-pink quince blooms—these and the peach blows that made gay and glad the gardens and the orchards.
And the woodlands and the lanes rejoiced also—for theirs were the cloyingly sweet blooms of the pea tree and the insignificant-looking but honey-smelling flowers of the locust, the bitter-sweet blossoms of the wild plum, so finely cut in tiny petals, so filled with snow-white stamens, so thickly massed together as to make the tree seem a fragrant snow cloud; then there was the red and pink of the "natural" apples, the ungrafted trees that had sprung up in every neighboring woodland; their taste was insipid, and had a peculiar, smoky flavor, but their blossoms were not less sweet than those of their cultured kinsfolk, and side by side with them stood the "choke cherry" with its long sprays of fragile blossoms that nauseate with their odor. Best of all, either in woodland or garden, orchard or lane, there was the wild crab-apple, upon whose gnarled and thorny branches grew its unspeakably sweet flower. The pink-veined petals folded about its perfumed centre, or opening but an hour or two, to disclose its golden heart, then, paling and falling, overcome by its own breath; for in the perfume of the wild crab-apple there lies all the story of the year, all the life of love; it has taken to itself all the sweetness, the bitterness, the languors, the fever, the desire, the satiety, the distaste, the joy, the sting of winter, the swoon of summer, the expectancy of spring, the overcoming of autumn, taken all, and mingling it with that we dream of, but know not, offers it to us upon thorny branches. And the fruit of these blossoms is bitter.
When the bloom was gone from all the trees, then the bees began to hum about the currant bushes, sipping the sweets of their green flowers, and there rose from orchard and field the savor of grape bloom. For Jamestown sent many hundred tons of grapes to the wine factories every year, and around the fences or over the cedars, there grew the "fox" grape, the "chicken" grape, and the bitter wild grape from which they distill a syrup for the throat.
Mrs. Deans' garden was "made," planted from side to side with vegetables, daily growing higher; the leaves were thickening on the currant bushes, and the young grape leaves were losing their downy whiteness and growing green and thick. Young turkeys, goslings, ducks, and baby chickens disputed with each other for the food dispensed so liberally to them; but Mrs. Deans ruled her poultry-yard, as she did her other belongings, with a rod of iron. The turkeys were the aristocrats of the place; they ate milk, white curds and chopped lettuce, and boiled eggs minced fine, with pepper; the rest fared on common meal—only all the spare time the bound girl had was spent in digging worms for the ducks.
"See that big worm there, Myron," she said one day, pointing to a huge, wriggling worm that two ducks were disputing possession of; "see that worm? Well, that's Mrs. Deans; of all the trouble that contrary critter give me I can't tell! It near wore me out, a-digging and a-digging; now it's in trouble its own self—you see—it'll be torn in two yet, yes—glad of it—there it goes! That'll happen to Mrs. Deans some day, when the Lord gets hold of her. Hush? I won't hush! Ain't she always a jangling? Jangling is something I can't abide, and how she goes it about nothing at all! She'll be tore in two along o' her ways, see if she ain't." With which satisfactory and encouraging prophecy Liz betook herself indoors.
Mrs. Deans had never found the time to go to Mrs. White's, but when one day her son Gamaliel told her he had seen Homer Wilson and Myron talking together in the "open village street" the heart of Mrs. Deans burned within her, and she reproached herself that she had not gone sooner; if she waited any longer it might be stale news; if they were brazen enough to talk to each other on the street—people—Jamestown people—would not fail to notice it; now that there was a possibility of other lips telling "young Ann White" of Homer Wilson's badness Mrs. Deans felt it incumbent upon her to act at once, to arise in her strength and baffle the designs of the evil one upon the unsuspecting citadel of young Ann White's heart. Mrs. Deans called it, to herself, "putting Homer Wilson's nose out of joint in that quarter anyhow," but the phrase matters little, the intention expressed being identical.
To "stir up the lazy and strengthen the weak" is a proceeding much to be admired doubtless, being enjoined by no less authoritative edict than the Westminster Confession; and however Mrs. Deans regarded the latter half of the injunction, she had nothing to reproach herself with in view of one of its requirements. That Mrs. Deans regarded all people under her as being lazy, as well as the majority of her neighbors, may be taken as granted; it will therefore be seen that she had little time for the latter half of the command. Before she left for Mrs. White's that day, she went to the kitchen and gave Liz and Myron an eloquent extempore narration of their past sins and shortcomings, their present delinquencies, their future state of sin and misery, proceeding to a peroration regarding the probabilities of their immortal lives, and rounding off her address with a pleasant prediction of eternal perdition for both of them. Having given them tasks they could not possibly perform before her return, Mrs. Deans turned her attention to her husband. As he could not move about much, and as he had a maddening gift for holding his tongue, Mrs. Deans was often exasperated by him; upon this occasion, having absolutely no handle to hinge her remarks upon, she contented herself with a few well-considered and audible reflections upon his utter uselessness, "either to God or man" as she put it, which threw such a burden upon her "helpless" shoulders; then she picked up his plug of chewing tobacco and narrowly regarded how much of it was gone, with a view to gauging the quantity he consumed in her absence. He squirmed under this; it affected him more than bitter words.
Having made every one as uncomfortable as possible, Mrs. Deans went her way.
Myron and Liz went out to their hoeing, Liz saying when once out of earshot of Mr. Deans:
"Did ye hear her jist, Myron, with that talk about 'eternal lakes of burning'—what's 'eternal' but 'continual?'—an' if Mrs. Deans ain't a continual burning torment her own self, I'll never drink water! Ain't she now, Myron? Why don't you speak out and say what you think? Keep still? Told us not to talk? Of course she did! She'd stop the dogs from barking if she could; I'll talk all I like! Old Stiffen can't see me till I get past the third currant bush, and I'll take care to be quiet then—old wretch he is! I'd like to scald him some day to see if that would limber him up and take him out of the kitchen, a-watchin' and a-watchin'." Liz, as a matter of fact, talked more than she hoed; but she had worked hard in a compulsory silence since daybreak, so it was hardly to be wondered at that she should be both slow and voluble now.
Myron's own eyes were heavy, and as she bent above her hoeing, her hands were none too eager for the toil, nor her feet too ready to advance; she worked on steadily though, and was beginning a new row before Liz completed her first one; as Liz passed her after some time to begin her second row, she said in an explosive undertone:
"You can't scare me with no hell-fire after living along o' Mrs. Deans;" then seeing Myron paid no heed, she muttered to herself, "and old Stiffen, too, he'd sicken any devil, a-watchin' and a-watchin'."
Liz, it will be seen, was not the model child of story book fame; the girl was the ordinary type of her class, with a thousand inherited failings, a dozen minor vices; but against these she had a heart that ached for love, a tongue that told the truth though it earned a blow; a generous and impulsive soul: but, alas, in Mrs. Deans' house she absorbed naught of good to offset her faults, save the virtue of courage and endurance, which, seeing Myron Holder's bravery, she cultivated through shame.
The hours passed.
Watching the girls as closely as he could, Henry Deans sat blinking in the sun, like a malevolent lizard lying in wait for flies.
Mrs. Deans meantime made her way along the road to Mrs. White's. The White house stood back some distance from the road, and was approached by a long, narrow lane, bordered by weather-beaten rail fences, none too well kept, Mrs. Deans thought wrathfully, as she stumbled over a broken rail; the grass had grown so rank about it that it was almost entirely hidden. Mrs. Deans inveighed against shiftlessness in general, and the White type in particular, all the way to the front door, whose iron handle and heavy knocker bespoke the age of the house; it was, indeed, one of the old landmarks, built at a time when the settlers hewed the finest oak trees in the wood for their kitchen rafters, and begrudged not to use the magnificent black walnuts for their stairs. This house had been the first one in Jamestown to have shutters—massive, solid affairs of oak, adjusted and held in place by heavy bars of iron that extended diagonally across them; the Whites, however, were much distressed by the old style of these shutters, and a year or two previously had substituted modern green slatted shutters upon the front of the house.
MRS. DEANS CALLS ON MRS. WHITE.MRS. DEANS CALLS ON MRS. WHITE.
Young Ann White answered Mrs. Deans' knock, and ushered her in with awkward cordiality. Young Ann White's name was Ossie Annie Abbie Maria White, named after "four aunts and her pa" as Mrs. White said. The Jamestown people pronounced the first three names with a strong accent upon the first syllable, and the middle syllable of Maria they clung to until they lost breath and relinquished it with a gasp; as they uttered it, Miss White's name was a sentence by itself.
Mrs. White came bustling in before Mrs. Deans got seated, and after expressing her pleasure at seeing her, saying, "I declare, Jane, the sight of you's good for sore eyes!" entered with great zest into the discussion of village gossip. Mrs. White's sitting room was an apartment that evidenced loudly the taste and industry of Mrs. White and her daughter. It had a "boughten" carpet on the floor, and upon this were strewn hooked mats of strange and wonderful design, trees with roses, daisies and blue flowers of name unknown, growing luxuriantly upon every branch; bright yellow horses and green dogs stood together upon the same mat in millenium-like peace, undisturbed by the red birds and white cats that enjoyed the same vantage ground with them; but finer than any of the others was the black mat placed in the centre of the floor, as being less likely to be trodden upon there; its design was a salmon-pink girl in a green dress. By what was little less than inspiration, Mrs. White had formed the eyes out of two large and glistening black buttons. The chairs were black haircloth, each adorned with a crocheted tidy worked by Miss White; the making of these tidies was her life—by means of them she divided her life into times and seasons. Her one tragedy was compassed by the unholy fate of one which, being just completed, fell into the paws and from thence to the jaws of a mischievous collie puppy, and was speedily reduced to rags. Her great achievement was the making of a "Rose of Sharon" tidy out of No. 100 thread. She could always fix any date by recalling what tidy she was engaged upon at the time. There was the "Spider-web tidy," the "Sheaves of Wheat," the "Rose of Sharon," the "Double Wheel"; one she called a "Fancy patterning tidy," and another was known as the "One in strips."
The room had a large old-fashioned mantel-piece of heavy oak; beneath it had been a huge square fireplace, big enough to hold a roaring fire of logs, but the massive fire-board stood before it winter and summer now, for it was never used. The fire-board was also of oak, darkened to that tint that the virtuoso loves and the dealer in spurious antiques strives after in vain. But this year, Mrs. White had papered it over with wall paper, pink roses on a white ground, and a blue border.
"It does look so much more genteel and cheerful!" said Mrs. White, and Mrs. Deans agreed with her.
The mantel was decked with a gaudy china vase, with paper flowers in it; a lamp, in the oil of which was a piece of red flannel, thought to be decorative as it showed through the glass; a cross cut out of perforated cardboard, and two curious round objects like spheres of finely carven wood; these were clove apples. It was common in polite society in Jamestown to ask "How old is your clove apple?" The answer was usually given in years, and would have greatly surprised any stranger to clove apples. To make a clove apple, they selected the largest specimen of apple to be found (and in Jamestown that meant a very big apple indeed). Having got the apple, the next proceeding was to stick it full of cloves, as closely as possible; that was all—the cloves absorbed and dried the juices of the apple—the apple shrunk and shrunk, wedging the cloves tighter and tighter together; until at last they became so tightly welded together by the pressure that it was absolutely impossible to pull, pry, or cut one out; they were popular ornaments in Jamestown sitting-rooms. Mrs. White, when any reference to clove apples was made, invariably said that she remembered the time when tomatoes were called love apples, and kept for "ornamings," by which she meant ornaments.
The walls of Mrs. White's sitting-room were hung with pictures; there was a highly colored print representing a pair of white kittens against a red velvet background, playing with dominoes; there was a glazed chromo of a preternaturally blonde baby, sleeping in a preternaturally green field, bestrewn with preternaturally white daisies; a woodcut of Abraham Lincoln, one of Queen Victoria, and a diploma for the excellence of Mr. White's fat cattle completed the decoration of the walls, except above the door, where purple wools on a perforated cardboard asked again the piercing question, "What is Home Without a Mother?"
There was a centre-table, with a large Bible overlaid with a crocheted mat upon it, and a home-made foot-stool that tripped you up every time you entered the room.
Mrs. Deans had brought no work with her, and when Mrs. White produced a basket and began to piece a block of a quilt, Mrs. Deans begged for thread and needle. Young Ann White rose to get them, and Mrs. Deans said:
"Well, Ann, now who's this quilt for?" The girl bridled and tossed her head until her rough hair stood on end; her dull skin and phlegmatic temperament made blushing an impossibility. Mrs. White broke in with boisterous good humor:
"Oh, Ann knows who it's fer all right enough; it's a poor hen can't scratch fer one chick, and that's all Sam and me has got—one apiece—Ann and Bing. Ann's got eight quilts all pieced now; this is the album pattern. When I finish this, I'm going to work on a 'Rising Sun' and—show Mrs. Deans that lace you made fer pilly cases, Ann."
Ann went to obey.
"She's so set on them things," continued her mother in an undertone, with many nods and headshakings; "so set on 'em. It's really wonderful; it makes me real nervous sometimes. There was Sarah—my cousin twice removed by marriage on Sam's side—and when she had consumpting, nothing would do but she must have a boughten feather; time and time again I argued with her, but never to no account—a boughten feather she would have, and being near the end, and being the only one the Clem Whiteses had, why they took to it that they'd humor her. So one day off Clem started and got the feather; he went to a millingnery store, and he says, says he, 'If the feather don't suit the lady—if it ain't becomin,' he said, for the clerk looked up sharp; 'If it ain't becomin,' Clem said, being always one to use fine language, 'if it ain't becomin,' I'll bring it back and change it for something else.'
"So he took the feather home, and three days after Sarah died, real reconciled 'cause she'd got the feather; they was real afraid she'd ask them to bury it with her, she thought so much of it, but they'd head her off if they thought she was going to speak of it, and remind her her end was near, which didn't make her enjoy the feather any the less, but just made her say less about it. Well, when the end came, it came suddent and she had no time to ask any promises; but she held on to it and when they drawed the pilly away, she still had it in her hand; well, her mother took it back to the millingnery store and got a whole black bunnit for the price of that feather. It's terrible what they do ask for them; they say Sam Warner's wife had more than an idea of getting one in the city when they went down to sell the wool, but I guess she thought that would be just a little more than his people would stand, and give up the idea—but pshaw! I wouldn't be surprised any day to see her with a feather; she's bought buttoned shoes for that young one of hers; why, my land! our Ann never had a pair of buttoned shoes till long after she had spoke in after-meeting.
"But Ann's so set on them things, it fairly makes me wonder if it ain't a warning that she'll be cut down. You know how 'tis with us all, Jane, 'the flower fadeth.'" Here Ann returned with various rolls of crochet trimming for Mrs. Deans to see; she unpinned the ends, extended them upon her black apron, and waited the praise she deserved. Mrs. Deans gave it liberally, but did not fail to describe the work she had seen at Mrs. Wilson's, left there by one of her market customers who came out to spend the day. Mrs. Deans described this production in such marvellous terms that Ann gathered up her treasures quite sadly, and as she pinned up each fat little roll wondered if by any possibility she could get the pattern.
Ann sat down to a tidy of intricate design—her mother babbled on about Bing and Ann, and her chickens and her garden; Mrs. Deans felt irritated. The door of the sitting-room opened upon the veranda; it was flung wide open, and held back by a cloth-covered brick, and the sunshine streamed gloriously across the gaudy mats.
Mrs. White was flowery of speech, being much given to the quoting of Scripture and apt to indulge in poetical similes drawn from the poetry of Mrs. Hemans, as used in the school-books. She was herself a poet of wide local repute, having composed the epitaph for a son lost in babyhood; engraved upon his tombstone it read:
"Good-by, young William Henry White,—The fever took you from me quite.The time has come for us to sever;But, William Henry, not forever."
Mrs. White wore her hair, still dark and abundant, in rows of curls. It was only after Ann grew up that she discarded the blue ribbon she had affected since her own girlhood.
Sitting in the sunshine, Mrs. Deans felt this comfortable self-satisfaction to be an unholy thing upon the part of the Whites. So she said abruptly:
"Isn't it a terrible thing about Homer Wilson? Well, it'll teach Marian a lesson; she set too much store on Homer altogether. I knowed what Homer Wilson was long before this came out!"
"Why, Jane, I never heard anything against Homer! What do you mean?" asked Mrs. White, looking over her spectacles at Mrs. Deans.
"Why, they say—but I don't want this mentioned, Ann; I want this kept particular confidential between us two, and no one else to be the wiser, though the talk's getting round, as others can tell beside me. But what folks tell is that if Myron Holder's young one ain't named Homer, it ain't because it hadn't ought to be."