“SHE OPENED THE DOOR IN PERSON.”“SHE OPENED THE DOOR IN PERSON.”
“SHE OPENED THE DOOR IN PERSON.”
Even Esther had no remembrance of having seen her before, but there could be no doubt of her identity. In feature she was singularly like her brother, but her small thin figure was not trim and straight like his. She was so painfully bent as plainly to need the aid of the stout oak stick on which she leaned, and her hair, in striking contrast with his, was snowy white. She greeted her nieces with as little effusion as their Aunt Elsie, but her quick bright eyes betrayed a much keener interest as they darted sharply from one to the other.
“Well, Ruel, I s’pose you’re feeling just as smart as ever to-day, and just as able to bless the Lord that you ain’t as the rest of us are. Thank you, my rheumatism ain’t a mite better ’n ’twas the last time you was here, and my sight and hearing are mebbe a little grain worse.”
She delivered herself of this with surprising rapidity as she walked before them into the parlor, looking back with short quick glances at her brother. He responded by a rather discomfited grunt. Evidently she had the start of him. The parlor was of the primmest New England type, and so dark that for some moments the girls, sitting uncomfortably on straight-backed chairs whose hard stuffed seats seemed never before to have been pressed by a human figure, could scarcely make out what manner of place they had entered. It dawned on them by degrees, and if anything had been needed to enhance the charm of the parlor at the old homestead, the necessary contrast would certainly have been furnished here.
There was nothing to suggest that any of the ordinary occupations of human life had ever been carried on in this room. The pictures which Stella had banished would seem to have been dragged from their hiding-places and hung on these walls, and beside them there was nothing of mural ornament except three silver coffin plates framed in oak on a ground of black. The Northmore girls, gazing in wonder at these shining tablets, could scarcely believe that they were really what they seemed, but Stella, to whom they appealed on their return, promptly disabused them of the doubt. Most certainly these sombre ornaments had their original place on the funeral casket. It was not uncommon, she said, to find such relics displayed in old-fashioned houses in this region.
“There were some in our house once,” she added, “but I persuaded grandfather to let me lay them away in the best bureau drawers. He objected at first, but after I put up my Madonnas and cathedrals he succumbed. I believe he considered the place unfit to display the names of those who had died in the faith.”
But this was afterward. At present Esther was occupied with the strenuous effort to read the names thus honored of Aunt Katharine, and Kate was bending all her energies to discover the points in which she herself resembled that lady. The latter turned upon them now with one of her sharp glances.
“So you’re Lucia’s girls,” she said with deliberation. “Well, you ain’t as good looking as she was, neither of you. But handsome is that handsome does; and if you behave yourselves, you’ll do.”
The girls were somewhat taken aback by this, but Kate rallied in a moment. “You can’t hurt our feelings by telling us we aren’t as good looking as mother was,” she said gayly, “for we know she was a regular beauty. Father’s told us that over and over.”
“I’ll warrant he thought so,” chuckled her grandfather, “and he wasn’t the only one, neither. Why all the likeliest young fellows in town came courting your mother. She didn’t have to take up with a Western man because she couldn’t get anybody nearer home.”
“Perhaps it was because she had a chance to compare the Western man with those around here that shedidtake up with him,” said Kate, quickly.
It was a fair retort; but the old gentleman’s forehead puckered for a moment as if he were not quite prepared for it. Before he could say anything in reply his sister had changed the subject, by asking, in her abrupt way, with her eyes fixed on her younger niece, “What do you think of this country?”
It is the stereotyped question from the old resident to the newcomer in all parts of the world. Perhaps, convenient as it is in bridging over the awkwardness of first acquaintance, it would be oftener omitted if society remembered that dictum of Dr. Johnson’s, that no one has a right to put you in such a position that you must either hurt him by telling the truth, or hurt yourself by not telling it. Kate Northmore had never faced the alternative under very crucial conditions, but whatever twinge there might be she preferred on general principles to resign to the other party, and she did so promptly now.
“Well, I can’t say I’m very much struck with the looks of it,” she said frankly. “It’s different from ours, you know; and these little bits of fields are so funny, all checkered off with stone walls. I haven’t got used to them yet.”
Miss Saxon looked at her niece without speaking, but the grandfather bristled at this. “Hm!” he grunted, “You Western folks seem to think nothing’s of any account unless it’s big. ’Taint the size of things, but what you do with ’em, that counts.”
“Well, it’s a wonder to me what you can do with some of this land of yours, it’s so rough and poor,” said Kate, lightly. “I don’t see how the farmers manage to make a living, scratching round among the rocks.” Then, with a good-natured laugh, she added: “Oh, we don’t despise the littles, out our way, as much as you think; but when it comes to wheat and corn, and things of that sort, we do like to see a lot of it growing all together. It looks as if there was enough to go round, you know, and makes people feel sort of free and easy.”
Perhaps, in his heart, Ruel Saxon doubted whether it was good for people to feel free and easy in this transient mortal state, but he had no chance just then to discuss the moral advantages of large labor and small returns, for Esther exclaimed, with a glance at her sister which was half reproachful: “But there are so many other things in a country besides the crops! For my part, I think New England is perfectly beautiful. I believe I’m in love with it all.”
Miss Katharine Saxon turned her head and looked at the girl attentively. The mother must have been very pretty indeed if she had ever looked prettier than Esther did at that moment. A delicate pink had risen in her cheeks, and her brown eyes seemed unusually soft and lustrous in the warmth with which she had spoken. She had made a lucky suggestion, and her grandfather took his cue instantly.
“We never pretended that our strong p’int was raising wheat ’n’ corn here in New England,” he said loftily. “The old Bay State can do better than that. She can raise men; men who fear God and honor their country, and can guide her in the hour of need with the spirit of wisdom and sound understanding.”
“We’ve got some of that sort, too,” said Kate, cutting in at the first pause. “The only difference is you started on your list a little ahead of us.”
But the remark was lost on her grandfather. He was on solid ground now, and he felt his eloquence rising. “You talk about our land being poor. Well, mebbe ’tis; mebbe we do have to scratch round among the rocks to make a living, but we’ve scratched lively enough to do it, and support our schools and churches, and start yours into the bargain. We’ve scratched deep enough to find the money to send lots of our boys to college—there’s been a good many of ’em right from this district. There was Abner Sickles that went to Harvard from the back side of Rocky Hill, where they used to say the stones were so thick you had to sharpen the sheep’s nose to get ’em down to the grass between; there was Baxter Slocum—thirteen children his father had—there were the Dunham boys, three out of six in one family.”
For the last minute Miss Katharine Saxon had been moving uneasily in her chair. Her square chin, which had been resting on her clasped hands at the top of her cane, had come up, and her eyes were fixed sharply on her brother.
“While you’re about it, Ruel,” she said, interrupting him in the dryest of tones, “you might just mention some o’ thegirlsthat have been sent to college from these old farms.”
Ruel Saxon, reined up thus suddenly in the onward charge of his eloquence, opened and closed his lips for a moment with a rather helpless expression. She waited for him to speak, her thin hands gripping the cane, and the corners of her mouth twitching ominously.
“Well, of course, Katharine,” he said testily, “there hain’t been as many girls. For that matter there warn’t the female colleges to send ’em to fifty years ago; but you know yourself there hain’t been the means to send ’em both, the boysandthe girls, and if it couldn’t be but one—”
He paused to moisten his lips, and she took up the word with an accent of intense bitterness. “If there couldn’t be but one, it must be the boy, of course,—always the boy. Oh, I know! Yes, and I know how the girls ’n’ their mothers have slaved to send ’em. It ain’t the men that have learned how to get more out of the farms; it’s the women that have learned how to get along with less in the house. There was Abner Sickles! Yes, there was; and there was his sister Abigail, too. I went to school with ’em both. She was enough sight smarter ’n he was; always could see into things quicker, ’n’ handle ’em better, but they took a notion to send him to college,—wanted to make a minister of him,—and she stopped going to school when she was fourteen, and did the housework for the family,—her mother was always sickly,—and then sat up nights, sewing straw and binding shoes to earn money for Abner.” She paused, with a note in her voice which suggested a clutch at the throat, then added: “She died when she was twenty. Went crazy the last part of the time, and thought she’d committed the unpardonable sin. It’s my opinion somebodyhadcommitted it; but ’twarn’t her.”
It was the old gentleman who was moving uneasily now. “It was too bad about Abigail,” he said, with a shake of the head. “I remember her case, and ’twas one of the strangest we ever had in the church. I went out to see her once, with two of the other deacons, and we set out the doctrine of the unpardonable sin clear and strong, and showed her that if she reallyhadcommitted it she wouldn’t be feeling so bad about it—she’d have her conscience seared as with a hot iron; but she couldn’t seem to lay hold of any comfort. However, it was plain that her mind wasn’t right, and I don’t believe the Lord held her responsible for her lack of faith.”
The old woman gave an impatient snort. “If he didn’t hold somebody responsible, you needn’t talk to me about justice,” she said fiercely. “I don’t know how you and the other deacons figured it out, Ruel, but if it ain’t the unpardonable sin for folks to act like fools, when the Lord has given ’em eyes to see with, and sense enough to put two and two together, I don’t know what ’tis. I tell you the whole trouble grew out of that notion that a boy must be sent away to school just because he was a boy, and a girl must be kept at home just because she was a girl. If the Almighty ever meant to have things go that way why didn’t He give the men the biggest brains, and put the strongest backs ’n’ arms on the women? Heaven knows they’ve needed ’em.”
A good memory was undoubtedly one of Ruel Saxon’s strong points, but all recollection of the gentle warning his daughter-in-law had given him was put utterly to flight by this speech of his sister’s. He stiffened himself in his chair, and his nostrils dilated (to use a pet figure of his own) “like a war-horse smelling the battle from afar.”
“Katharine,” he said, “you darken counsel by words without knowledge. I don’t pretend, and nobody ever pretended, that Abigail Sickles or’ to have worked herself to death to keep Abner in college. Her folks or’ to have seen it in time, and stopped her. But you take too much upon yourself when you want to change things round from the way the Lord made ’em. It’s thementhat have got to be at the head of things in church and state; it’s thementhat have got to go out into the world and earn the living for the women and children; and it’s because they’ve needed the education more, and had more call to use it, that the boys have been sent to college instid of the girls. There’s reason in all things.”
She broke in upon him with a short, scornful laugh. “There’s a terrible good reason sometimes, Ruel, why the women have to earn the living for themselves, ’n’ the children too; and that’s to keep themselves from starving. Who earned the living for Nancy’s children when she brought ’em all home to the old house forty years ago? Well, I guess she ’n’ I earned most of it.”
She lifted her shoulders with an effort, and added: “Shouldn’t be quite so near doubled together now if it hadn’t been for bending over that spinning-wheel day in ’n’ day out, working to get food ’n’ clothes for those children, the six of ’em that John Proctor ran away ’n’ left. You talk about men going out in the world to earn the living. It would be a good thing for the women to go into the world too, sometimes. Mebbe they wouldn’t be quite so helpless then when they’re left to shift for themselves.”
The old man winced. “You had an awful hard time, Katharine, you ’n’ Nancy. John Proctor didn’t do his duty by his family,” he said; and then he faced her with a fresh impatience. “But that ain’t the way the men gener’ly do, is it? To hear you talk a body’d think the women had just naturally got to plan for that sort of thing. You want ’em to go out into the world, like the men, and make a business of it. I’d like to know who’d take care of the home ’n’ the children if they did. Home is the place for women. The Apostle Paul—”
There was a distinct flash of anger now in the small, bright eyes of Miss Katharine Saxon. “Don’t tell me what Paul said,” she exclaimed. “I tell you that notion o’ his, that there was nothing a woman had a right to do but marry, ’n’ have children, ’n’ tend the house, is at the bottom of half the foolishness there is in the world to-day. Women have just as good a right to pick ’n’ choose what they shall do as the men have. And some of ’em had a good deal better do something else than marry the men that want ’em. I tell you Paul didn’t know it all. ’Cording to his own account he had to be struck by lightning before he could see some things, and if another streak had come his way mebbe he’d caught sight of a few more that were worth looking at.”
Ruel Saxon gazed at his sister for a minute speechless. Then he said solemnly, “Katharine, thereissuch a thing as blasphemy, and I’d be a little careful if I was you how I talked about the Lord’s dealings with his saints.”
He glanced at his granddaughters as he said it, as if to suggest that their morals, if not his own, might be impaired by such language.
“Laws, Ruel,” she said briskly, “I’d somehow got it into my head that that thing happened to him on the way to Damascus, and I didn’t know as you or anybody else called Saul of Tarsus a saint.”
She had him at a moment’s disadvantage, and the thin, high, mocking laugh with which she ended put the finishing touch to his irritation.
“As the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of a fool,” he said, with slow emphasis.
It should be observed in passing that Deacon Saxon’s use of the name which he had just bestowed by implication on his sister was, like the text itself, Solomonic. The person lacking, not in knowledge, but in moral sense, was the one whom the wise man called a fool, and there were moments when Katharine Saxon appeared to her brother to be so wanting in this respect as to come fairly under the title. It was not the first time that his frankness had led him to bestow it on her.
“Hey?” she said, leaning forward suddenly, with her hand curled about her ear.
That she had not caught the words was by no means certain. It suited her humor sometimes to offset his boastfulness as to his good hearing with a certain parade of her own slight deafness, and the occasions for making him repeat himself were often cunningly chosen. For once he did not do it. Perhaps, a second time, he remembered the presence of his granddaughters.
As for the girls themselves, they caught their breath, in the silence that followed, with something like a gasp. It is safe to say that they had never been present before at such an interview between relatives. Kate would not have minded a renewal of hostilities, but Esther, with better grace, seized the chance to effect a truce by turning the conversation into a more peaceful channel.
“Aunt Katharine,” she said eagerly, “you spoke of the spinning you used to do. Have you the old wheel now? I’ve heard mother tell what a wonderful spinner you were, and I should so like to see the very wheel you used.”
The old woman took her hand from her ear and turned toward the girl. “No,” she said, “I hain’t got the old wheel now; one of Nancy’s girls wanted it, and I let her carry it off. ’Twasn’t any account; pretty near as much wore out as I was when it stopped running.”
Evidently she felt that her passage-at-arms with her brother was ended. The sharpness of her expression relaxed, and she rose from her place with her ordinary manner. “I can show you a piece of linen your mother wove, if you want to see it. She’d have made a good spinner herself if she’d stuck to it, but I s’pose she forgot all about it long ago. Well, there’s plenty other ways for women to use their time nowadays, and I’m glad of it.”
The rest of the call ran smoothly. Miss Saxon could be even gracious when she was so disposed, and she treated her guests to a bottle of raspberry vinegar, which, in spite of the fact that she had brewed it herself, was not in the least too sharp, with fruit cake which time had brought to the most perfect mellowness. Her nieces would have left her house imagining that the “queerness,” of which she had given such ample proof, was confined to the one subject which she had discussed with her brother, had it not been for a little episode at the very end of the call, and for this, as it happened, the old gentleman was again responsible.
“How are you getting along with your garden, Katharine?” he asked. “I was thinking mebbe I or’ to send Tom down here to do a little weeding for you.”
A peculiar smile gleamed suddenly in the eyes of his sister. “Thank ye, Ruel, I’ve got all the help I need jest now,” she said. “Come out ’n’ take a look at my garden.”
She led the way to the rear of the house, and stepped before them into the trim little garden. It was of the old-fashioned sort, with vegetables growing in thrifty rows, and bunches of such flowers as phlox, sweet william, and bachelor’s buttons standing at the corners of the walks. It would have seemed a model of conventional primness, but for a curious figure seated on a three-legged stool, puffing tobacco smoke from a long Dutch pipe in among the branches of a rose-bush.
He might have been upwards of sixty; a dapper little man with a shining face, and a round head covered as to its top by an embroidered cap adorned with a crimson tassel. His waistcoat was of gay old-fashioned silk, across which was strung a huge gold chain, and a flaming topaz pin adorned the front of his calico shirt. At sight of the company issuing from the house he started from his seat and trotted up the walk to meet them, his hand extended and his face expressive of the most beaming cordiality.
Ruel Saxon, who was following his sister with a meekness of deportment which had sat uneasily upon him ever since the close of their discussion, started as his eye fell on this person, and threw up his head with a movement of surprise and irritation. “Good day, Solomon,” he said stiffly, as they came together, Miss Saxon having stepped aside to give free course for the meeting.
“Why, how d’y’ do, Deacon, how d’y’ do?” exclaimed the other, seizing the old gentleman’s hand, which, to tell the truth, had not been offered him, and shaking it furiously. “It’s been a terrible long time since you and I met. I—I was thinkin’ the other day I or’ to come round and see how you was gittin’ along.”
The deacon did not look overjoyed at the mention of the intended honor. “How long has Solomon been here?” he asked rather curtly, turning to his sister.
“Two weeks to-morrow,” she replied, with equal curtness. Then, turning to the little man, and from him to the girls, she said with marked politeness, “Mr. Ridgeway, these are my nieces, Lucia Saxon’s children. I guess you remember her.”
The little man pulled the cap from his head, revealing a crown as bald as a baby’s, and bowed himself up and down with the fervor of an Oriental. “Lucia Saxon? What, her that married the doctor and went out West? Why, sartin, sartin. She was one of the nicest gals I ever see, and the prettiest spoken. I—I guess your mother must ’av’ told you about me,” he added eagerly. “I took her home from spellin’ school once. She had spelled down everybody but me; but I was older’n she was, you know, a good deal older.” The delight of the remembrance seemed to overcome him, and he hopped first on one foot, then on the other, like an excited child.
Ruel Saxon’s face worked curiously while this performance lasted. “I don’t see but what your garden truck is getting on all right,” he said in the dryest of tones, “and I guess the girls ’n’ I’d better be going.”
He turned, making his way past the others, regardless of the fact that his footprints were left in the onion-bed which bordered the walk, and headed the line again toward the house.
“I shall write to mother that we have seen you,” said Esther, smiling back at the little man, who still stood bowing with his cap in his hands, and Kate gave him a friendly nod, though her mouth was twitching with amusement.
Aunt Katharine said good-by to them at the front door. “If you ever feel like seeing the old woman again, come down,” she said to the girls. “’Tain’t so very far across the fields, and you can follow the cow-path.” Then, without waiting to see them go, she closed the door.
“Grandfather,” Kate burst out when they were fairly off, “who in the world is that man, and how does he come to be at Aunt Katharine’s?”
“That man,” he repeated, deepening his tone with an accent of disgust, “is a poor half-witted cretur that belongs at the poorhouse. He stays there most of the time, but now ’n’ then he gets a restless spell and they let him out. Then he always comes round to your Aunt Katharine’s, and she takes him in.”
“Well, he’s the queerest acting man I ever came across,” said Kate, “and how he was dressed out, with his fine flowered vest and his jewellery!”
“‘Jewellery!’” grunted her grandfather. “He didn’t have on any compared with what he has sometimes. Why, when he really dresses up, that cretur covers himself all over with it.”
The girls looked so astonished that he apparently felt it incumbent on him to attempt some explanation of the man. “The fact is,” he said, “Solomon Ridgeway is as crazy as a loon on one p’int. He thinks he’s rich, though for aught I know he’s got as much sense about other things as he ever had. He thinks he’s terrible rich, and that the best way to keep his property, as he calls it, is in gold and jewels. He’s got a trunkful of it—wo’thless stuff, of course—that he carries with him everywhere. I s’pose it’s stowed away somewhere at your Aunt Katharine’s now.”
Kate really seemed past speaking for a moment, and Esther exclaimed in a tone of utter bewilderment, “Well, I should have thought Aunt Katharine was the last person in the world who would want such a man at her house. What makes her do it?”
“The Lord only knows,” said the old gentleman solemnly. And then he jerked the reins and urged Dobbin on his way in a tone of uncommon asperity.
The fact was, the question had a special irritation for him. That his sister, who flouted wise men and scorned the opinions of those having authority, should bear with the vagaries of a being like Solomon Ridgeway was a thing that passed his understanding. With the man himself hemighthave had some patience, though his form of mania was peculiarly exasperating to his own hard common sense, and somehow he could not help resenting it that “Solomon,” of all names, should have lighted on so foolish a creature; but that, such as he was, he should be the object of Katharine Saxon’s pointed and continuous favor was trying beyond measure to her brother. He lapsed into a silence quite unusual with him, and the girls did not disturb it again on the way home.
They were longing to talk the visit over with Stella, but she was away when they reached the house, and Aunt Elsie asked no questions beyond an inquiry for Aunt Katharine’s health. It was at supper that the subject found its way into the family talk, and then Stella, who had just come in, opened it.
“Well, I hope you enjoyed your call on Aunt Katharine,” she said, smiling at her cousins.
“Of course we did,” said Kate, promptly. “You didn’t begin to tell us how interesting she is.”
“Oh, but you should have been there on a day when she and grandfather discussed things,” said Stella. “That’s the time when she really shows her quality.” She sent a demure glance at the old gentleman as she spoke. How she had become possessed of his intention to refrain from controversy is not certain, but somehow she had it.
He glanced with obvious embarrassment at his granddaughters. Then he set down his cup of tea, and faced his daughter-in-law. “Elsie,” he said, in a tone whose humility was really touching, “I meant to stand by what I said to you. I certainly did; but I couldn’t do it.” He cleared his throat and his tone grew firmer. “I couldn’t do it, and I don’t know as I shall be held responsible for it, either. The Bible says, ‘As much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men,’—and I s’pose that means women too,—but it don’t lie in me, and it never will, to keep my mouth shut while folks are advancing such notions as Katharine did this afternoon. I did contend with her; I certainly did.”
The Northmore girls could not keep straight faces, and Stella broke into a delighted giggle. “I’m sure ’twas your duty, grandpa, and I’m glad you did it,” she said. “What was it this time; woman’s rights, or the folly of getting married, or what?”
She glanced at her cousins as she asked the question, and Esther spoke first. “It was education partly, and the question whether women ought not to be as free as men to choose what they shall do. I must say that for my part I thought Aunt Katharine made some real good points, though of course she needn’t have been quite so bitter.”
“It was my speaking about Abner Sickles that stirred her up to begin with,” said the old gentleman, still addressing himself in half-apologetic tone to Aunt Elsie. “That put her in mind of his sister Abigail, and how she worked herself to death helping him through college.”
“I shouldn’t wonder if helping Abner was the greatest comfort the poor girl had,” observed Aunt Elsie.
The unemphatic way in which she sometimes made important suggestions was one of Aunt Elsie’s peculiarities. No one spoke for a minute, and she turned the conversation away from Aunt Katharine by suddenly asking a question on a wholly different subject.
After supper that evening, as Ruel Saxon sat in his room in the twilight, Esther came softly in and sat down beside him.
“Grandfather,” she said, “what made Aunt Katharine so bitter against the men?”
She had been turning the question wonderingly in her thoughts ever since the interview of the afternoon. There was something in the lonely old woman, crabbed of manner and sharp of tongue as she was, which had appealed to her strongly. That she was a unique personality, unlike any one she had seen before, was no doubt a part of it, for Esther loved the striking and picturesque; but there was more than this. She, too, had felt some touch of revolt against the limitations with which custom had hedged the ordinary life of woman, and Aunt Katharine’s fierce, uncaring challenge of it all had not been wholly unpleasing to her.
“What made Katharine so bitter against the men?” repeated her grandfather. He had started at the question, as one does sometimes when called upon suddenly to account for a familiar fact which everyday acquaintance has robbed of all its wonder. “Well, that’s a long story, and I don’t s’pose anybody but Katharine herself could tell the whole of it; but there were some things all of us knew, and she did have her grievances—there’s no doubt but what she had her grievances.”
He jerked off his spectacles, through which he had been trying to read a chapter of Proverbs, settled himself in his chair, dropped his chin in his hand, and began:—
“It started just about the time that Nancy came home with her children; Nancy was our sister, you know. There were three of us: Nancy and Katharine and me. Katharine was the youngest, and she was going to be married that spring to Levi Dodge. He was a likely young fellow, as everybody thought, and they’d been keeping company for upward of a year. But when Nancy came home it changed everything. There were those six children to be done for, and Nancy herself all wore out with work ’n’ worry, and your grandmother—for I was married then, you know—had her hands more ’n full with the housework and her own children, and it looked to Katharine as if she’d or’ to put off getting married a while and help things along here at home.”
“We didn’t ask her to, and we didn’t so much as know she was thinking of it, till she’d got her mind all made up; but I tell you we were awful glad, and I never shall forget how Nancy and your grandmother cried and hugged her, when she told ’em what she was going to do, right here in this room where you ’n’ I be to-night.”
He paused, and it seemed to Esther as if the shadows in the dusky room took momentary shape of those three women, young, loving, and in trouble together, who had met there so long ago. Perhaps the old man felt their presence too, for there was a peculiar softness in his voice as he went on:—
“We wouldn’t ’a’ let her do it, if we’d known how things were coming out, but you see we thought Nancy’d be in a home of her own again inside a year, and then the way’d be open for Katharine ’n’ Levi, and of course we thought he’d be reasonable about it. But bless your heart, when she came to talk it over with him he wouldn’t give in an inch. He said she’d giv’ her promise to him, and she couldn’t go back on it; he had more claim on her than John Proctor’s family had. Well, of course, I don’t know what passed between ’em,—Katharine never talked it over much,—but she was always high strung, and I guess she gave it to him pretty straight that if he couldn’t wait for her a little while under such circumstances he needn’t count on having her at all. Anyhow, the upshot of it was he went away mad, and we were dreadful sorry, but we thought he’d get over it in a day or two. He didn’t, though. In less ’n a week he was courting Sally Fry, and they two were married on the very day that was set for Katharine’s wedding.”
“How perfectly abominable!” burst out Esther. “I don’t wonder she despises the men if that’s the way she was treated.”
“She needn’t despise ’em all, need she?” said her grandfather, sharply. “Therehavebeen men that could wait as long as any woman. There was Jacob, for instance. He waited seven years for Rachel, working for a hard man all the time, and the Bible says they seemed like only a few days to him for the love he bore her. And then he worked for her seven years more.”
Esther was silent. There was no answer to this case of Jacob, dear old Jacob, a prince indeed, with all his meanness, since he could love like that!
“Do you suppose Aunt Katharine really cared for that man?” she asked after a moment.
“I guess most likely she did,” said her grandfather, nodding his head slowly. “She wasn’t the kind to say she’d marry a man unless she loved him. But she never made a sound after he left her. She held her head higher than ever, and the way she worked! You’d have thought she had the strength of ten women in her.”
He drew his hand reflectively across his chin for a moment, then added: “But somehow I never thought ’twas that affair with Levi that soured your Aunt Katharine as much as it was the way John Proctor acted. It was strange about Proctor. You see, in those days they could put a man in prison for debt, and he had got in debt—not so very deep, only a matter of three or four hundred dollars; but the man he owed it to was threatening to have the law of him if he didn’t pay, and there warn’t any way John could turn to get that money. There was nothing he could do but get out of the country, and I’m free to confess now that I helped him go.
“You see, we thought if he could once get into Canada, and work at his trade—he was a first-rate carpenter—he could pay off that money in a little while, and I agreed to do what I could for his family while he was gone. We went over everything together, and he talked as fair as a man could, and then I drove with him one day ’n’ night, and the relatives up New Hampshire way gave him a lift when he got there, and between us all he was over the border before folks round here knew he was gone. I thought then that I was doing my duty, for it was an unjust law, and they did away with it pretty soon after that; but looking backnow, and seeing how things turned out, I sometimes wish I’d let John Proctor stay here, and take what came of it.”
“Why, didn’t he pay that money, after all?” asked Esther, as her grandfather paused.
“Pay it!” he repeated. “Not a cent of it; and what’s more we never saw hide or hair of him in this country again. For a while he wrote to his wife, and now ’n’ then sent her some money, but it got longer between times, and by’m by the letters stopped for good, though we heard of him now ’n’ then, and knew he was alive and earning a good living. I never could figure it out why he acted that way, for Nancy was a good wife, and up to the time he went away John seemed to think as much of his family as other men. There was such a thing in Bible times as folks being possessed with the devil,” he added solemnly, “and I have my suspicions that that was what ailed John Proctor.”
He paused when he had made this not wholly unkind suggestion, then went on: “It was terrible hard for all of us, but somehow it seemed as if it worked on Katharine more ’n anybody else. She hated the very name of John Proctor, but she took up the cudgels for his wife ’n’ children, and I always thought ’twas slaving for them, and seeing all they went through with, that set her so against the men. Mebbe she might have got over it some, when the children grew older, and times eased up a little, but then came that trouble to Ruth, the oldest of Nancy’s girls, and the one Katharine thought the most of.
“We thought Ruth had made a good match, though the man was consider’ble older ’n she was,—her mother hurried it on a little herself, for of course she was anxious to get the girls into homes of their own,—but he never was good to her after they were married. He broke her down with hard work, and holding her in, and the poor little thing only lived a year or two. After that if anybody said marriage to Katharine it was like tinder in dry leaves. She took to studying about woman’s rights and all that, till she got to be as—well, as you saw her this afternoon.”
“Poor Aunt Katharine!” said Esther, softly. That she had suffered wrong might surely bespeak in a generous mind some excuse for her bitterness, but that, after all, it was not her own wrongs, but those of others which had burned that bitterness into her soul, made it seem even noble to the girl who had heard her story.
“Yes, it was too bad. I’ve always been sorry for Katharine,” said the old gentleman, and then he added, with an asperity he could not quite repress: “but the trouble is she got into the way of looking all the time at the worst side of things, and by’m by it ’peared to her as if that side reached all the way round. She talks about folks having sense enough to put two ’n’ two together, but I notice she always picks out the partic’ler two she wants whensheadds things up.”
A light step crossed the threshold at that moment, and Stella Saxon’s graceful figure appeared behind her grandfather’s chair. “Haven’t you had enough of Aunt Katharine for one day, Esther?” she demanded. “Leave grandfather to think up some new arguments for the next time he goes to see her, and come with me. I want you to see what a picture it is from the back of our old barn when the shadows creep over the hills.”
She lighted the lamp that stood by the open Bible, then slipped her arm through her cousin’s and drew her away. “Thank you for telling me all this,” said Esther, lingering a moment by her grandfather’s chair. “I love to hear stories of what happened here so long ago.”
“There are plenty of ’em, and they’ll keep,” he replied, smiling; and then he returned to the Proverbs again with unabated enjoyment.
“Do you know,” said Esther, as the two walked away, “I believe I should really love Aunt Katharine if I knew her.”
Stella gave one of her shrugs. “There’s no accounting for tastes,” she said. Then, as she glanced in at the barn door, which they were passing at that moment, she added with a laugh: “I declare, if Kate hasn’t managed to make her way with my brother Tom! They’re hobnobbing together like two old cronies.”
The truth was Kate Northmore had made up her mind to get acquainted with her cousin. Whether it was the barn or the boy that had brought her out this evening is not certain. She had a liking for a good quality of each. This particular barn was of a larger sort than she was used to, and the boy—she half suspected that he was smaller. There was something wrong about a boy who would go whistling off across the fields when his chores were done without saying “boo” to a girl who was looking after and longing to go with him. However, he might be only timid.
She had no thought of winning a place in his regard by the thing she did when she stepped into the barn to-night, but by chance she had done it. She had seen Dobbin standing in his stall with his harness on, as he had been put there an hour before. There was a rush of work now, for the cows were in the barn, and Tom and the hired man were seated at the milking. She had taken in the situation; then, with a word to Dobbin and a good-natured slap on his flank, stepped in beside him and removed his unnecessary burden.
It was a foolish thing to do, for she had on her pretty lawn, sash and all, but the fact that she had not minded her clothes, together with the surprising fact that she could do the deed at all, had impressed Tom deeply.
“Well,” he said, “you’re the first girl I ever saw who could do that.”
“That!” repeated Kate, “why, I’ve helped about horses ever since I was big enough to reach up. Father’s a doctor, you know, and the horses have to be got out in a hurry sometimes. I can harness and unharness about as quick as any man he ever had on the place. I’m strong in my arms.” She made a quick, free movement of her arms, from which the sleeves fell back, showing the firm round muscles, then added lightly: “I like everything about horses, specially driving. Dobbin’s too fat to be any good. What makes you feed him so much?”
“You’d better ask grandfather that question,” said Tom. “He never comes into the barn without piling his manger full of hay. He thinks the rest of us abuse him.”
They exchanged a good-natured laugh. Then Kate said: “I should think you would want more than one horse on this place. I don’t see how you can stand it to work behind oxen; they’re so slow.”
Tom’s countenance grew a trifle rigid. “We like them well enough,” he said stiffly.
“Oh, but you wouldn’t,” protested Kate, “if you’d ever worked with horses. Out our way they do all the work with them, and you’ll hardly see a farmer driving into town with a one-horse team.”
Tom would have scorned to appear at all impressed. “I shouldn’t care for such a lot of horses,” he said. “I like cows. There’s more profit in them.”
“Well, when it comes to cows you can make a bigger showing than we can,” said Kate, “but that’s because you raise milk and we raise crops.” And then she added in a tone of candor, “I reckon that makes the difference in the way the work is done. You don’t have big fields to plough and reap, and you can afford to spend time crawling round behind oxen when we can’t.”
Tom did not offer any reply to this interesting theory. “What makes you say ‘reckon’ so much?” he asked abruptly.
Kate’s eyes widened. “It’s as good as ‘guess,’ isn’t it?” she retorted. “I’d as lief reckon as guess any time.”
Tom poured his pail of milk into the big strainer and turned to go. “I’ve got another cow to milk before I’m through,” he said.
“I can milk, too,” said Kate, “though I don’t care much about it. Aunt Milly taught me.” And then she added, with a glance down the line of stalls: “But if I were going to do it I shouldn’t want the cows cooped up this way. I should want them out in the barn lot.”
“What, loose in the yard?” repeated Tom. He positively had to stop now. “And have them walking round all the time you’re trying to milk them? Well, I should think that would be a pretty business!”
“Our cow doesn’t walk round when we’re milking her,” said Kate. “Why, a cow naturally wants to be milked when the time comes, and it’s a great deal pleasanter being outdoors. We don’t care so very much about the milking-stool, either,” she added, laughing. “Icoulddo it on a pinch without any.”
“What, squat on your feet, and the cow not even tied up!” ejaculated Tom. The accomplishments of his cousin Kate were certainly out of the ordinary. He looked at her with a growing curiosity, then added loftily: “In this part of the country women don’t milk. We don’t think it’s their business.”
“Well, I’m glad you don’t,” said Kate; “but ’tisn’t such a queer thing for women to do as you seem to think. In most countries women generally do it.”
“I never heard of a woman milking before,” said Tom, doggedly.
Kate’s eyes grew big again. “Why, in stories they always do it,” she cried.
Tom looked impervious to any memory of the sort, and she added, with insistence: “You must have heard of the woman who counted her chickens before they were hatched. She had a pail of milk on her head at the very time, you know; and in the ‘House that Jack Built’ it was the ‘maiden all forlorn who milked the cow with the crumpled horn.’ The man hadn’t a thing to do with it except bothering her.”
Certainly Tom could not deny acquaintance with those classics. “I never took much stock in Mother Goose,” he said, starting on with his pail again.
“But you’veheardof them,” Kate cried triumphantly. He did not look back this time, but he was evidently meditating. As for Kate, she felt that the acquaintance had begun in an auspicious manner, and perched on the side of the cutting machine to wait for his return.
They were together preparing some cut-feed for Dobbin’s evening meal when the girls looked in at the door, and the talk was evidently flowing with the greatest ease.
“This is just like a cutting machine we used to have at home, and I have special reason to remember it,” Kate was saying as she turned the wheel, “for I nearly lost the end of my thumb in it when I was a little tot. Father was at home, as good luck would have it, and he fixed it up so quick that no great harm came of it.” She held up a pink thumb for Tom’s inspection, and added, “You wouldn’t know it now by anything except the nail being a little thicker than common at one corner, and that’s really been an advantage to me, for I can open a jack-knife without asking a boy to do it for me.”
Tom gave a grunt of approval. “And sharpen the pencil too?” he asked. Then, suddenly: “Are there many boys out your way? There are more girls here.”
“Oh, there are lots of boys,” said Kate, and then she added: “but the nicest one of all has gone to college, and we don’t see much of him nowadays. Are you going to college?”
He stirred the cut-feed for a minute without speaking, then shook his head. “Stella wants me to go,” he said, “and grandfather used to talk about it, too, but he’s sort of given it up lately. I guess he thinks I’m not scholar enough; and I’m not,” he added frankly. “I don’t take to studying. I’d rather work with things that are outside of my own head.”
Kate dropped the handle of the cutting machine. “Tom,” she exclaimed, in a tone of heartfelt sympathy, “that’s just the way I feel, too. I never did like school as Esther and Mort and some of the others do. I don’t want to be a stupid, of course—you have to know things or you’re no account; but for my part, I’d never get them out of books if I could get them any other way. I like people and affairs better.”
There is nothing like downright honesty to prepare the way for friendship. They had made a frank disclosure of feeling on an important subject, and Kate and Tom were comrades from that moment; comrades, in spite of the fact that certain other points of view were by no means held in common, and that each contended strenuously for his own. They talked for a long time of cousinly affairs. With his mother’s quiet way of looking at things, Tom had a considerable spice of his grandfather’s shrewdness, and Kate found his opinions on various matters interesting.
“Aunt Katharine must be a strange woman,” she said, when they had touched on a variety of other subjects. “Do they always fight, she and grandfather, as they did to-day?”
“Always,” said Tom, promptly. “It’s nip and tuck every time they come together. You’d think sometimes they fairly hated each other. But if one of them gets sick you ought to see how the other frets. Grandfather gets into a regular stew sometimes over her living off there by herself; but it’s a good thing she does. We couldn’t stand it if she lived here.”
“What supports her?” asked Kate, with her quick instinct for practical details.
“Supports her?” repeated Tom; “why, Aunt Katharine’s rich. Didn’t you know that? She had some property left to her years ago,—it was city land, I believe,—and it rose in value so it made a fortune. I heard grandfather say once that she must have as much as forty thousand dollars of her own.” The sum seemed unlimited wealth to the country boy. “Nobody knows what she’ll do with it,” he added; “she’ll want to fix it so the men can’t get it. She says she’d leave it to one of her female relatives if she could find one who’d promise never to marry.”
“She’d better propose that to Stella,” said Kate; “she’s so fond of her art.”
Tom whistled. “She isn’t so fond of it but she’d leave it quick enough if the right one asked her,” he said astutely.
And then they rose and walked together toward the house. Aunt Elsie, in the kitchen door, was calling, with an anxious note in her voice: “Girls, girls, why don’t you come in? You’re staying out in the dew too long.”
It seemed as if a summer of ordinary time was compressed into that first fortnight at the old homestead. Esther wondered sometimes whether the surrounding hills, over whose tops the morning broke earlier, and in whose soft green hollows the twilights seemed to linger longer than any she had known before, had not something to do with the lifting of the days into the lengthened space of life and happiness. The charm of the New England landscape, its restful yet enticing beauty, its reserves, its revelations, had captured her fancy and her heart completely. Her letters were full of the new delight. Mrs. Northmore smiled as she read them, and felt that in Esther she was living over again the joys of her own girlhood.
As for Kate, she was feeling the new environment as keenly as her sister, but there was a difference in the letters. They were not rhapsodical, and they were sprinkled with questions, such, for instance, as, “Don’twe speak as correctly in the West as they do in New England?” “Isn’tit absurd to drop therclear out of words, anddowe over-do it?”
Between herself and Tom Saxon there was continual sharpshooting as to the relative merits of their respective sections, but it did not diminish in the least their relish for each other’s company. She rode with him in the mornings to the milk factory, and occasionally took down the load of cans in his stead. She went with him for the cows, and was regularly depended on as the person to take the luncheon to the hayfield in the middle of the forenoon. Sometimes she stopped and ate a doughnut with the workmen under the trees, but she had not yet developed a fondness for the peculiar beverage compounded of water, molasses, and vinegar, vaguely called “drink,” which seemed the approved liquid in this region for quenching the thirst of haymakers.
Indeed, the daily round furnished to each of the girls so much of enjoyment that they could easily have spared the more formal pleasures, but Aunt Elsie had definite ideas as to the courtesies due between families, and Stella’s prestige in the community gained ready attention for her cousins. There were calls in plenty to be received and returned, and for picnics and teas there were early invitations.
Esterly was counted one of the most social of New England towns, and its summer population included city boarders who had a mind for pleasure. They fell in with whatever was planned for them, Kate and Esther, with ready enjoyment, yet for them both the distinctive engagements of the old home and the old farm remained easily the best. One of them, suggested by Aunt Elsie one day at table, brought a thrill of peculiar pleasure.
“I do wish,” she said, with a glance at the young people which included them all, “that we could get some huckleberries. They say they’re ripe on Gray’s Hill, and I do need something to make pies of.”
Stella gave a little sigh. It was the first invitation of the season to an occupation which she detested; but Esther exclaimed: “Go huckleberrying! Oh, I should like that so much! I’ve heard mother talk about huckleberrying, and I want to see what it’s like.”
“So do I,” said Kate, eagerly. “Why can’t we go this afternoon?”
Stella gave another sigh, this time a deeper one. “Oh, what accommodating creatures you are!” she said. “I ought to want to go with you, of course, but to tell the honest truth I don’t hanker for it, and I’m positively opposed to climbing Gray’s Hill unless we know for certain that those berries are ripe.”
“I saw some there yesterday, over on the south side,” said Tom.
“Then maybe you’d better go too,” said his mother, persuasively. “You could show the girls right where they are.”
Tom may have regretted that he had aired his knowledge, but there was no escape for him now, especially as his grandfather added briskly, “Yes, Tom, you can go as well as not, for we shan’t get in the hay that’s down this afternoon, it’s so cloudy.”
And so it happened that an hour later the four, well supplied with tin pails, were off in search of huckleberries. Across the fields odorous of new-mown hay, by the foot-bridge over the meadow brook, across the old county road and over the low stone wall, they made their pleasant pilgrimage. Tom and Kate were ahead, she keeping steady pace with his easy swing, lowlander though she was, and not to the manner born of such climbing as this. Once, in a dimple of the hill, she made a dash forward, and, swinging her pail above her head, shouted: “I’ve found the first! Here they are!”
But Tom, who was up with her in a moment, gave a whoop of disdain as he scanned the low cluster of bushes. “Those! why, those are blueberries. Don’t you know the difference?”
Kate confessed with some humility that she did not, but the humility vanished when he added loftily: “And just as like as not you never will. There were some Westerners boarding over at Lester’s one summer, and those folks couldn’t tell one from t’other clear up to the end of the season.”
“Well,” said Kate, with a toss of her head, “maybe we can’t tell huckleberries from blueberries, but we can always tell hickory nuts from walnuts, which is more than you folks here can do, and there’s a sight more difference between them than there is betweentheselittle things.”
She broke a blueberry bush, and looked at it with an attention which promised that she, at least, would know the species when she met it again, then started on with the remark, “Well, whichever of them I get, I mean to fill my bucket with something before I leave this hill.”
“There you go again,” grumbled Tom, who had been rather set back by the taunt about the nuts. “You always call a pail a bucket.”
“Well, itisa bucket,” cried Kate, beating a tattoo on the bottom of hers with spirit. “You couldn’t prove that I was wrong when you went to the dictionary about it, and anyway it isn’t half as funny to call a pail a bucket as to call a frying-pan a ‘spider’ and a stool a ‘cricket.’”
“I suppose you children are quarrelling about something as usual,” observed Stella, who with Esther had just caught up with the advance guard. “I wonder how you can keep it up so steadily. I should think you’d sometimes get tired.”
“I’ll tell you one thing, sis,” said Tom, with brotherly responsiveness, “you’ll have to keep at the picking a little steadier than you generally do, or it won’t make anybody tired to carry home the berries you’ll get. This is the way she does,” he added, turning to his cousins; “she goes fidgeting round, looking for the place where they’re thickest, and when she finds it she settles down and draws a picture of a tree, or a rock, or something. I’ll bet she’s got her drawing things with her now.”
Stella did not deny the charge. “What irrelevant remarks you do contrive to make, Tom!” she said. “Come, go ahead, if you mean to show us where those berries are.”
They found them, and were all busily picking in a few minutes more. However Stella’s interest in huckleberries might flag later on there was no criticism to be made on her attention at first, and her fingers flew over the bushes at a rate which augured well for the filling of her pail. As for the Northmore girls, they were in ecstasies. Kate settled down to the business at once, though for a while she ate most of the berries she picked, while Esther paused between the handfuls to take long whiffs of the sweet fern which grew everywhere among the bushes, and to fill her eyes with the landscape which looked fairer than ever from the side of this green old hill.
Everything was interesting—the sights, the smells, the blossoms which were all around them; even the sprig of lobelia which Tom presented for his cousins’ tasting, having first cunningly prepared the way with spearmint and pennyroyal—how Kate wished she could return the favor with a green persimmon!—and the slender yellow worm, industriously measuring the bushes, had its own claim to attention. Its name and manner of travel reminded Kate of one of Aunt Milly’s songs with an admonishing refrain of, “Keep an inching along, Keep an inching along,” and she trolled it out with a rollicking plantation accent that charmed her audience.
Perhaps it was the singing which drew a traveller who was climbing up the hill in their direction. In a pause of the verses Tom suddenly exclaimed: “Upon my word, there’s Solomon Ridgeway. He’s got his pack on his back, too. Let’s have some fun.”
It was indeed the queer protégé of Aunt Katharine who appeared at that moment, bowing and smiling as he emerged from behind a rock. Evidently Tom did not share his grandfather’s extreme dislike for the man’s society, for he advanced to meet him in the most friendly manner.
“Well, Solomon,” he exclaimed, “so you thought you’d come huckleberrying, too! Do you expect to fill that box of yours this afternoon?”
The face of the little old man, which was fairly twinkling with pleasure, expressed an eager dissent. “Oh, no, I—I didn’t come huckleberryin’,” he said, “and I couldn’t think of puttin’ ’em in this box. Why this box—” he lowered his voice with a delighted chuckle—“has got some of my jewels in it You see, I’m goin’ over to see little Mary Berger. They say she’s got the mumps, and I kind o’ thought ’twould brighten her up to see ’em. It don’t hurt the children—bless their hearts—to see fine things; it does ’em good. And I always tell ’em,” he added earnestly, “that thereairthings better ’n pearls and rubies. Tain’t everybody that the Lord gives riches to, and if they’re good they’ll be happy without ’em.”
“Why, that’s quite a moral, Solomon,” said Tom. “You ought to have been a preacher.” He sent a roguish glance at the girls, then, throwing an accent of solicitude into his voice, added: “But aren’t you afraid you might get robbed going through those woods? There’s quite a strip of them before you get to Berger’s.”
The owner of the jewels sent an apprehensive glance into the woods which skirted the brow of the hill and answered bravely: “Yes, I be, Thomas. I be a little afeared of it. I—I won’t go so far as to say I ain’t. But I don’t b’lieve a body or’ to stan’ back on that account when there’s somethin’ they feel as if they or’ to be doin’, and I’ve always been took care of before—I’ve always been took care of.”
The manliness of this ought to have shamed Tom out of his waggishness, but he was not done with it yet. “Solomon,” he said, with the utmost gravity,—“I should think you’d want to get your property into something besides jewellery. Then you wouldn’t run such risks. Besides, if you had it in the bank, you know, it would be growing bigger all the time.”
The little man’s face wore a look of distress, and he put his hand on his box protectingly. “They tell me that sometimes,” he said in a plaintive tone, “but I—I couldn’t think of it. It wouldn’t be half as much comfort to me as ’tis this way. Besides, I’m rich enough now, and when a body’s got enough, it’s enough, ain’t it? And why can’t you settle down and take the good of it?”
“I think you’re quite right, Mr. Ridgeway,” said Stella. “It’s perfectly vulgar for people to go straining and scrambling after more money when they have as much as they can enjoy already. The world would be a good deal pleasanter place than it is if more people felt as you do about that.”
She punctuated this with reproving glances at Tom, to which, however, he paid not the smallest attention.
“But you know, Solomon,” he said artfully, “if you only had your money where you could draw on it, you wouldn’t have to work as you do now. They keep you trotting pretty lively at the farm, don’t they? And I’ll warrant Aunt Katharine finds you chores enough when you’re at her house.”
The little man’s face was clear again. Here, at least, was a point on which he had no misgiving. “Law, Thomas,” he said, “I—I like to keep busy. Why, there ain’t a bit o’ sense in a body bein’ all puffed up and thinkin’ he’s too good to work like other folks jest ’cause he’s rich. ’Tain’t your own doings, being rich, leastways not all of it. It’s partly the way things happen, and then it’s the disposition you’ve got. That’s the way I look at it. And it always ’peared to me,” he added, with the most touching simplicity, “that, when a body’s rich as I be, he or’ to do a leetle more ’n common folks to sort o’ try ’n’ pay up for it.”
“Mr. Ridgeway,” exclaimed Stella—it was impossible after this to let that graceless brother say another word—“would you mind showing us some of your pretty things right now? My cousins never saw them, and I’m sure they’d enjoy it ever so much.”
The countenance of Solomon Ridgeway was aflame with pleasure. He lowered his box from his shoulders and unstrapped it with a childish eagerness. “Why, I—I’d be proud to, Miss Stella,” he said, with a hurrying rapture. Then, looking about for a suitable place of exhibition, he added, “Jest come under that big chestnut tree over there, and I’ll spread ’em all out so you can see ’em.”
It was not huckleberrying, but something much more unique, which engaged them for the next half hour. The collection which Solomon Ridgeway drew from his box and spread before their dazzled eyes was a marvel of tinsel and glitter. There were brooches and rings and chains enough to have made the fortune of half a dozen pedlers; trumpery stuff, most of it, but what of that?
The owner was not one to let a carping world settle for him the value of his treasure. There was paste that gleamed like diamonds in settings burnished like the finest gold, and there were the colors of topaz and emerald and sapphire and ruby. Who cared whether they flashed in bits of glass or in stones drawn from the mines? They were things of beauty for a’ that, and they filled their owner’s soul with joy. He had gathered them slowly through the savings of earlier years, and the gifts of friends; he loved them every one, and believed them to be of fabulous value.
“They ain’t all I’ve got, you know. There’s a lot more,” he said repeatedly; and then he rubbed his hands together and smiled upon his audience with the air of a Crœsus demanding, “Do you know any one richer than I?”
It was impossible not to wish to give him pleasure, and more than once the girls exclaimed over the beauty of some trinket. Esther was especially warm in her admiration, and there was no insincerity in her words when she said: “I think you have some perfectly lovely things, Mr. Ridgeway. I don’t wonder you prize them, and I’m sure that little girl who is sick will thank you all her life for letting her see them.”
He had almost forgotten his friend on the other side of the hill. He gathered up his treasures now with a sudden remembrance, lifted his box to his shoulders again and was off, turning back again and again to make his little bow, half of pomposity and half of humility, as he hurried away.
“Is he crazy, or isn’t he?” exclaimed Kate, when he was fairly out of hearing.
“He’s queer. That’s all you can say,” said Stella; “but for my part, I don’t mind him. People are so much of a pattern here in America that I think it’s rather nice to have one of a different sort mixed in now and then.”
“I don’t see how he can keep up his notion of being rich and live in a poorhouse,” said Kate.
“Don Quixote thought all the inns were castles,” said Stella. “I don’t know why a person with an imagination like his shouldn’t take a poorhouse for a first-class hotel.”
Her interest in huckleberrying was gone now, and the mood Tom had foretold was upon her. Esther divined it as she saw her looking at the chestnut tree, with her head tipped to one side.
“Oh, do sketch it, dear,” she whispered. “Did you really bring drawing materials with you?”
Stella laughed, and drew a pencil and small pad from the bag that hung at her belt.
“Fill my pail for me, and you shall have it for a souvenir,” she said.
The sketch was a pretty thing, and the pails, though not all full, contained a goodly quantity of berries, when they descended the hill in the late afternoon. As they reached the bottom a sudden thought came to Esther. “Do you suppose your mother would care if I should take my berries round to Aunt Katharine?” she asked.
“My mother would be ready to give you a special reward for thinking of it,” said Stella. “But do you really feel like going round by Aunt Katharine’s? It’s ever so far out of our way!”
“Oh, I don’t care for that,” said Esther, and she added quickly: “but please don’t feel that you must go too. I know the way.”
Perhaps she was not really anxious that Stella should accompany her, nor sorry that Kate was already far ahead with Tom, when she turned down the old road a few minutes later with her face toward Aunt Katharine’s. “I shall only stay a little while,” she called back. “You won’t be home very long before me.”
But she was wrong as to this. Supper was over and the sunset fading when she appeared at her grandfather’s.
“She insisted on my staying, though I had no thought of her asking me,” she explained to Aunt Elsie. “She was delighted with the huckleberries.”
Sitting in the south doorway afterward with Stella, she said very earnestly: “You never saw anybody pleasanter than Aunt Katharine was all the time I was there. I’m sure she’s a great deal kinder than you think she is. Do you know we got talking of Solomon Ridgeway, and she told me some real interesting things about him. She says he was married when he was young, but his wife only lived a few months. Evidently Aunt Katharine didn’t think much of her, for she said she was a silly little thing, who cared more about finery than anything else. But he was all bound up in her, and when she died it almost killed him. He had a terrible sickness, and when he got over it his mind had this queer kink in it, and never came right afterward.” She paused a moment, then added, “Somehow I couldn’t help thinking that there might be a clew in that story to the reason why she is so good to him.”
“She’s just as queer in her way as he is in his. I guess it’s an affinity of queerness,” said Stella, carelessly. And then she called her cousin’s attention to the color of the clouds, which were fading in airy fringes over Gray’s Hill.