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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
In "The Gayworthys," Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney crafts a compelling narrative that delves into the intricacies of familial bonds and societal expectations in the 19th-century American landscape. The novel, rich in character development and imbued with a moralistic keynote, intertwines realism with an undercurrent of idealism as it explores the dilemmas faced by the Gayworthy family. Whitney's elegant prose punctuates the lyrical portrayal of the characters'Äô internal struggles, offering readers a nuanced understanding of human nature and the zeitgeist of her era. Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, a prominent figure in 19th-century American literature, was influenced by her experiences as a writer and suffragist, which provided her with a distinctive lens through which she examined gender roles and social complexities. Hailing from a literary family, Whitney'Äôs deep engagement with community and moral issues often reflected in her writings, including "The Gayworthys," where she showcases her commitment to portraying women'Äôs experiences and societal challenges with depth and sensitivity. This novel is highly recommended for readers interested in social commentary and character-driven narratives. Whitney'Äôs exploration of the moral dilemmas of her characters creates an engaging tapestry that invites reflection on the intersection of personal desires and societal expectations. Dive into "The Gayworthys" to uncover the timeless themes of family, ethics, and resilience.
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The Gayworthys
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I.
DOCTOR GAYWORTHY'S WOMEN-FOLKS.
Did you ever eat strawberry short-cake? If not, I am afraid I cannot put you in the way of that delight, further than to tell you that it is a delicious mystery of cuisine, known among certain dwellers in certain hill counties of New England, where the glorious scarlet berry blushes indigenous and profuse all over pasture slopes and mountain-sides at the early outburst of the short and fervid summer. A mystery, the manner of whose compounding is a grand, masonic secret among the skilful and initiated few; for it is not every farmer's wife or daughter, you must know, who has passed that high degree which entitles her to call her neighbors together for such annual regale and marvel.
I can tell you this only; that on the June day wherefrom I date this story, in the great, snowy-clean, pewter-shining kitchen of the Gayworthys, solemn preparations were toward; that on the broad dresser stood a huge pan, heaped high with the glowing fruit, wherefrom the whole house was redolent of rich, wild fragrance; that beside it, on either hand, waited, in plentiful supply, flour of the whitest, and cream of the yellowest; and that, somehow, by a deft putting of this and that together, the mighty result was to come.
Huldah Brown stood, bare-armed and waiting, before the whole; and looked calculatingly upon the gathered material.
"It's an awful lot, to be sure; but then they'll every soul of 'em come, from all pints of the compass; and when they're scalt and mashed, they do s'rink down!"
Huldah's utterance must stand, in all its horrible ambiguity, as to who or what was to be "scalt and mashed." I may not venture to throw light on one point, lest I trespass, with unwarranted illumination, upon another.
"And there's a manifest providence, comin' across the chip-yard!"
The "manifest providence" was a sharp-nosed, little, elderly woman, in a striped sun-bonnet, with a three-quart tin pail full of strawberries, which she changed from one hand to the other, wearily, as she came up to the open door.
"Miss Vorse!" cried Huldah, from the stair-foot: "I b'lieve my soul, we hain't got berries enough, arter all!"
"You don't think it, Huldah!" came back, in a sharp explosive consternation.
"Well, I do then!" returned Huldah, "and here's Widder Horke jest comin' along with a pailful. I call that clear luck!"
"See what she asks for 'em. I'll be down in a minute." Huldah Brown knew very well at which end to present a suggestion. The way to bring people to your own conclusion is to give them, not your last thought, but your first.
Huldah startled her mistress with the selfsame doubt that had startled herself, and then brought forward the "manifest providence."
Up-stairs, in the white bedroom, were gathered the four ladies of the house; or, in country parlance, "all Dr. Gayworthy's women-folks." Mrs. Reuben Gair, Mrs. Prudence Vorse, and the two young, unmarried sisters, Joanna and Rebecca.
I mention first Mrs. Reuben Gair. Because, though she cannot claim the precedence of seniority, she holds the stronger right of paramount importance among the sisters; and is at this moment the center and oracle of their group, as they stand, leaning eager faces in between the white festoons of dimity, about the great, old-fashioned, high-posted bedstead, whereon lie unfolded and displayed certain purchases, which the city lady has from time to time been commissioned by letter and pattern to make, and upon whose fashion and quality she enlarges with all the eloquence of a perfect au-fait-ism.
Mrs. Reuben Gair came up from Selport two days since, for her yearly summer visit in Hilbury. And so, the Hilbury season has begun, and the Gayworthys are giving their first summer party, and strawberry short-cake is the chief nominal attraction; while "from all pints of the compass they'll be sure to come," although there were no short-cake at all; since Mrs. Reuben will be to be seen in her new bright green silk, of the freshest Selport style: and every soul (feminine) will be enabled to go home, having taken mental measurement and specification thereof, and knowing precisely the number of breadths in the skirt, and the width of the seven little "crossway" ruffles that garnish it.
The Gayworthy sisters have made an early toilet, and the house is in early festival trim, and there has been ample time for the production and discussion of the long-expected fineries.
Mrs. Vorse, or "sister Prue," is a woman of five and thirty, who looks to have taken life hard. She made "no great of a match" some fifteen years ago, and has come back within the four last past, to keep house for the old doctor, who is her stepfather only,—her mother, his second wife, having been a widow with this one child,—while her young half-sisters have been away at school. Her son, Gershom Vorse, then a boy of eight, came with her, and here they still abide, greatly to the comfort of the worthy doctor, whose household Prudence guides in the true spirit of her name, and to the welcome enfranchisement of Joanna and Rebecca; not altogether, either, to the dissatisfaction of Mrs. Reuben, notwithstanding that the sisterhood between them is one of courtesy and association only; Mrs. Gair, although the younger, being the child of the first Mrs. Gayworthy; and thus, as she could not help remembering, at times, with a certain touch of jealous restlessness as connected with the present, and an as certain, but half-examined complacency as regarded the contingencies of the future, "really no relation at all."
"A double family of girls was quite enough in all conscience; and then, there was Prue's great boy!" Very clumsy and ill-judged, to be sure, this latter circumstance, on the part of Prue.
The world, as I have intimated, had been hard work for Prudence Vorse. Things had not fallen in comfortably or fortunately for her, as they do for some. She had had ten years of trying at life which was not life. If she wanted anything, every nerve was to be strained to get it. The people about her, instead of being helps to her wishes, were so many obstacles for her to overcome. She had always been heading straight against a stone wall; the more, because it had never been in her nature to take any circuitous way. Her face had got a hard directness and determination in it, so. Her voice had laid aside its softer modulations, and taken a short, strong, uncompromising tone. Her look, her movement, her whole bearing, had a searchingness, a promptness, a decision, almost aggressive, in them.
Many a woman hardens or sharpens, through the opposing or grinding of unkindly circumstance, who else might have been gentle, restful, round with grace in soul and lineament, through nestling lovingly among loving influences. Ah, well! God sees!
Mrs. Gair, on the contrary, has been one of those for whom all things smile; who have the world on their own terms; who have always pleasant weather for their pleasant plans, and timely tempest to make impossible that which they may not care to do. This, at least, was the look her life wore to others; she herself knew her own unsatisfactions, as we all do; whether hers were noble or ignoble discontents may be shown as we shall turn the coming pages.
There are only five years between her and her stepsister, as they stand there together; the one in her glistening, summer-bright robe, fresh and new as the new leaves of June; with round, fair face unlined by any perplexity, and hair untouched of autumn, dressed fearlessly in the simple style of the time; the other in her well-kept dress of not too costly black, having that air of unusedness which a black silk dress, produced only upon state occasions, may keep through whatever vicissitudes of passing fashion and fading gloss,—new always in its owner's idea however shabby it may come to be to eyes of others; cappy head-dress, that, although it is to the regularly instituted cap what spring eye-glasses are to spectacles, yet is, like them, the beginning of an acknowledgment; and the face that tells its ten years' story as I have hinted;—who could have believed in but that five years' difference?
Joanna and Rebecca are young; wearing the look that only early girlhood wears,—unwritten of any past,—expectant of all future possibilities. What need to describe them? Round, laughing, and fair,—the one; slight, brown, delicate, serious-eyed,—the other; that is all. The years of their lives—perhaps the pages of this story—shall develop or contradict whatever prophecy you may read in two such faces.
Meanwhile, this sketch of the four is but a daguerreotype, flashed in an instant; the instant wherein Widow Horke still pauses upon the doorstone, and busy Huldah Brown, who, you may be certain, will not wait there long, yet lingers at the stair-foot.
And sister Prue smooths her new cap that has been brushed a little awry by the cotton fringes of the bed-hangings, and hastens down-stairs with a great white apron tied on over the best black silk, and sleeves turned up, to superintend the strawberry short-cake; and Mrs. Reuben Gair, craving help of her two young sisters, lays shawls and muslins and ribbons and patterns carefully back into the great traveling trunk; which being locked, she plunges into the far recesses of the dark, narrow closet that runs back between the chambers their full length, lest half Hilbury may get accidental glimpse or confidentially crave full sight of these new summer things that have come from Selport.
"You're tired, I guess?" says Huldah Brown to the widow, as Mrs. Vorse comes down the stairs.
"Tired!" answers Widow Horke, emphatically. "I'm all gone! I don't know where."
"Walk in and sit down," says the quick, smart voice of Prudence Vorse, "while Huldah measures the berries. Three quarts? I don't want more 'n two. They'd be clear wasted. I guess Mrs. Hartshorne'll take the other. Ten cents! I haven't paid but six this week past."
So speaking, Mrs. Vorse led the way, pail in hand, across the kitchen toward the dresser, by the end of which, with a voluminous sigh, Widow Horke sunk into a seat.
"They're wuth that, to me," pleaded the latter, with a low whine, the diminuendo of her sigh.
Mrs. Vorse turned short round, and pushed the pail toward her across the corner of the board.
"Very well, then," was the prompt decision, "the best thing you can do is just to take 'em right home and eat 'em. They won't be so valuable to anybody else, at that rate."
Mrs. Horke laughed faintly, as literally at her own expense.
"You're allers jest so queer," she said. "Well, seein' it's you, I 'spose I must let you have 'em."
"Just as you like. Six cents is a fair price." And Mrs. Vorse went over into the pantry, where she kept odd change in a blue mug, and brought back, presently, the twelve cents, and something beside, wrapped in a brown paper.
"That'll help out your supper," said she, never minding that the plum cake was worth five times the difference in the disputed price of the strawberries. Mrs. Vorse was not stingy. But she had certain rules which she never let herself off from. She might give away, but she never would pay an exorbitant price. She had an uncompromising sense of justice which carried itself out into the least details.
"Sarah Gair!" she cried sharply, as a child of seven, sashed, pantaletted, and bronze-booted, running in before Mrs. Reuben, and across to the tempting dresser, straightway "thrust in a thumb and pulled out a plum," from Widow Horke's tin pail,—"if you want strawberries, take 'em out of the pudding dish! They're paid for, and those ain't!" and she deliberately put a berry from said pudding-dish back into the pail.
"Lord'a massy!" ejaculated the widow, laughing genuinely this time, with a double tickle of Mrs. Prue's oddity and the aroma of plum cake, "if anybody ever heerd the like! You do hev the singl'rest notions, Miss Vorse."
"So it seems to me," remarked Mrs. Reuben Gair, as the strawberry picker took up her pail and departed across the chip-yard. "And they don't appear always to be quite consistent; didn't I hear you beating the poor woman down in her price a minute ago?"
"That's just where the consistency is," retorted her stepsister. "Right's right, either way.—She may be poor," continued Mrs. Prudence, "and she may be a widow woman; and she may be rheumatic, winters; and she may live all alone down there by Gibson's clearing; but that ain't any reason why she should put it all on to the price of a mess of strawberries. When I give, I give; and when I buy, I buy.—Sarah Gair!" she cried again, suddenly, to the small, starched, ribboned, and beruffled creature who by this time was peeping in furtively at the pantry door, within which, on the ample shelves, stood the whole bountiful variety and array of country delicacies that were to sustain the ancient honor of the Gayworthy table, "don't you make up your mind to sponge-cake from the beginning, this time, and eat five pieces, as you did at the Fairbrother's!"
The child drooped down from head to foot, from her glad, eager attitude, in a moment; and a shame that only rebuked childhood knows, dreaming of nought more shameful than the present fault whereof it stands convicted, rushed over her, hot and scarlet.
"Mrs. Fairbrother asked me," she murmured faintly, "and ma won't let me eat plum cake."
"If Mrs. Fairbrother asked you five times, three times you should have said, 'No, I thank you.'"
"But," persisted the culprit, more confidently now, feeling suddenly to have the great Angel, Truth, upon her side, "she asked me if I wanted some more: and I did!"
Aunt Prue was silent.
"You should have said 'No, I thank you,' all the same," admonished the mother. "It wasn't polite."
"Polite!" cried aunt Prue, aside. "Better tell her not to be greedy."
"And what do you suppose all those people think of you now?"
Mrs. Gair flung this last shaft,—a great battle-axe of world's-opinion against a mere gnat of transgression—and then the two grown women forgot the whole matter in five minutes, and the child crept out, and sat upon the doorstone, and felt her small pride crushed, and her character stained forever.
The strawberry party, at least it seemed so at this moment, was all spoiled now.
So, in our clumsy recklessness, we deal with souls!
Only, the dock always grows beside the nettle. It is God who takes care of that. Aunt Rebecca, in her white dress, with her pure, gentle young face, came out to the doorstone and stood behind Sarah.
The pleasant south wind was blowing through the great maples that stood in a row between the road and the chip-yard; the scent of early roses came up from the low flower-garden, to which a white gate, and a few rough stone steps led in and down straight opposite the door. Further on, beside the drive that wound with sudden slope around the garden to the right, toward the great barns, stood the long trough, hewn from a tree-trunk, and holding clear, cool water that flowed incessantly into it, through a wooden duct of halved and hollowed saplings, leading from a spring in the hillside away up behind the house. Here a yoke of tired cattle were drinking,—the plowboy standing patiently beside; close by the great creatures' heads, upon the trough-rim, perched fearless chickens, dipping their yellow bills; and underneath and around, in the merry, unfailing puddles, splashed and quackled the ducks. The bright June sun, genial, not scorching, hung in the afternoon sky. There were birds in the maple trees, and the very grass about the doorstone was full of happy life. Out upon all, through troubled eyes, looked a little, tender human soul that had felt a pain.
"What is it, Say?"
Say turned round at the gentle voice, and nestled her face against the folds of the white dress.
"I ate all sponge-cake for my supper at Mrs. Fairbrother's," she murmured like a penitent at confessional, whispering into priestly ears the avowal of a deadly sin.
"And that was——?" said Aunt Rebecca.
"Greedy. Horrid." So far she spoke from sentence of others, out of her shame; and then something in herself rebelled at her own words, and she added, with sudden defiance—"But I don't see why. There was plenty of it. And they asked me."
"Plenty for you, dear. But if everybody else had wanted all sponge-cake?"
Sarah saw the selfishness then, and there was no answer for her to make. She dropped, wretchedly, back into her self-contempt again.
"I wish," said the child, impulsively, "that I was a chicken. Only a little, yellow, peeping chicken. Like those down there."
"Like that one, running away to hide under the fence, with a barleycorn in his mouth?"
"Oh dear!" This soul that had been born into the world, and had had its tiny experience of the evil, might chafe in vain. She could see nowhere her escape, not even into chickenhood, had that been possible.
"Not that way," said Rebecca, more to her own thought than remembering the child. "Only toward God."
"We must ask, Say, to have the selfishness taken from us. And we must try to give up. We can't turn into chickens, even if that would do. But we can grow—to be angels. This one little fault may make you better all your life. And," she added, with a delicate heart-instinct, "nobody will ever remember it!"
Say's face changed. She had passed through, in these few moments—sensitive children do, in a strange undreamed-of way, in these their little experiences—an epitome of the grand, spiritual experience of human life, and of the world. All things great are in all things little. Law comes with its rebuke,—its fruitless shame for what is past; Gospel with its word of mercy for what has been, its hope for better things to be. Aunt Prue was condemnation. Aunt Rebecca was redemption. The child loved the saintly young girl, at that moment, as men love their Redeemer.
She might overlive it, then; even this terrible misdemeanor of the sponge-cake. "Nobody would remember it." The words were a balm like that which comes to us grown sinners with God's words—"I have blotted out thy transgressions; I will not remember thy sins."
Say slid her little hand into Aunt Rebecca's. "Let me stay by you at tea-time," she whispered. "Why, Auntie!" she cried, suddenly, with altered tone, as for the first time she lifted her eyes fully to the kind face that looked down upon her. "You had your hair in those pretty puffs. Where are they?"
"I brushed them back again," said Aunt Rebecca, quietly.
This young girl of nineteen had renounced her vanity so. She had seen in her glass that her face was very pretty, set in its glossy frame of smoothly banded locks; and, lest she should remember it to her spiritual hurt,—lest she should so, thinking of self, forget her Lord,—she had put them back, and chosen to wear only her usual and unnoted look to-day.
Moreover, the Reverend Gordon King was to be of the strawberry party.
I do not say that puffs are sinful, I do not say that God forbids a simple joy in the beauty that He gives. I only tell you what this young creature, true to her own conception of duty, did.
Rebecca Gayworthy was growing into the character that primitive New England influences, and almost these alone, develop from certain natures. Out of these by-places where the Puritan air still lingers—out of these Bethlehems, slow of growth, perhaps, but the less tainted, come souls that rule. That walk sternly over self,—that choose the thorns,—that take up their cross daily, giving up their own work to do that of the Lord Christ. Taught from infancy that no Church or outside ark is to save them; that no cabalism of words said over them is to bring them necessarily into the kingdom of heaven; admonished of the spiritual birth,—warned of the spiritual death; set searching, each soul for itself, what this birth may mean,—how salvation from this death be won; the thoughtful, earnest spirit wrestles and reaches till it lays hold of sainthood.
A fugue of voices from within called Rebecca at this moment. Flour and cream and fruit had been carried away. The hour had come for laying the long table in the great front kitchen, the only room in the farmhouse which might afford space for the expected guests at a real comfortable, sit-down, tea-drinking, whereat alone might strawberry short-cake be fittingly enjoyed. At other times, the Gayworthy ladies knew well how to order and preside over the stateliness of the formal "handing-round" in the best parlor. To-night was high festival, where mere gentility took second place.
The wide fireplace was garnished with greenery, and the flames that ordinarily poured upward through its capacious outlet were kindling unwontedly in the out-room, where Huldah Brown was already mixing and rolling, and would shortly be "scalding and mashing,"—high priestess of the mighty mystery that she was. The dresser held now the wide tray laden with rare old china cups and saucers and plates; teapots of the same, tall, slender, quaint, long-spouted, high-handled; little pitchers with the "long ears," that shall forever be memorialized while little human receptacles with the like appendages continue to be; all these, and many of them; for in the days and regions of notable personal housewifery, and neat-handed Huldahs helping, grandmother's treasures of porcelain gathered and came down, with neither nick nor breakage, to second and third generations. Alas, for the days that have been, and shall be no more forever!
The monstrous linen-chest, that stood in the great "kitchen chamber" overhead, had delivered up its most voluminous naperies to shroud the extended board whose construction for the occasion, since no guests shall have need to spy, we, neither, need pry into nor explain. There was a sweet, nameless, delicate fragrance in the air, as the pure white folds were shaken out, such as is breathed only from old presses, and quaint bureaus, and great chests like this that had held these, wherein women of the olden time, who set store by their fair linens and delicate laces, and silken heirlooms of taffeta and brocade, kept daintily, with bits of musk, and sprigs of lavender, such wealth of house and wardrobe.
Rebecca was summoned to assist in the spreading and placing. An hour hence, and the early country party would have assembled.
Sarah Gair stayed outside, waiting to see what Gershom Vorse, coming up toward her from the orchard gate, with one of the farm men, might be going to do.
"Eben is going to feed the pigs now, Say! Come out into the shed-chamber, and we'll call 'em in!"
Say sprang down from the doorstone at that, eagerly; and skipped, in a dainty way, turning out the toes of her new bronze boots, over the bit of grass-plot that lay between her and the wide open doors of the great woodshed.
Gershom came up, with a certain contempt in the tread of his stout country shoes.
"I forgot you were all dressed up, and toes in position," said he.
Say had before this offered to teach him the small beginnings that she herself had made in the sublime art which includes "Deportment."
"That isn't a bit of matter," returned the straightforward little lady, not accepting the sarcasm, and picking her way among the scattered chips and litter along the shed, with a continued, conscious pleasure,—the pleasure of using pretty things,—in each separate planting of the trim, golden-gleaming little feet. "It's as nice out in my play-parlor, as it is in Aunt Prue's best room. Besides, my dollies want to see me, by this time."
The shed-chamber was a clean, floored room, rough-beamed and small-windowed, at the further end of the building. One window opened on the yard, toward the house, and the other overlooked the pig-pen, and pleasanter things beyond. Through the middle of the floor came up two square, box-like constructions—open conduits to the troughs beneath.
And this "play-parlor," as Say called it, was a really pleasant place. To a child, a bit of Paradise, roughly boarded in. Here, in any weather, Say could come, and amuse herself with her grand china-closet of broken bits,—luckily for the children, common ware did get fractured now and then,—ranged along the ledges in one corner; decorate the brown, unplaned walls with boughs of green and wild flowers or gay, coarse garden-blossoms that she had "leave to pick"; admonish and discipline, dress and array, her indefinite family of corn-cob children, and above all, when everything else sated, stand at the "pig-pen" window, and look out over the green meadow stretching towards the bit of oak woods that skirted the opposite boundary of the wet land with its green mystery, which nobody but the pigs ever penetrated, and whither these happy animals daily betook themselves through a little wicket-gate left open from their board and lodging place. The call from this window, in a high, peculiar monotone, "pig-pig-pig-pig-pig," would bring, first one, then another, and at last the whole drove, peeping out from the oak-grove, and scampering across the meadow to their roomy, and not unclean quarters within the wicket; where, at suitable intervals, buckets-full, not of common refuse, but of what to swinish appreciation, must have seemed the most sumptuous white soup,—a boiling of vegetables added to the surplus of the dairy,—rich buttermilk, or sweet whey, or plentiful skimmed milk, better than humans in the cities pay for,—was poured, a luscious flood, down the square conduits above mentioned. I think pigs were never so happy, so well lodged, so bountifully and delicately fed, as these of Grandpapa Gayworthy! What with the liberty abroad, and the dainties at home, it was the very poetry of pork.
At any rate, Sarah Gair was hardly ever more happy than in luring them out from their green, shady covert where the sweet acorns grew, and watching their eagerness as they scrambled along the meadow-path, and into their dining-parlor, and tumbled up confusedly about the troughs; lifting their small, keen eyes, like many a creature of higher organization with a very assured expectancy of good gifts due, according to precedent, from above.
"Eben—ezer!" cried Say, from the window, as the man entered the chamber behind them, and set his pail beside the great wooden spouts. "The gate's blown to! The pigs can't get in! Make haste,—there's grandpa driving down the yard!"
"An' I guess he'll want his horse took out, afore I come back again. So you an' the pigs can wait. It'll be sometime, too, I shouldn't wonder. You can't expect a man that carries a name as long as that, to stir round quite so spry as a Jack-be-nimble!"
Eben had so his sly revenge for Say's mischievous giving of the whole title, which, it was well known in the household, he very decidedly disliked. He left the pails as they were, beside the spouts, and went down to the yard below. As he set the wicket back, Dr. Gayworthy really did call to him. Meanwhile the children at the window called the pigs.
"How funny they look," said Say, "with their great ears flapping, and their queer, flat noses going, so!" and she turned her lips, very drolly, inside out and up and down against nose and chin, and tried to work them, pig-fashion.
"There they come, tumbling and grunting," as the creatures crossed their outer court and disappeared beneath the building. "And now, I wish Eb would come."
To pass away the time, Say skipped down from the block of timber upon which she stood at the window, and executing certain imperfectly learned "dancing steps," fell to admiring her new boots again,—chatting on, all the while, to Gershom.
"Did you know we're going to have a little table, you and I, and take tea at the same time with the company?"
"I hate company," answered Gershom, gruffly. "People stuck round, mincing at little bits, and saying, 'No, I thank you,' with their mouths puckered up, when they want it, all the time! I hate company, and I hate company manners!—'Ma-l-vi-ny!'" he drawled, in a high, plaintive pitch of voice, "'take—your fingers—out—of the su-gar bowl! Do-n't—touch—the pie—until—it's cut!' That's Mrs. Fairbrother. And then she gives her a lump of sugar, and a big piece of cake to eat in a corner, so as to make her behave. P—ff!"
"But then," put in little Say, quite seriously, "people must behave, you know. We shouldn't like to act like the pigs down there," as a fierce, impatient scramble and squealing was heard from about the empty troughs.
"I don't know," returned Gershom, a little less gruffly, but with a tone of cavil, still. "It's wrong, somehow. It ain't real. If they'd like to be like the pigs, they'd better do it."
"I'm sure I shouldn't like to be like the pigs," said Say, practising a waltz step pretty successfully. "I like to be nice!"
"O yes," returned Gershom, with a small sneer. "You like to wear new brown boots, and be fine, I daresay. But that ain't it."
"Gershom! You're cross!"
"No, I ain't. But you're proud. You're thinking all the time of your boots. You're thinking there isn't another pair in all Hilbury like 'em. What if there isn't? That don't make you any better than the rest. You've got nothing but bare feet, like everybody's else, inside 'em, after all!"
"Gershom! You're real ugly. I don't care for my boots!"
"Poh! That's likely! Don't you pick round, like a cat, for fear you should wet 'em or scratch 'em?" And Gershom turned away, in utter disdain.
"I'd just as lief spoil 'em as not! See here!"
Gershom turned his head, again, at the passionate tone and a sudden splash; and Eben re-entered the shed-chamber at the same moment. The two saw something astonishing. A small figure, dilated with an angry, desperate triumph, holding itself haughtily, erect, motionless, in a pig's-pail!
Gershom's scorn was the one thing Say could not bear. Woman-like, she vindicated herself impetuously and recklessly, from one suspicion, by rushing, absurdly, into an opposite excess. She had her reward, as women have.
"I don't see how that mends the matter," was the cool, slighting comment of the boy.
"You can't say any more about my boots, anyhow!" And standing there still in her ridiculous attitude, from which even the dignity of a righteous resentment now fell away, she burst into a passion of impotent tears.
Eben lifted her, quietly, by the shoulders, and set her, dripping, upon the floor. "Well, I vum!" said he, "that's spunky. If ever I see the like o' that afore, my name ain't Eben——ezer!"
Say stood sobbing, conscious of ignominious failure; remembering, with a rush, all that lay before her now,—the getting into the house again, her mother's and aunt's displeasure,—all that was utterly impossible and horrible to do and to bear. She stood there in a shame, and fear, and agony; and in a great pause, that seemed like the end of all things. The next that life had for her might come; she could not move to meet it.
Then Gershom changed his mood. Conceit and vanity and self-satisfaction,—the shams of society patent to his early experience,—these he could battle with and put down. These, boy as he was, he had no mercy for. But humiliation and helplessness and tears,—these, the man-chivalry aroused in him to pity and to help.
He came and drew Say gently by the arm. "Come," said he; "never mind! Sit down here on the block." Say let herself be put there, passively.
Gershom unfastened and drew off the soaked boots and stockings, and then brought a dipper full of water from the well, which he poured over the white little feet and ankles, and the unhappy pantalets. "Now," said he, "don't cry; but come up the back stairs with me. There's nobody but Huldah in the out-room. And you and I'll have our supper in the kitchen-chamber."
There was nobody like Gershom for tormenting or consoling.
This childish scene betrayed something, on each side, of character, and foreshadowed much of what was yet to be.
CHAPTER II.
DOWN AMONG THE COMPANY.
"From all points of the compass" they began to arrive. Not that this implies necessarily any mighty concourse; there was no other way for a gathering to be made in Hilbury. It was one of those great, thinly populated townships that lie about among the hills in certain New England regions, which have a small settlement—sometimes that only of a single family, with its branches—in each corner, and a meeting-house in the middle. There were, in Hillbury, the separate villages of the Center, the Bridge, Lawton's and Gibson's Corners, and Gair's Hill. So, from all these they came,—from up the road and down the road,—and, driving across the chip-yard, tied their horses to the garden fence.
Dr. Gayworthy's house stood, if mathematics admit of such an expression, in the edge of the Center. It was a fair, prosperous-looking building, kept fresh with seasonable paintings, of a mellow, sunny, smiling straw-color; the color in the country, most indicative of well-to-do-ing. It had an air somehow, among the neighboring dwellings of dusky red, as of a dainty lady in primrose silk among rustics wearing common scarlet cotton print.
The children—Gershom and Say—watched the arrival of the company from the "clothes-room" window,—the clothes-room being a large, light closet, off the southwest end of the great kitchen-chamber.
Say's spirits were reacting merrily from her terror and disgrace. Mrs. Reuben, intent at the moment upon the placing of the iced plum-cakes, had but half comprehended the catastrophe which Gershom tried to convey to her knowledge, taking to himself as large a share of the blame as might be.
"I'll warrant it!" was her exclamation. "If there's a mischief to be got into, she'll be sure to find it!"
"She's very sorry about it, Aunt Jane. You won't scold her, will you?"
Something in this appeal, whatever it may have been, of word or manner, seemed to give "Aunt Jane" more annoyance than all the previous recital. She motioned—I might say, if it were elegant, elbowed—him off, with the arm against which, in his eagerness to follow her along the table, he pressed a little, to the damage of the new French embroidered cape, with its innumerable delicate lace finishings and frills, the like of which had never before been seen in Hilbury. The gesture was more pettish than it was like her usual self to be; for Mrs. Reuben Gair rarely allowed herself to be "put about," as the common saying is; she had a way of smoothly steering along toward her ends, whether great or small; without ever jostling against anything or anybody.
"There, go away," she returned, hastily. "I've no time, now, for scolding, or anything else. If you've got her into a mess, you'll have to take care of her and keep her out of the way."
Gershom skipped up the out-room stairs, well pleased at gaining even this much.
"The worst's over, Say," he said. "She knows. And she wasn't so terrible angry, after all. She seemed more put out about my tumbling her new-fashioned vandyke, or whatever you call it, than anything else."
So Say was in spirits again; and sat, like a barefooted princess, upon the divan of blankets and "comfortables" that lay piled below the clothes-room window, and watched the gay arrivals; and Gershom, by and by, when the strawberry feasting began below, ran up and down the out-room staircase, receiving from friendly Huldah Brown nice bits of what he and Say liked best; and Say thought nothing in the world worth wishing for any longer, since Gershie was so good-natured.
"I told you I didn't care about my boots," she cried. "I'd rather be here than down among the company, a great deal!"
Down among the company, however it might be as to bodily wants, there was perhaps many a heart-hunger less abundantly ministered to than little Sarah Gair's.
Stacy Lawton felt no scruple about wearing her hair in the new puffs. She had thought of little else since Mrs. Reuben Gair appeared in them at Mrs. Fairbrother's sewing-circle.
She, as well as Rebecca Gayworthy, had heard the young minister, Gordon King, preach his two sermons last Sunday, the one upon "seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness;" after which, Stacy, with a party of other young girls, had adjourned to spend the "noon-time" with a friend close by the meeting-house, in eating cold pie, cake, and cheese, and in low-toned discussion among themselves as to how it—not this seeking of the kingdom, but the hair-dressing was done; the other, at afternoon service, upon the "mortifying of the flesh"; from which she went straightway home, and used her leisure hours of twilight in patient experiments before her glass, until the hairs of her head, which the Scripture-reading of the day had admonished her she "could neither make white nor black," took shape and place as she desired.
Rebecca Gayworthy shut herself in her chamber, also; but she sat there in a still, solemn presence that pervaded her soul; and in the fair garden thereof the Lord God walked in this cool of His day.
So Stacy Lawton came to the strawberry party with her dark hair banded stylishly from off her face; and the consciousness that she was looking very pretty, and that people were noticing it, gave a sparkle to her eyes, and a sprightly grace and ease to her movements that made her, as indeed she was very apt at all times to be, quite the belle of the occasion. Say what you will of violets, and unconscious charms, the perk little daisy gets the better of it in the eye of the world; and there is nothing that helps beauty so to its full success as just the spice of consciousness that gives confidence.
And Rebecca had put from her the like adornment, for conscience's sake. Foolishly, you say? I am not sure. There is somewhere this written—that "all things shall work together for good to them that love God." Even a mistaken or needless self-sacrifice, then. "There is none that hath forsaken anything for the kingdom of heaven's sake but shall receive manifold more." God's promise to pay holds good, I think.
Nevertheless, it is very true that Gordon King, as he stood talking for a few moments with Rebecca upon his first entrance, thought silently that "somehow, she wasn't quite so pretty, after all, as he had fancied;" and that Stacy Lawton's bright glance and musical laugh enticed him presently to that corner of the room where she held small, merry court; where she made room for him at her side with a beaming look that seemed warm welcome only, but was secretly, also, kindled of a coquettish triumph.
The Reverend Gordon King was very like other young men, it must be owned; and although he preached from the Bible on a Sunday the truth he found there, he went out from his pulpit of a week-day into the little world about him, and valued the things thereof greatly after the world's own fashion. "Take no thought for raiment, what ye shall put on," he had read and exhorted; yet here he was, quite appreciative of the results of Miss Stacy's "taking thought" which had brought about all this blooming prettiness in puffed-hair and pink muslin.
I do not mean that Gordon King was a hypocrite,—to be ranked with the Scribes and Pharisees in the condemnation. I mean simply, that he was no better than human; and as yet, perhaps, not wholly sanctified human. There may be snuffling, canting "shepherds,"—Stigginses, Chadbands, and the like in the world. I have not known them. I only speak of people of whom I know such to have been.
Preaching ran in the King family; as politics or doctoring, sailoring or soldiering, run in some others. The uncle of Gordon had been a divine, eminent in his neighborhood, degreed in due course, as Doctor Divinitatis, and now occupying a good college professor-ship. His elder brother was in Batavia, sent out by the A. B. C. F. M. His father was an influential deacon in the church; his sister had married the Rev. Felix Fairbrother; which brings him into the pulpit of Hilbury and into the scene of our story. He had gone through a college course; he had studied in the Divinity School; he had also, as needful preliminary to this,—not feignedly, but of good faith,—putting himself "in the way of grace,"—gone through what passed with himself and those about him for the genuine order of religious experience; he believed himself, and was believed, to have received the renewing gift—the intangible ordinance of the Spirit. How was he truly to know if what he had gotten were the same wherein another soul rejoiced?
Life was to test for him and teach him this. God, who worked, doubtless, in these very cues of circumstance, calling him outwardly, might have laid up for him in his future, a nobler, intenser experience than any whereto he had yet reached in these five and twenty years that were past.
Meanwhile, for this party at the Gayworthys, he had dressed with thoughts not very different from those that any other bachelor of twenty-five might have had, in dressing for a ladies' party. There was an external difference. He folded about his neck the white cravat, at that time the still distinctive badge of his order. Two white cravats, successively, I should say; for the first that he essayed proving to be but limply starched, and the great houseclock below reminding him at the same moment of the lateness of the hour, he had flung it down with a very unclerical gesture of—to say the least—impatience; and an inarticulate ejaculation that, on ruder or unconsecrated lips might have gone nigh to syllable itself profanely. I don't say that it wasn't a great deal better so than if he had actually said anything that would need to be spelt with a black ——; and I don't suppose he ever did use bad words. But I wonder if, after all, the angels up above listen so needfully for the vibrations of these gases about our earth which feed and pulsate to our human breath as for the tremblings of the unseen spirit; and whether the state of mind of the Reverend Gordon King for the moment was really so widely unlike that of the poor man whose hay-cart I saw topple over in the field the other day, and who did say something with a dash in the middle. And I am afraid that, as a general statement men are but men, too often; and that, lest they might be worse, it behooves somebody to look after them pretty carefully, even in the matter of white cravats.
Howbeit, this was he whom Rebecca, in her innocent reverence, held as one sanctified of God above common men. For whom she would not use any harmless art of outer adornment; but rather hallow herself, and hold herself pure of earthly vanity, if so, at least, she might keep her soul upon the plane of such as his; if so, at least, she might be utterly worthy, whether it should please God that she might win his love, or no. Ah, there is a sainthood to whose companionship such life reaches, though that which it believes in seem to mock its faith!
If Gordon King had held the answering talisman in his own soul, he should not, this night, have been lured away to the false princess, while the true, veiled in her meek-heartedness, waited so near his side.
Rebecca, moving about among the guests with her Madonna hair and quiet look, grew even a shade more quiet, perhaps, but that was all. Joanna, bright and laughing, with a little positive emphatic way of her own of uttering droll or absurdly extravagant things, that made everybody else laugh with her, was somehow also a little more pronounced in her special characteristics,—a little more queer, and animated, and hyperbolical than usual. Nobody guessed,—as she kept a knot of the Hilbury girls in chimes of merriment with a carefully detailed receipt for the famous short-cake, in which she gravely asserted "soft soap, beaten to a cream" to be the chief ingredient, and described to their eager questionings the secret arrangement of "seventeen crash flounces" which she declared—ladies were not caged or coopered then—held Mrs. Reuben's skirts in such graceful rotundity,—the stealthy anxiety that glanced through all her fun, in the quick half-turn of her head at each movement near the door; or the disappointment that was gradually settling down cold upon her heart, as time wore on, and somebody, whom she looked for, did not come; and no one around her caught, as she did, a chance word of Mrs. Hartshorne's, who stood a dozen feet off, in answer to a question put by Mrs. Prue, that Joanna dared not, for her life, have put, herself.
"Gabriel's gone over to Deepwater, sailing with the Purcells. He promised a week ago, to go, when they settled on a day; and Aleck Purcell came over this morning to get him."
"Are the Frank Purcells staying there still?"
"O yes—the young folks. Mr. and Mrs. went back last Tuesday."
After that, Joanna laughed more merrily yet, and became yet more absurd. And her end of the room grew quite noisy with the "gale" the girls got into; and plaintive Mrs. Fairbrother, away over opposite, quite worn out with continual mild, ineffectual remonstrances with "Malviny," who, as the minister's child, was privileged to be taken everywhere, said to her husband,—"It's Joanna Gayworthy. She's always in such high spirits. She'll get sobered down, one of these days, when she comes to see care and trouble."
Joanna Gayworthy, at the same moment, was thinking, in her secret heart, how nice it would be, when all these people were gone, and the china set away, and the house shut up, and lights put out, and she in bed, having a good cry to herself, in the dark.
Well,—this was a strawberry party. It makes no difference. That, or anything else, as it might happen. It was life, which finds slight outside seeming and excuse, and veils so its great workings. You don't hold out to people, undisguisedly, the hundred different hopes and motives which you know will bring them together, when you invite them to your house. You ask them to eat strawberries, or to listen to music, or to dance the polka. The rest is incidental,—thrown in. So we come to live double. Nobody says anything about it, but every one is conscious of something, be it what it may, that underlies the dressing and the dancing, and the feasting, and the words of the hour, which is the reality; else there is none, in it all. Take this away, and the whole crumbles into nothing. The game is not worth the candle. The candle, henceforth, goes out.
Doctor Gayworthy knew all this; but he had got past the time for thinking much about it. He could have remembered hours wherein all life had seemed to him centered; hours that seemed an existence, questioning nothing of a beginning or an end; a husking, or a quilting, or a winter dance, the simple scene of which had widened out with a breadth of experience that made it as a theater whereon the pivotal act of a human life was played, while all the eager stars looked down; he could have remembered when, as his real life withdrew itself, and centered otherwise and elsewhere, such gatherings began to lose their charm, and he came to wonder how it was that there were no longer any such drives, or dances, or bees, or frolics, as had been when he was young. Now, even this was past; he neither participated nor wondered; but accepted or offered a hospitality that was part of a routine, and only looked to it, that, so far as depended upon him, everybody got their tea and cake, which was what they had ostensibly come for.
So, to-night, the Doctor, worthy gentleman, looked up and down among his daughters' guests, and saw that all was plentiful and comfortable; and he walked about the rooms after tea was over, and noticed everybody, and chatted with a few; and observed, indeed, that Rebecca was a little pale and still to-night,—tired, perhaps, with her preparations; and that Joanna was, as always, a gay little gipsy, and the life of the company; and it never occurred to him to imagine that these two or three hours wherein he wore his best coat, and submitted to this little temporary stir in the house, were any more to them, by chance, than they might be to himself.
As the company thinned off, toward nine o'clock, this little scene took place between him and Mrs. Reuben in the tea-room, whence Huldah was removing the "things," and whither the doctor had come for a surreptitious "third cup" which he had not got at the regular time.
"Where are the children? I haven't seen them to-night."
"Why, Gershom got Say into some sort of a scrape in the shed-chamber, while the pigs were being fed; and splashed her with the pails, I believe; I hadn't time to dress her over, or to inquire much about it. I wish the boy wasn't so rude and teasing."
"Got into a scrape, did they? I'm sorry for that. He's a very good sort of boy, though, Jane. A remarkably good boy; and steady, too, for his age. I don't know what I should do without Gershom."
Mrs. Gair was apparently intent upon a stain of something which had fallen upon the front breadth of her new silk, and which she was trying to wipe off with a wet napkin.
"He ought to be a good boy," she remarked. "He owes more to you than he'll ever be able to pay."
"Well, I don't know about that,—yet," said the doctor. "If things were squared up between Prue and the boy and me, I don't know exactly how the balance would stand, I'm sure."
"Everybody else knows. Why, father, you could not have done more for them if they'd been your own. To be sure," she added, as glancing up from her labor, she caught a darkening look upon the doctor's face, "I know, of course, they seem just like your own. And I don't suppose there was ever a mixed-up family like ours, that thought so little of the difference. But when you talk of squaring up accounts! By the way, father,"—and Mrs. Gair laid down the napkin and reached the sugar for the doctor, standing by, with a thoughtful expression, while he bountifully sweetened his tea,—"now you speak of him, have you ever thought what it will be best for him to do, one of these days? He's getting to be a great boy. I must have a talk with you about him when you're at leisure, sometime, before I go. I dare say Mr. Gair might find something for him in Selport."
Mrs. Reuben was scrupulous in always speaking of her husband as "Mr. Gair," in this neighborhood, where he had some thirty years before, run barefooted.
"Time enough to talk about that," replied the doctor, a little impatiently. Then, setting down his cup, resting the knuckles of his hands upon the table-edge, and bending forward so, for a moment, he seemed to take thought, and come to a resolve.
"Jane," he said, seriously, after this instant's pause, changing his posture and moving a pace closer to her side,—"don't speak to Reuben of anything of the sort; and don't talk to the boy about Selport. There's time enough, as I said; and I haven't made up my mind. At least I shouldn't have spoken if you hadn't begun. But Hilbury has always done well enough for me, and I've been in hopes it might do well enough for Gershom. He's all the boy I've got, you know."
Yes, Mrs. Gair knew now just what she had wanted to find out. The good doctor had no thought of Gershom Vorse but as his boy. "All the boy he'd got."
Jane Gair's work lay straight before her, and then and there she made an initial stroke.
She, too, held herself an instant in deliberation, the while she resumed again the napkin, she had laid down, and with its dry corner wiped, leisurely and solicitously, the damp spot upon her dress. "O yes," she said, half absently, as people do when they are mainly intent on that which occupies their fingers, and speak mechanically. "There's no hurry. And I don't know as it would have occurred to me to say anything about it, only that Gershom has been asking me some questions, now and then, since I came up, about the city. It seemed to me as though he had got a little restless. Boys will, you know. There,"—once more dropping the napkin, and stroking down the folds of silk with her fingers,—"I don't see as I can do anything better for it, now."
"Better let it be," said Huldah Brown, coming in for a fresh relay of dishes, and catching the last sentence. "It's grease, I guess. It's easier to spot things than to clean 'em, a good deal."
"Oh, well, never mind," answered Mrs. Reuben, good-naturedly, "I'll manage it among the gathers, and it won't show." And she moved away into the front rooms.
"Jane Gayworthy, all over!" ejaculated Huldah, as she came into the out-room again, where Eben sat, eating strawberry short-cake. "She allus thinks it's no matter what's done, as long as it's tucked away in the gethers, out of sight. For my part, I like things good and clean, clear through. As soon as they're spotted they're sp'ilt, to my thinkin'."
Eben pushed his emptied plate into the middle of the table, and tilting his chair upon its hinder legs, made a quadruped of himself so, and walked himself back a few paces, as Yankees know how, till he rested comfortably against the wall. He had been seated within six feet, or thereabouts, of the steps that led up into the kitchen proper, through all the foregoing conversation. The busy handmaiden, in the clatter of her dishes, farther off, had caught nothing of it, save in her passages to and fro.
"Huldy Brown!" said Eben, emphatically, throwing up his arms over his head against the partition, and crossing his long legs in the air. "I tell you what it is! I don't want to jedge nobody; but I b'lieve, as I've got a created soul, she's thunderin sly!"
CHAPTER III.
PEEKIN' AND HARKIN'.
When people decline peremptorily the discussion of affairs, you may be sure they go away and think them over all the more. An idea like this suggested itself to Mrs. Reuben Gair. Her hint of Selport, and something for the boy to do, had not apparently taken direct effect; but it might have set her father to considering, perhaps a little prematurely, as regarded her own secret wishes in the matter. Mrs. Reuben Gair was not mistaken in her surmise.
She had set her father to considering. Or rather, considerations which had long been passively revolving, as it were, within his mind, at this word of hers took shape, came out, and would be looked at. They grew to definite questions, and demanded, suddenly, decisions.
"You couldn't have done more for them, if they'd been your own!" There might be something more that he ought to do, because they were not his own. Somehow, after Jane's words, this thought pressed upon him obstinately, and refused to evaporate itself into mere vague purpose for the future. He finished his cup of tea, and, turning away rather abruptly, walked out upon the doorstone where Rebecca and Say had had their little talk together before the "company" came.
The company—those of it who still remained—were gathered at the front of the house, within and without. Laughter and merry speech of young voices came around from the pleasant dooryard, where the moon shone down upon June roses, and upon human life also in its June.
The good doctor stood musingly and listened; looking up to the still-night heaven, unrolling the same slow-moving, gorgeous scroll as long ago, when it had been blossoming-time with him as well. And, standing there, he felt, rather than thought, how men change, and lives pass, and the great, unaltered skies look down on all. God laid His hand over him so, and sealed thought into action.
He scarcely knew why, but in those moments his "mind was made up."
"I won't leave things at loose ends another hour," said he at last, and turning back from the doorway, he walked straight through the long kitchen, passing on into his own little private room, which adjoined. Here he found his good friend, Parson Fairbrother, who, after having done his social duty among the company, had made his privileged way hither, to mouse, as he was apt to do, among the old books; and was at this moment quite lost in something he had lit upon among the pages of Burton's Anatomy.
"I want a little talk with you, Parson, if you please; and I've got a five-minutes bit of business to do. You shall take old Burton home if you like," said the doctor, closing the door by which he had entered—the parson had already shut that leading to the best parlor, to exclude disturbing sounds—and pushing two great leathern arm-chairs towards the table, in one of which he seated himself, while Mr. Fairbrother, turning down a leaf, carefully closed the volume, and came forward, in compliance, to the other.
When the parsonage party,—Mrs. Fairbrother, Malviny and Gordon King, with Miss Stacy Lawton, who had heedlessly let the Gibsons, her next-door neighbors, go home without her, fifteen minutes before, and who now availed herself of the Fairbrother escort, "only for as far as they went,"—was gathering to take leave, the good minister, after considerable outcry, was found thus cosily closeted with the doctor; and when summoned a second time by Malviny, sent word that they "might step along. He'd come presently." It was nothing unusual. Nobody gave the circumstance a second thought, unless, indeed, the watchful, elder daughter of the house.
Presently—I should think, though, a good half hour after—Mrs. Gair, wondering very much, and waiting to put out the last candles, while her sisters were busied setting other things to rights, heard her father go with the minister to the front gate, and say good-night; returning directly to his own little room again, whence, in a few moments, stole out the deferred fragrance of his evening pipe.
There seemed to be a good deal revolving in various brains that night in the Gayworthy farmhouse. It might have been late tea-drinking, or strawberry short-cake, or the mental stimulus of social contact; whatever it was, people did not go straight to bed and to sleep, according to their wont.
Mrs. Vorse, having with her own hands set every precious bit of china back into the closet sacred to its keeping, departed up the staircase to the kitchen chamber with an armful of linen, enjoining on Huldah, as she went, to see everything safe in the out-room for the night.
Huldah had milkpans to wash, and bread to set; but she sang to herself cheerily, as left apparently alone in all the lower part of the house, she moved, not a whit loath or wearily, from kitchen to dairy, from dairy to the large, lonely out-room, where waited her last work for the night. She sang as she gathered her pans, whose contents had been rifled of their cream for the feasting; as she wiped down sweet-smelling shelves, whose purity neither drop nor dust might defile; as she poured away the skimmed milk into the large, tidy tub that stood in the far corner to accumulate the dainty waste whose destination we know; sang on, with a sudden glee in her voice, as she carried the freshly-scalded tins out presently at the door, and set them gleaming there in the moonlight, catching, as she did so, glimpse of a tall, stalwart figure—not raw-boned and shambling, but sturdy, well-built, albeit Yankee to the vertebral main-shaft—that gathered itself up from leaning over the garden fence, and sauntered with great strides towards her. The song broke into a laugh as she turned back again, ignoring the presence, and said to herself, with a spasm of fun bubbling up among her words:—
"I knew it! I was certain he'd jest go and be redickl'ous again!"
Eben Hatch and Huldah Brown had grown up, boy and girl together, upon the Gayworthy farm.
When Huldah was eighteen, her mother,—who had been "brought up," as the country phrase is for expressing board-and-clothes-remunerated service, by the mother of Dr. Gayworthy, and who had married, had a child, been widowed, and returned to her old employ, as if she had been simply put out at interest,—Huldah, with the eight years' start in the world, standing for the percentage of Mrs. Brown's ten years' absence, and accompanying her mother, to be profitably "brought up" in her turn,—had died, leaving her daughter to the comfortable hereditary position which was practically little less privileged or more precarious than that of a daughter of the house.
Since that time, Eben had had frequent turns of being what Huldah called "redickl'ous"; but as yet, owing, as he thought, to persistent ill-luck,—as Huldah secretly believed, to "special interpositions,"—he had never, however often he had shamefacedly essayed it, got the step beyond, which might have touched the sublime; in his own words he had "somehow never quite made out to fetch it."
They were always nervous occasions these, to Huldah; she wouldn't care to have them go a hair's-breadth further than they did; she hailed devoutly the "interpositions," which Providence—usually, it must be owned, through the instrumentality of her own womanly artifice—threw in; she drew what would have been a long breath, if it hadn't at the same time been a secret chuckle, when Eben, looking a blank surprise, found himself suddenly at the end of his opportunity,—like the sheep fenced in with such a crooked art, that when he had fairly, as he thought, jumped the enclosure, he found himself back upon the same side,—and the danger was for that time over. Nevertheless, at due intervals, she was best pleased after all that the peril should recur. If Eben hadn't now and then been "redickl'ous" at home, there would have been no knowing that he wasn't redickl'ous—nay, even achieving the sublime—elsewhere.
So Huldah drew herself back out of the moonlight, with an instinct of shunning any over-sentimental accessories, and disappeared down the trap stairway to the cellar, for the jug of yeast, as Eben stepped over the threshold.
"You there?" she exclaimed, when she emerged again from below, and found him just where she knew he would be, waiting in the night-shine at the open door.
"Yes. I'm here, Huldy. Jest come an' look at the moon! of all the June nights I ever see, this is the crowner!"
Huldah understood him and his moon-rapture. The heavenly satellite had precious little, in reality, to do with it; the same old story veiled itself so, in his homely New England dialect, that Lorenzo breathed to Jessica out there in Venice, in the verse she never heard of. If there had never been a moon, there would have been lovers, doubtless, all the same, and they might easily have found something else to talk about. What they pretend to look at, or to speak of, is no matter; as well squashes as sunbeams; the subject is but as the indifferent third substance, in chemistry,—thrown in only that the others may unite; the thing is, to bring the two souls together.
Huldah, however, eschewed the whole, as moonshine, all of it; and taking herself away out of its perilous gleams walked straight over to her bread-pan; remarking, only, very unsympathically, as she did so, that "she'd seen the moon afore; she guessed there wasn't anything special about it; at any rate she hadn't time to look."
If Huldah once got her hands fairly into the dough,—there was where Eben's bread would be, sure enough; so while she measured the yeast, and scooped the orthodox hollow for it in the flour, and began to stir it in, gently, with her wooden spoon, he ventured with a fresh persistence.
"The folks out there in the front yard, was tellin', to-night, about the moon lookin' different to different people; come here, Huldy, jest a minute! I want to know how big you think it is!"
