To deck with flowers my faded hair.'"
The idea of Mr. Rollin decking his hair with flowers was a specially entertaining one to me.
Presently, he continued:—
"To descend for a moment to secular subjects—I've got my own horses here now, Miss Hungerford. I had my man Bob bring them down from Providence. They got here last night, and they're a pair of spankers, too, if I do say it that shouldn't, as the phrase is. That was one of the inducements which led me to follow your—to follow Captain Keeler's example in coming to church this morning. And now I have a calm, serious, and reasonable proposal to make. No doubt we are both familiar with the small conventionalities of life, but on such a day as this, and with such a glorious air outside, and such a unique framework of society—everything delightfully pagan—scruples worthy only of small consideration at any time should be thrown aside. I don't know what perils you encountered on your way to church this morning, in the canvas-covered vehicle. But, if you will drive back to Wallencamp with me, I promise to take you there fleetly and safely, and you may have the consciousness, besides, if you care for it, that you have made the day one of spiritual reclamation to an erring fellow-creature."
The Sunday-school had risen to its feet and was slowly droning "Yield not to temptation," etc. The situation was odd enough. Mr. Rollin's repressed laughing voice was in my ear: "Will you yield?" and I yielded.
At the close of the Sunday-school, as we were going out of the church, I told Grandma that I should drive home with Emily's fisherman.
She drew me gravely to one side. "We shall be very sorry to lose your company, teacher," she said; "only we hadn't ought to lose no precious opportunity, and I do hope as you'll labor for that young man's soul." I felt hopelessly conscience-stricken.
We drove home through "Lost Cedars"—a good many miles out of the ordinary course—and I was cheerfully consenting to the divergence.
Wild and tenantless, in the midst of a wild and tenantless landscape, Lost Cedars wore that air of lovely, though utter, desolation which might easily have suggested its name.
There was a still unfrozen lake, which the setting sun, more like the sun of an Italian winter than of rugged New England, was painting in gorgeous colors, when we reached the place.
"We come fishing here, sometimes," said Mr. Rollin; "I keep a little boat down there under the bush, and I happen to have the key of the boat here in my pocket. It looks awfully tempting, doesn't it?"
I had always been passionately fond of out-door life, and prided myself in having acquired no little skill at the oar. We were out on the painted lake, and I was rowing the light boat, and taking much selfish enjoyment out of the scene around me, when I became conscious that the fisherman was leaning far forward from his seat in the boat, addressing me in a low tone.
"To discuss a topic appropriate to the day, Miss Hungerford: I suppose you've read about that fellow who was looking for the pearl of great price, haven't you?—that is, as I take it, you know, it was something that was going to be of more value to him than anything else in the world,—well, now, I believe that every man thinks he's going to be lucky enough to fall in with something of that sort some day, don't you?"
Mr. Rollin's tone was unusually serious and even slightly embarrassed. I looked up with curious surprise from my dreamy observation of the water. Then I thought of what Grandma Keeler had said to me about laboring for this young man's spiritual good.
"I think we all ought to seek it," I observed tritely, giving a long, studied artistic stroke to the oars. "I don't see why you shouldn't find it, I'm sure—if you ask. I wish that I were good enough to talk to you real helpfully on this subject."
I was startled at the inspiriting effect my brief exhortation seemed already to have produced on the soul of Emily's fisherman.
"To ask! Is that all!" he exclaimed in the same low breath. And looking at the glowing, though rather unsanctified light on his features, my interest suddenly expanded to take in the possible drift of his words. I concluded that it was time for me to show myself eminently discreet; having departed so far from the immediate object of my mission as to spend a considerable part of the Sabbath driving and rowing with a strange young man, miles from every place of refuge.
"I'm tired," I said. "Please row back now, I should like to go home."
I rose to give Mr. Rollin my place at the oar. He held out his hand to assist me, and, whether by any malicious design of his or not, at that moment the boat gave a sudden lurch, and I was precipitated helplessly forward into his arms. I felt his kiss burning on my lips.
With anger at the fisherman's unfairness, and bitterness at what I felt to be the mortifying result of my own folly and indiscretion—"Oh," I exclaimed; "I hate you! I wish you would never speak to me again! I wish I had fallen into the water."
The fisherman sent the boat leaping on with long strokes. "D——n it!" he muttered softly: "I wish you had, and I after you!"
We drove for several miles on the way homeward in silence. Then Mr. Rollin spoke. I had been meditating upon Rebecca, upon my determination to make my life in Wallencamp one of supreme self-sacrifice and devotion to duty, and had concluded, in a deeply repentant mind, that this unpleasant incident at the close of the day was only the natural consequence of my error in departing from the prescribed limits of my self-appointed task.
I felt that after this experience it would be unwise for me further to extend my mission work in Mr. Rollin's behalf. So I answered him but briefly, and in a tone of martyr-like composure, which I could not help observing perplexed and irritated him more than anger or the most frigid silence would have done.
I was strengthened in this frame of mind when we parted at the little gate in front of the Ark, and Mr. Rollin proposed another drive for the ensuing week.
Then I revealed to the fisherman the grave burden of my soul.
"Mr. Rollin," I said; "if I had come to Wallencamp merely in search of my own pleasure and diversion, I should doubtless find it very easy to do some things which I do not consider harmful in themselves, but which it is wrong for me to do under the circumstances. I may tell you that I have been very reckless, very thoughtless in my life, but I came here resolving to devote myself to an earnest, serious work. I hoped to do these people good. They do seem to believe in me. They trust me. I cannot bear that they should think me in any way unworthy of their trust. When you asked me to drive this evening,—it was just as it used to be—I did not think. You were very kind. It was pleasant, and I thank you,—but I ought not to have gone—don't you see? I believe, now, that it would have been so much better if I had not."
"I don't see," said Mr. Rollin; "why should you leave me out altogether? Don't I believe in you? Don't I need to be done some good to?"
At this last childishly whimsical appeal I was in sore danger of being diverted from the serious channel of my thoughts. Then the door of the Ark softly opened a little way, and there, nightcapped in white, like a full, benignant moon, appeared the head of Grandma Keeler, as she peered blindly out into the night.
"Poor old soul!" I said. "She has probably been 'waiting and watching.' Don't you see already one of the results of my sinning? Good night," I said, extending my hand to the fisherman, who had fixed on that innocent and unconscious nightcap a darkly withering gaze.
"Oh, never mind me," he muttered, turning abruptly. "Only take care of this infernal old nest of Hoosiers, and respectable people may go to the devil!"
CHAPTER VI.
BECKY AND THE CRADLEBOW.
"Teacher's got Beck's beau!"
"Teacher's got Beck's beau!" I heard it whispered among the school children. Rebecca heard, too, and paled a little, but looked up at me and smiled as frankly as ever.
Seeing her alone afterwards, I took occasion to remark, incidentally, "how kind it was of her friend, Mr. Rollin, to bring me home from church. Fanny was so slow! And I thought he was a very pleasant young man, but even the most estimable people, you know," I added, laughing, with an undertone of studied significance; "are not just fitted to enjoy each other's society always."
Then I blushed under the girl's clear, trustful gaze.
"You don't think I mind what the children talk!" she said.
Every day Rebecca appealed more and more, unconsciously, to what was most generous and grave and heedful in my nature. She seemed to be demanding of me, with mute, gentle importunity, to make real my ideal of life, to be what I knew she believed me to be. Her faith in my superior wisdom and goodness, her slow, timid way of confiding in me, with tears and blushes even; it was all very flattering, very captivating to one who had but so lately risen to occupy the pedestal of a moral instructress, and "my child," "my dear child," I said to her in many private discourses, with more than the tranquil grace and dignity with which such terms had been applied to me, only a year before, by the august principal of Mt. B—— Seminary.
Rebecca read my books, and I drew her out to talk with me about them. She prepared her lessons, with me, out of school. She knew that she might come whenever she chose to my little room at the Ark, which the chimney kept comfortably warm, and often I heard her footsteps on the stairs and her gentle knock at the door.
If I was troubled or perplexed on any account, Rebecca always seemed to understand in that quiet, unobtrusive way of hers, and followed my movements with a grave, restful sympathy in her eyes. On several occasions I had asked her, playfully, to walk up the lane with me after school. So it became a matter of course that she should wait for me. Often we took longer walks, for it was an "open winter," with only one or two light falls of snow.
Then I believed the "Tempter" came to me, in the form of another invitation to drive, from Mr. Rollin.
Occupied with my duties in the school-room, one afternoon, I was startled to observe these characters as suddenly and mysteriously raised as if by the unseen hand of a modern sibyl on the blackboard:—
"teecher's Bo is a setting On the Fens."
Involuntarily raising my eyes to the window, I was unable to discover on the fence opposite anything of the nature indicated in those words. I concluded that the whole was to be taken as one of those deeply allegorical expressions in which the Wallencamp tongue abounded.
Shortly afterward, a boy who had been playing truant and the Jews' harp at the same time, in a subdued and melancholy way under the window, and who had, doubtless, been bribed to undertake his present commission through some extraordinary means, entered the school-room, and laid on my desk a note from the auburn-haired fisherman. It was hastily scrawled in lead pencil, on a leaf torn from a memorandum.
The fisherman confessed to all the meekness and long suffering, without the cheerful intrepidity of Mary's little lamb! He would do all his waiting outside. Mr. Levi was down from West Wallen to-day, and said that he had heard somebody say that there were four letters came for the teacher in last night's mail. Would I like to drive over to West Wallen and get them. The fisherman did not believe that I had been in earnest in the prudish and unreasonable notions I had propounded when he left me the other evening.
"Prudish!" In my newly-acquired elevation of mind, I hugged the term with a deep, intense, and mysterious delight. Oh, if my mother could only know—if my elder sister could only know that I had actually been accused of prudishness! It was in the glow and inspiration of this idea that I indited the answer to Mr. Rollin's missive: "Why would he make it unpleasant and disagreeable for me to do what seemed so plainly my duty?"—and dispatched the same by the pensive and unpunished truant, who was soon heard again revelling in the stolen sweets of his Jews' harp beneath the window.
After this I had no further intercourse with the fisherman for some days. If I chanced to meet him in the lane, Rebecca was always with me. He came one evening to the Ark. The young people were there, singing.
Then I heard, from time to time, of his taking Rebecca to drive, and congratulated myself that, through my composed wisdom and forethought, the little world of Wallencamp was destined to move very smoothly, on the whole.
"I wonder why Mr. Rollin don't go home," observed Grandma Keeler, complacently, on one of those rare occasions when the Keeler family circle held quiet possession of the Ark before the songful company had arrived. "He didn't use to stay but a week or two at a time, and all the rest o' the fishermen have been gone some time now; and he keeps them horses down here, and goes loungin' around with no more object than a butterfly in December."
"I tell ye he's a makin' up to Beck," said Grandpa Keeler, with the knowing air of an old man accustomed to fathom mysteries of this peculiar nature.
A spark shot out of Madeline's great, black eyes. Then she laughed unpleasantly. "There's something in the wind besides Beck," said she.
"Why, I don't know," said Grandma; "he don't hang around there very much, may be, but they say he takes her to ride, and I'm sure he don't wait on nobody else. But I should think, if he was a going to speak out he'd ought to do it, and not waste his time a keepin' a puttin' it off. Why, my fust husband wasn't but a week makin' up his mind, and pa," she continued, referring openly to Grandpa Keeler, "he wan't quite so outspoken, to be sure; but he came around to it in the course of a month or two, and kind o' beat around the bush then, and wanted to know what I thought on't, and—wall, I told him 'yes,'—I didn't see no use in bein' squeamish so long as I'd once made up my mind to it."
"I asked ye as soon as I could!" exclaimed Grandpa, bristling on the defensive. "I wanted to be sure o' gittin' a house fust."
"There!" said Madeline briskly, putting down her foot, and tossing her head as she addressed the old couple. "Be good, children! Be good!—and now, do you mark my words, it isn't Becky Weir that Dave Rollin is hanging around here for. There's some folks to be made up to, and there's some folks, jest as good, to be stepped on. And Dave Rollin—what does he think of Wallencamp folks, anyway? He wouldn't take the trouble to kick 'em out of his road; he'd jest step on 'em, and he's steppin' on Beck Weir. He don't care enough about her to let her alone."
"Wall, I—don't—know!" said Grandma. "What's he stayin' for, then?"
"Staying! Lord, ma!" said Madeline sharply, with a strange cold glitter in her eye. "How do I know what he's stayin' for? Oh," she added, in a tone of lighter bitterness, "It's a mild winter and open roads. He's sketching they say, and exploring the Cape. Let him explore from one end to the other, he won't find such another fool as himself."
"We can't help nothin' by talkin' that way;" said Grandma Keeler, a little pale, though calmly cognizant of Madeline's emotion.
"You know I had an experience of my own once, ma," said Madeline, terribly white about the lips.
"I wouldn't rake up old wounds, daughter." There was nothing unfeeling in Grandma Keeler's tone.
The daughter shut her lips together tightly, as though more than she had intended to reveal had already escaped them, and applied herself desperately to her sewing.
I fancied that I had detected a personally aggressive quality in Madeline's indignant tone.
"I don't see why we should feel that way about Rebecca," I said. "The more one gets acquainted with her, the more lovable and worthy of respect she seems. I knew a great many girls, at school—girls with every advantage of wealth and culture, too, who had not half of Rebecca's grace and refinement, nor a tenth part of her beauty!"
Madeline said nothing, bending to her work with the same bitter compression of the lips.
"It's right you should stand up for her, teacher," said Grandma Keeler, pleasantly. "Miss Waite, she begun by makin' a kind o' pet o' her, but I don't think Rebecca ever set her heart on her as she has on you, and it's easy to see you've took lots o' pains with her. She's a gittin' them same kind o' sorter interestin' high-flowed ways—why, she used to be just like the rest of 'em—jest sich a rompin', roarin' thing as Drussilly Weir is now."
"Goodness gracious, ma!" Madeline put in again, sharply. "What good is it going to do Beck Weir to put on airs? Better stick to her own ways, and her own folks—she'll find they'll stand by her best in the end, I guess—than to be fillin' her head with notions to hurt her feelin's over by and by. She's a fool, I think, for treatin' George Olver as she does. He's worth a dozen Dave Rollins, if his coat don't set quite so fine, and would work his fingers off to suit her if she'd only settle down to him and be sensible."
"Wall," said Grandma Keeler, in a tone that was a curious contrast to Madeline's, "our feelin's won't always go as we'd ought to have em', daughter."
"No, they won't!" Madeline snapped out excitedly, "but, ma, you know I'm in the right of it just as well as I do; and there's Lute Cradlebow's got to dreamin' and moonin' around in the same way. Took it into his head he wanted to get an education—well, what hasn't he took into his head! So he must begin recitin' to teacher. Well, he had in his mind to study, I don't doubt, to begin with, and used to come two or three times a week, and rattle off a string, and now he's here every day of his life, and, if there's any reciting going on, I don't hear it—not that I want to meddle with other folks' business, but I've known those boys a good many years, and I hate to see anybody hurt and run over, even if they be young and ignorant, and making fools of themselves. Some folks are none too good, I think, for all their airs, and had better look out to see where they're going!"
"Why, thar', Madeline!" said Grandma, with a decided touch of disapproval in her voice. "R'a'ly, seems to me you're kind o' out. I'm sure Luther Larkin seems to be a gittin' along finely with his Latin and Algibbery—I'm sure I've heard a lot of it, when I've been goin' through the room, if you ain't; and if he's took it into his head to git book larnin', and maybe scratch enough together to go away somewheres to school, why, I'm sure, there's older boys than him, and not so bright, have ketched up if they set there minds to it, and as for our teacher—Madeline!"
"Oh, I've no doubt but what Miss Hungerford meant kindly," said Madeline, with the lightness she could so suddenly assume. "It's a mighty queer world, that's all!" she added presently, rising and putting on her bonnet; "and managed very queerly, for I suppose it is managed. I'm going out, ma. Those children have split my head with their noise to-day, and I promised Patty I'd come in and sit awhile. Now, if I've been cross and crazy, don't you and teacher talk me over," she said, looking back and trying hard to smile—and she did look very tired and white, as though she had been suffering—"and if those children wake up and begin to squall"—with a glance towards the little bedroom—"let 'em squall. If I've wished it once to-day, I have a hundred times, that they was the other side of sunset!"
"I wish you'd step into Lihu's—such a poor, sufferin' creetur as he is—with these," said Grandma, appearing from the pantry with some eggs in her apron. "I wish you could take the consolations of religion with you, Madeline," she continued gravely, as Mrs. Philander was closing the door.
"Lord, ma! my pocket's full now!" exclaimed Madeline. "Besides, they might break the eggs!" And the latch fell down with a click.
"I wish Madeline was a believer," Grandma sighed, purposely rattling about the cover of the stove to wake up Grandpa, who had fallen asleep in his chair.
Grandpa looked at me, and smiled feebly, then roused himself to meet this supposed challenge like a man.
"Believer, ma?" said he; "why ain't I a believer? As old Cap'n Gates said to me on his last voyage"—Grandpa yawned alarmingly (poor old man! he was but half awake), as this unlucky reminiscence of his sea-faring life flitted through his brain—"says he, 'I read my almanick and my Bible, both, Bijonah;' says he, 'I read 'em both, and I believe there's a great deal o' truth in both on 'em.'"
"Thar, pa!" said Grandma, solemnly, "you'd better go to sleep! you'd better close your eyes, Bijonah Keeler! What if you should never open 'em again on earthly scenes, and them words on your lips,—and you a perfessor!"
Grandpa scratched his head in drowsy bewilderment, passed his hand once or twice over the coarse stubble on his face, and again committed himself helplessly to the sweet obliviousness of slumber.
I drew my chair up confidentially close to Grandma Keeler's, and rested my arms on the table as I looked into her face.
"Grandma!" I said, for I knew that she was better pleased to have me call her that; "I begin to think that I ought never to have come to Wallencamp on a mission, that perhaps it would be just as well if I had never come to Wallencamp at all, I mean. I didn't think. At first, it seemed more than anything else, like something very new to entertain myself with. I didn't think enough of the responsibility. Then, perhaps, I thought too much of it. I don't know. I wish I were out of it all. Grandma, I never tried to do the right thing so hard before in my life. I never worked so hard before—and I don't mind that; but I meant it all for the best, and it's no use, it's just like all the rest. I'm tired. I wish I were out of it."
"Wall, thar' now, darlin'," said Grandma, employing to the full her tone of infinite consolation. "You ain't the first one as mistook a stump for livin' creetur in the night, and don't you talk about givin' up nor nothin' like it, darlin', for we couldn't do without you noways—nor you without us, for yet a while, I'm thinkin', though it does seem strange—and never you mind one straw for what Madeline said, for she was kind o' out to-night, anyway, not having got no letter from Philander, I suppose. But then she ought not to feel so. Why, there was time and time agin that I didn't git no letter from Bijonah Keeler when he was voyagin', and to be sure, they wasn't much better than nothin' when they did come; for pa"—Grandma cast a calmly comprehensive glance at her unconscious mate—"pa was a man that had a great many idees in general, but, when he set down to write a letter, somehow he seemed to consider that it wasn't no place for idees, a letter wasn't—seemed as though he managed a'most a purpose not to get none in."
"Grandma," I said, leaning forward, laughing, and folding my hands in her lap, "you're the best comforter I know of."
"Wall, thar'," said she; "it's a good deal in feelin's, and Madeline ain't r'al well, so she kind o' allows 'em to overcome her sometimes."
"And what did she mean by saying that about Rebecca?" I asked.
"Oh, she just meant girls will be girls, that's all!" replied Grandma; "why, mercy! I know all about that. I don't feel like nothin' much more than a girl myself, half the time; and we all have to have our experiences, to be sure. They ain't nobody else can wear 'em for us, but, dear me! the Lord ain't going to let our experiences hurt us; they're for our betterin'."
"And Lute Cradlebow, Grandma?" I said; "what did she mean about him?"
"Oh, she just meant boys will be boys, that's all—especially big ones—but thar'! I've known 'em to get over it a hundred times and not hurt 'em none. If you're always lookin' at human natur' on the dark side, it seems kind o' desp'rit. My first husband, he wasn't a fretful man, but he was always viewin' the dark side o' things. I suppose one reason was he didn't have no father nor mother, and so he kind o' begun life as a took-in boy, but Pollos Slocum, he done very well by him, for he hadn't no children of his own, but his brother—that was Daniel Slocum—he had six. There was two boys and four girls. Mary, she came fust. She was born February nineteenth"——
I was sorry that Grandma's thoughts had drifted into this hopeless and interminable channel.
I had considered carefully what Madeline had said, and determined on a little new advice for my friend, Rebecca. So, the next time we were alone in my room together, I directed the conversation with a view to this end.
"And I wouldn't trust any one, my dear," I said with cheerful earnestness; "then if people prove true, why, it's all the more delightful; and if not, one isn't disappointed; so you can hold the scales quite indifferently in your own hand, and are always master of the situation. Oh, I wouldn't trust people! It would be very nice if this were the sort of world that you could do it in, but it isn't. It's a very deceitful world."
"But I can trust you, can't I?" Rebecca held me with her gravely questioning eyes.
"Well, I don't know;" I began with the determination to be severely true to my text, but the look in Rebecca's eyes hurt me.
"Oh, yes! little girl," I continued, falling into the half-tender, half-playful tone that it was always easiest to assume with her; "of course, you must trust me I Haven't I been a good teacher to you, so far?" And I sought by smiling in the girl's face, to chase the grieved expression away from it. "What I meant was that I wouldn't trust people generally, because it's a selfish world, and such is the depravity of the human mind that if it appears at all convenient, we are apt, you know, to sacrifice other people to our own interests; so, with all the little kindnesses and politenesses which are current in society, it is still the common practice—and if is best that it should be so—to keep, in the main, a sharp look out for 'Number One!'"
Having proceeded so far, it occurred to me that the occasion was favorable for the discharge of another duty which I had been meditating in regard to Rebecca.
"You are what Grandma Keeler calls a believer, are you not, dear?" I said, with the same composedly dictatorial manner: "in distinction from a professor, I mean."
Rebecca gave a little gasp, and turned her head away, for an instant. When she looked back, there were tears of distress in her eyes.
I felt a vague wonder and regret.
"No," she said; "I thought, once—I wanted—I hoped——"
"Why, child!" I hastened to exclaim. "I didn't ask you because I had any reason to doubt that you were one—quite the contrary—but simply for this. It seems to me it would be such a desirable thing for you, situated as you are, here, with so few surroundings of a refining and elevating nature, if you could attach yourself, if it were merely for a feeling of fellowship and sympathy—for of course, you could not attend, often—to some simple Orthodox body of believers—like the Methodist church at West Wallen, for instance. It seems to me, that, in your case, believing simply and unquestionably, as I have no doubt you do, it would be a sort of assurance, a sort of continual rest and support to you. It would be a great relief to me if I felt that you were so guarded. Not that I consider it essential at all; to some people, indeed, of a deeply thoughtful and inquisitive mind, such a course would appear impossible. You have never troubled yourself, Becky," I continued, in a tone of reassuring lightness; "you have never troubled yourself with doubts and speculations on religious subjects?"
"I don't know," Becky replied, the look of perplexity and distress deepening in her eyes.
"Why should you?" I murmured, softly stroking her hair; "He carries the lambs in His bosom." I had been little in the habit of quoting Scripture—the words, coming to my mind, struck me as particularly Beautiful and applicable on this occasion. "And so what I have suggested, would be the easiest and most natural thing in the world for you to do. I suppose it might be necessary for you to have come to some conclusion in regard to the first principles of Theology; but probably you have already satisfied yourself as to these in your own mind."
Rebecca looked little like one who had arrived at the calm plane of philosophical conclusion of any sort.
"I don't know," she gasped.
"Well, take the Trinity, for instance," I continued, in a tone highly suggestive of calm and supreme forbearance with helpless ignorance. "Probably you believe in the Trinity?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Rebecca. "I don't know what it means. Nobody ever told me; nobody ever talked to me about those things before."
"It's simply," I said; "a term implying the existence of three persons in the Godhead. So the Trinitarians are distinguished from the Unitarians who believe that it consists of one. I'm not particularly informed as to the Methodist credentials of faith. You will always hear that they believe that salvation is free to all who will accept of it. Some people believe that man is a free agent, and may accept or refuse the means of grace, and if he refuses, is eternally lost. And then, again, there are the Universalists, who believe that all will be eventually saved. There is the Calvinistic element—those who believe in predestination—that is——"
Becky had laid her head down on the bed, and was quietly sobbing.
"My poor child," I exclaimed, with swift compassion, "don't think anything more about what I have said to you. Let it go. It isn't vital."
"You don't hate me for not knowing anything?" sobbed Becky. "Nobody ever tried to have me understand, before."
"You know enough; quite enough, dear!" I remarked hastily, producing from my trunk a quantity of illustrated magazines. These we looked over together, and when Becky went away, the tears were dried in her eyes, and she was laughing as merrily as ever.
With the severely implied reproach of Madeline's words still in my mind, I took pains to assume toward Luther Larkin a more elder-sisterly air even than before.
It was true, I felt that I had been unjustly stung, having, amid the press of other duties, undertaken the advancement of that bright youth, from motives, I believed, of an ideal and disinterested nature. It was also true, that, after the first enthusiasm with respect to his lessons had passed away, as well as the natural diffidence he had at first felt in my presence, Luther Larkin, though punctual to the hour of recitation, had gradually fallen into a habit of more lively and discursive inquiry than that furnished within the dull range of his text-books. He had a singularly fearless manner of challenging the inexplicable in thought and life, with a light conversational flow of much brilliancy. Moreover, he was a delightful dreamer.
We had our recitation, for quiet, in one of Grandma's gloomy and mysterious keepin'-rooms. The only object inviting to sedentary posture in this room was Grandpa's huge "chist," which occupied a position "along side" the East window. Those sacred window curtains, of green paper, flowered with crimson roses, were never rolled up; but as the light strayed in at one side, and fell on the Cradlebow's fine head, often I reflected that under certain other conditions of life, meaning conditions more favorable to Luther Larkin, I might have regarded him very tenderly, and invested the strength and beauty of his young manhood with heroic meaning.
As it was, I assumed that I was years beyond him in the gravest respects. And if there was any truth in what Madeline had intimated, possibly I had been at fault for not impressing this fact more deeply on his mind.
"So you are getting sadly behindhand with your lessons, Luther," I said. "I wish you would make a brave effort to catch up. There is no true attainment to be reached without a corresponding degree of effort—of perseverance."
I spoke with a serious and gracious air, as though this sentiment, gleaned from a profound experience, had occurred to me as an idea peculiarly my own.
"Never mind the lessons!" replied my audacious pupil, brightly. "Teacher," he added presently, having fallen into a gently musing attitude; "how shiny those crimples in your hair look, with that streak of sun lighting on 'em!"
"Luther," said I, very gravely: "you ought not to talk to me about my hair. Suppose we give our attention to these books. Now you were getting along so fast, I'm very sorry——"
"Do you think I'm to blame, teacher?" exclaimed Luther, earnestly, "There wasn't a stick of wood to be had in our house this morning! And I've had to be off, all day, chopping, with Scudder—you ought to have seen the black snake we killed this morning. It was six feet long. If you don't believe it, Scudder's got the carcass. It was lying all curled up in the bushes with its head up so—'you watch him, Lute,' says Scudder, 'and I'll run and get the axe!' I couldn't help laughing. The axe was over the other side of the bog, and the snake began to stretch himself out and slide along. I brought my boot-heel down once or twice on his head, about as quick and strong as I could make it. I killed him. It's a good sign to kill a snake, teacher. It's a good sign to dream of killing one; but you come across one so, accidentally, and kill it, and it's sure to bring good luck, Granny says."
"That's more significant than a great many of your signs and symbols," I said. "That means that you will slay the tempter in your path, and be successful in overcoming difficulties. In short, it means that whatever there has been to divert you, you are coming back to the resolve to study and improve yourself; to be all the stronger for having a few chance obstacles to dispose of."
Luther's head began to droop a little. I thought it was time that the melancholy atmosphere of the room should have begun to exercise its usual depressive effect on his spirits.
"You think I don't like the books, teacher," he said. "I do, but there's most always something else to be doing. Father's lame. He can't do any work, and there's the rest to take care of. First, I sat up nights to study, then I got so sleepy I couldn't. But I'd got so in the habit of coming in to talk a little while after you got home from school, teacher, that I—I forgot to forget it. Have I been a great bother to you? You've been real good. I don't want you to think I forget that. And if I'd had a chance at the books early, or to push right along with 'em now, I might make out something in that line."
Luther did not speak complainingly, nor even with hopeless regret. He rose and stretched himself, with solemn satisfaction, to the extent of his goodly proportions.
"But I'm a man now, teacher," he said. "I shall be twenty in June, and life is short. A man hasn't got time for everything. He'd be a fool to waste it crying for what he didn't happen to have. He'd better push along and work for the best. I meant to tell you. I'm going to sea, teacher! I'm going trading. I was down to New Bedford, to see Captain Sparhauk yesterday, for I was out with him once before, and got a good deal of the hang of the business then; and he offered me a place on his ship next time he sails."
Luther stood with flushed face, regarding me with a bright restless look of inquiry in his eyes.
"Are you going away, really, Luther? I'm very sorry!" I said.
"You don't care! what do you care?" he exclaimed almost rudely, with an unnatural touch of hardness in his laugh. "It's the way you talk to all the rest. A fellow might get to thinking too much about it. A fellow might get to caring—if he believed it—I don't."
"What makes you think I shouldn't care if you were going away?" I continued, with the dispassionately gentle and reproving tone I considered it wisest to assume on the occasion. "I should care, I should be very sorry. Come and sit down here, please, and tell me all about it, when you are going, and where, and what you are going for?"
Luther came slowly back to the light. He seemed verily to have grown older and handsomer in a moment. I experienced a deeper feeling of regret than ever before, that the circumstances of his life could not have been conducive to heroism.
"The captain couldn't tell me just when he should sail," said he; "and I'm going to get money. I know a good deal of the Spanish and Portugal, I learned to talk them before—and I shall go to a great many places, I may not come back when the ship does. Say, what strange eyes you've got, teacher; now they're brown—and now, they're black, and now, they're a sort of—a—purplish gray."
"Oh, my dear boy," I exclaimed, with a sudden accession of wisdom, sighing deeply; "you ought not to talk to me about the color of my eyes." At the same time to deepen the effect of this condescending tenderness, I pushed back lightly from his forehead a stray lock of hair that was hanging there.
"Don't do that!" the boy cried with startling impetuosity. "Don't call me that again! I mean, teacher," he went on in a gentler tone, though none the less excitedly;—"if you should know somebody, that had set his heart on something, very much, and didn't want anything else if he couldn't have that, and if he should know that he hadn't any right to ask for it now, but go off and work for it real hard, and, maybe come back lucky in a few years, with a right to ask for it then;—do you think, teacher, that there'd be any chance of his finding—of his getting what he wanted most? If you were in anybody's place, now, teacher, would you give him a word of encouragement to try?"
"I think that the person you speak of would be much more likely to succeed in a practical undertaking, without any hallucination of that sort before his eyes—and if, as you say, it isn't right that he should ask for it now, can we predict that it would be any more reasonable and expedient in the future? These idle fancies of ours soon pass away, Luther, and will look laughable and grotesque enough to us by and by. Life is so full of changes, and people change, oh, so much!"
In spite of the vanity of my soul, I comforted myself with the reflection that Luther would not care long. I did not really believe that he would go to sea. I stood with him a moment in the door of Grandma's kitchen. He looked over to the woods, behind which the water lay, and the fire and impatience had all gone out of his manner. His gentleness touched me deeply, yet I was determined not to feel his hurt, nor—"if only the circumstances of his life had been different"—what might have been mine also!
"Hark! It's high tide. It's making quite a fuss over there," he said. "I think a man feels more quiet somehow, when he's out there, teacher. Father says I'm a wild chap and uneasy. I guess that's so. I can take care of them just as well too if I go, and better. Only if I should die—" there was nothing affected or forlorn in the Cradlebow's tone—"I should like to be buried on the hill, with father's folks. You've been across there. You look one way and there's the river, oftenest still—and the other way, you hear the old Bay scooting along the sand. I like it, being used to hearing it go always. Granny says it makes a difference then, where you lie, about the resting easy. I don't know. Sometimes it seems as though I should rest easier there."
"A dissertation on the graveyard," I began in a tone of affected lightness, and then paused, convicted of untruth by the solemn light in the Cradlebow's strange, grand eyes.
CHAPTER VII.
LUTE CRADLEBOW KISSES THE TEACHER.
Wallencamp had its peculiar seasons. After the season of hulled corn, came the reign of baked beans. It was during this latter dispensation that my courage failed considerably.
Madeline used to remark, throwing a rare musical halo about her words: "These beans are better than they look. Ain't they, teacher?"
And I was wont to reply conscientiously enough, though with a sweetly wearied glance at the familiar dish; "Certainly, they do taste better than they look."
Occasionally we had what Harvey Dole called, "squash on the shell," an ingenious term for the last of the winter pumpkins boiled in halves, and served au naturel.
Grandpa, too, pined and put away his food. He used to look across the table at me, with a feeble appeal for sympathy in his expression. Oftentimes he sighed deeply, and related anecdotes redolent of "red salmon" and "deer flesh," "strawberries as big as teacups" and "peaches as big as pint bowls," in places where he had sailed.
Once, he ventured to remark, apologetically, referring to the beans and pumpkins, that "bein' sich a mild winter, somehow he didn't hanker arter sech bracin' food, and he guessed he'd go over to Ware'am, and git some pork."
"Wall, thar' now, pa!" said Grandma; "seems to me we'd ought ter consider all the fruits o' God's bounty as good and relishin' in their season."
"I call that punkin out of season," said Grandpa, recklessly. "Strikes me so."
"I was talkin' about fruits. I wasn't talkin' about punkins," said Grandma, with derisive conclusiveness.
"Wall," said Grandpa, very much aroused, "if you call them tarnal white beans the fruits of God, I don't!"
"Don't you consider that God made beans, pa?"
"No, I don't!"
"Who, then—" continued Grandma, in an awful tone—"do you consider made beans, pa?"
Grandpa's eyes, as he glared at the dish, were large and round, and significant of unspeakable things.
"Bijonah Keeler!" Grandma hastened to say; "my ears have heard enough!"
As for Grandma, neither her appetite, nor her spirits, flagged. In spite of her confirmed habit of tantalizing Grandpa—and this was from no malevolence of motive, but simply as the conscientious fulfilment of a sacred religious and domestic duty—she was the most delightful soul I ever knew.
At supper, it was a habit for her to sit at the table long after we had finished our meal, and to continue eating and talking in her slow, automatic, sublimely philosophical manner, until not a vestige of anything eatable remained, and then as she rose, she would remark, simply, with a glance at the denuded board:—
"It beats all, how near you guessed the vittles to-night, daughter!"
Then Grandma resorted to an occasional pastime, harmless and playful enough in itself, yet intended as a special means of discipline for Grandpa, and certainly, a source of great torment and anxiety to that poor old man.
Between the hours of eight and nine P.M., Grandma would deftly glide out of the family circle, and be seen no more that night. At bedtime, Grandpa would begin the search, while Madeline and I ungenerously retired.
In the privacy of my own chamber, I could hear the old Captain tramping desolately about the Ark, calling, "Ma! ma!" Could hear the outside door swung open, and imagine Grandpa's wild face peering into the darkness, while still he called; "Ma! ma! where be ye? It's half after ten!"
Then, from the foot of the stairs would arise his distressed, appealing cry; "Come, ma, where be ye? It's half after ten!" Silence everywhere. With a mighty groan, Grandpa would come shuffling up the steep stairs, and what was most remarkable, Grandma was invariably found secluded amid the rubbish in the old garret. Then the whisperings that arose between those two would have pierced through denser substances by far than the little red door which separated me from the scene.
"How'd I know, ma, but what you'd gone out and broke yer leg, or somethin'? Come, ma—" with exasperated persuasiveness—"what do ye want to pester me this way for?"
"Why, pa," arose the calm, mellifluous accents of Grandma Keeler, "so't you might know how you'd feel if I should be took away!"
Next, the little staircase would resound with loud creaks and groans, as this reunited couple cautiously—and I have no doubt that they believed the whole affair had been conducted with the utmost secrecy—made their way down in their stocking feet.
Grandma—Heaven bless her, always devoted, though original—never saw a human ill that she did not long to alleviate. So, as Grandpa and I daily refused our food, she affirmed, as her opinion, that the one need of our deranged systems was a clarifier! And she forthwith prepared a mixture of onions and molasses, with various bitter roots, which latter she, upon her knees, had wrested from the frosty bosom of the earth in an arena immediately adjoining the Ark. Thus I beheld her one wintry day, and wondered greatly what she was at. When I came home from school at night, through a strangely permeated atmosphere, I beheld the clarifier simmering on the stove.
Grandpa already stood shivering over the fire. He smiled when I came in, but it was a faint and deathly smile—the smile of one who has returned, per force, to weak, defenceless infancy.
Grandma pressed me kindly to partake. I preferred to keep what ills I had, rather than fly to others that I knew not of. So I gently and firmly declined. But for several days in succession, Grandpa was made the victim of this ghastly remedy.
His sufferings went beyond the power of mad expostulation to express, and came nigh to produce upon his features the aspect of a saintly resignation.
Never shall I forget his appearance during this clarifying period—his occasional faint and fleeting attempts at wit—his usually hopeless and world-weary air. The wonder to me was that he did not then enter upon a celestial state of existence, being eminently fitted to go, as far as the attenuation of his mortal frame was concerned. It was at this time that I wrote home that I had never had such an appetite before in my life as now in Wallencamp (which, in one sense, I felt to be perfectly true); that the food was of a most remarkable variety (which I also felt to be true); but that it was rather difficult to procure oranges and the like. Whereupon, I received from home a large box, containing all manner of pleasant fruits, and thus poor old Grandpa Keeler and I were enabled to take a new lease of life.
I found that it was considered indispensable to the proper discharge of my duties in Wallencamp that I should make frequent calls on the parents of my flock, throughout the entire community. If I failed in any measure in this respect, they reproached me with being "unsociable," and said; "Seems to me you ain't very neighborly, teacher."
I had called myself a student of human nature. It seemed to me, now, that in those dingy Wallencamp houses, I stood for the first time, awed and delighted before the real article. Sometimes the men sent out great volumes of smoke from their pipes, in the low rooms, that were not delightful; but as far as they knew, they exerted themselves to the utmost, men and women both, to make their homes pleasant and attractive to me.
Godfrey Cradlebow's place was as small and poor as any. There was one room that served as kitchen, dining-room, and parlor, with a corresponding medley of furniture. A very finely chased gold watch hung against the loose brown boards of the wall—a reminder of Godfrey Cradlebow's youth. But what distinguished this house from all the others, was the profusion of books it contained. There were books on the tables, books under the tables, books piled up in the corner of the room.
Godfrey Cradlebow himself was confined in-doors much of the time with the rheumatism. He made nets for the fishermen. I used to like to watch his fingers moving deftly while he talked.
Things having gone wrong with him, and he having suffered much acute physical pain, besides—(that was evident from the manner in which his stalwart frame had been bent with his disease) he had "taken to drink," not excessively, but he seemed to be, most of the time, in a lightly inebriated condition. He was a strange and fluent talker, often ecstatic.
"It is commonly believed, Miss Hungerford," he said to me, once; "that we start on the summit of life, that we descend into the valley, that the sun is westering; but as for me, I seem to look far below there on the mists and dew of earlier years. I walk among the hills. The horizon widens. The air grows thin. I see the solemn streaks of dawn appearing through the gloom. Ah," he murmured, again; "weak and erring though I undoubtedly am, I have a kinship with the living Christ. Yes, even such kinship as human worthlessness may have with infinite perfection. People will say to you about here, Miss Hungerford; 'Oh, never mind Godfrey Cradlebow. He's always being converted, why, he has been converted twenty times already!' very true, ay, and a hundred times, and I trust I shall taste the sweets of conversion many times more before I die. I do not believe the soul to be a barren tract, so far removed from the ocean of God's love, that it may be washed by the waves only once in a lifetime, and that, in case of some terrible flood. But I rejoice daily in the sweet and natural return of the tide. How the shores wait for it! Strewn with weeds and wreck, scorched by the sun, chilled by the night, how it listens for the sound of its coming! until it rushes in—ah! roar after roar—all-covering, all-hiding, all-embracing!"
Godfrey Cradlebow shook his head rapturously, tears rolled down his cheeks, and all the while he went on rapidly with his netting.
He had the natural tact and grace of a gentleman, and was especially courteous to his wife. This brought down upon him the derision of the Wallencampers, whose conjugal relations were seldom more delicately implied than by a reference—"my woman thar'!" or "my man over thar'!" with an accompanying jerk of the thumb.
Lydia, Godfrey Cradlebow's wife, was tall and slight, with dark hair and eyes—a perfect face, though worn and sad. She invariably wore over her cotton gown, on occasions when she went out, a very fine, very thin old-fashioned mantilla, bordered with a deep black fringe. This pathetic remnant of gentility, borne rudely about by the Wallencamp winds, with Lydia's refined face and melancholy dark eyes, gave her a very interesting and picturesque appearance; though I never thought she wore the mantilla during the winter for effect. She was shy, though exceedingly gentle in her manners. At first, I had thought that she avoided me. But one time, when making the round of my parochial calls, I stopped at the Cradlebows', and Mr. Cradlebow discoursing fluently on the Phenomenon, recommended a severe method of discipline as best adapted to his case, I replied, laughingly, that he had better be cautious about making any suggestions of that sort, for Simeon and I were getting to be great friends; the mother, on whose heart I had had no design, took my hand at the door, when I went away, in a clinging, almost an affectionate way.
"You are good to my boys, teacher," she said; "and I thank you for it. They make you a great deal of trouble."
"Oh, no," I answered lightly, returning with a sense of pleasure the pressure of her hand, and it was not until afterwards, walking slowly down the lane that I sighed gently, thinking of that troublesome boy who had told me he was going to sea.
Removed from the world of newspapers, the ordinary active interest in the affairs of church and state, there was a great deal of the lively gadding about, neighborly dropping in element in Wallencamp. This applied to the men equally as well as to the women. I remember that Abbie Ann once put out her washing, and this fact kept the whole social element of Wallencamp on the qui vive for a number of days.
The caller would appear at the door at anytime during the day with a good-natured matter-of-fact "I was a passin' by, and thought I'd drop in a minit, jest to see how ye was gittin' along."
"Won't you set?" would be the cordial response. "Do set."
"Wall, I don't know how to spend the time anyway," the visitor would reply; "there's so many things a drivin' on me."
But this care-belabored victim of fate usually concluded by sitting quite complacently for any length of time.
When such visitations occurred out of school hours, and I remained up in my room, as I frequently did at first, the droppers in felt very much aggrieved, as though I had wittingly offended the instincts of good society.
Besides all which, seldom an evening passed that the young people did not come to the Ark en masse to sing.
Then Madeline or Rebecca, or (very rarely) I propelled a strain of doubtful melody from Madeline's little melodeon, while the singers—boys and girls together—chimed in, joyfully rendering with a perfect fearlessness of utterance and deep intensity of expression such songs as "Go, bury thy sorrow, the world hath its share," and "Jesus, keep me near the cross," and "Whiter than snow, yes, whiter than snow; now wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."
They knew no other songs. They would sing through a large proportion of the Moody and Sankey Hymnal in a single evening.
At first I listened half amused or thoroughly wearied. But, as the strains grew more familiar and I sang occasionally with the others, I felt each day more tired and more conscious of my own incompetency. And still the Words rang in my ears; "I hear the Saviour say, thy strength indeed is small;" with much about trusting in Him, and his willingness to bear it all. As the wind beat against the Ark on wild nights, so that we could hardly tell which was the wind and which was the roar of the maddened sea, and still those voices chanted hopefully of the "stormless home beyond the river," etc., the words began to strike on something deeper than my physical or intellectual sense, and that not rudely.
I smiled to catch myself humming them over often, and in the school-room, when I felt that my patience was fast oozing, and I experienced a wild desire to loose the reins and let all go, unconsciously I took refuge in repeating those same simple words, going over with them, again and again, beneath my breath, holding on to them as though they possessed some unknown charm to keep me still and strong.
I went to the evening meetings. They were held in the school-house, and were very popular in Wallencamp.
By some provision of the government on behalf of the Indians, a small meeting-house had been built for those in the vicinity of Wallencamp, and they were also provided with a minister for several months during the year. On this account the Indians rather set themselves up above the benighted Wallencampers, whom government had not endowed with the privileges of the sanctuary, while they, in turn, made derisive allusions to the "Nigger-camp" minister, and regarded with contempt its prescribed means of grace.
The Indians enjoyed, for part of the time that I was in Wallencamp, the ministrations of a Baptist clergyman, a truly earnest and intelligent man, gifted with a most forceful manner of utterance, but so lean as to present a phenomenal appearance. This good man feared nothing but that he should fail in some part of the performance of his duty. He believed that it was his duty to come over and preach to the Wallencampers also, in their school-house, and he did so.
I think that the Wallencampers regarded this, on the whole, as a doubtful though entertaining move.
I do not think that they took any particular pains to harass or annoy the Rev. Mr. Rivers. But they certainly did not restrict themselves in that natural freedom which they always enjoyed on the occasions of their spiritual feasts.
They attended, as usual—the old and the young, the good, the bad, the indifferent, with a lively sprinkling of babies.
Though not a cold night, they kept the stove gorged with fuel. It roared furiously. They were restless. They made signs audibly expressive of the fact that the air of the room was insufferably close, and very audibly slammed up the windows. They whispered and giggled; they went out and came in, as they pleased. They drank a great deal of water. I remember particularly, how at the most earnest and affecting part of the Rev. Mr. Rivers' discourse, the immortal Estella, alias the "Modoc," arose in gawky innocence and all good faith from her seat immediately in front of the speaker, and walked to the back part of the room to regale herself with a draught.
The Baptist minister discharged a withering and conscientious reproof at them through his nose.
Now, for, the Wallencampers to be reproved, however scathingly, by some zealous and inspired individual of their own number, was considered, on the whole, as an apt and appropriate thing, but to be reproved by the "Nigger-camp" minister! When, after the meeting he walked with the Keeler family back to the Ark, where he had been hospitably entertained, the Wallencamp boys saw us depart in silent wrath, and I feared that Treachery lay in wait for the Rev. Mr. Rivers.
He sat and talked with us at the Ark for an hour or more, perhaps, before bidding us good-night, and during that time I caught glimpses of faces that appeared at the window, and then vanished again instantly—familiar faces, expressive of much scornful merriment. Now and then I heard a smothered giggle outside, and a scrambling among the bushes. It was a dark night. When the Rev. Mr. Rivers finally rose to depart, and had got as far as the gate, he became helplessly entangled in a perfect network of small ropes. He could neither advance nor recede. In a pitiable and ignominious condition, he called to us for help.
"Those devilish boys!" said Grandpa, with religious fervor of tone, at the same time glancing at me with a delighted twinkle in his eye. "I knew they was up to something. I heered 'em out there;" and he patiently lit his lantern, and went out to cut the minister free; but the Rev. Mr. Rivers did not come to the Wallencamp school-house to preach again.
Among those who looked on with quiet approval at this childish and barbarous performance of the Wallencamp youth, I learned afterwards, were staid Lovell Barlow and little Bachelor Lot.
Left to their own spiritual devices, the Wallencampers carried on their evening meetings after methods formerly approved. They rose and talked—or prayed—or diverted themselves socially—or sang. Everything they were moved to do, they did.
The lame giant, Godfrey Cradlebow, at seasons when the tide came in, would pour forth the utterances of his soul with the most earnest eloquence. At other times, he was morbid and silent, or made skeptical and sneering remarks aside.
Lovell Barlow, though generally regarded as a believer, had never so far overcome his natural modesty and reserve as to address the Wallencamp meeting. But one night, spurred to make the attempt by some of his malicious and fun-loving compatriots, he surprised us all by rising with a violent motion from his seat, and making a sudden plunge forward as though his audience were a cold bath, and he had determined to wade in.
"Boys!" he began, with a most unnatural ferociousness. Then I felt Lovell's eyes fixed on my face. "And girls, too," he added, more gently; "and girls, too, certainly, I think so;" he continued; "I think so." His tone became very feeble. He glanced about with a wild eye for his hat, grasped it, and went out, and I saw him afterwards, through the window, standing like a statue, in the moonlight, with his arms folded, and with a perfectly cold and emotionless cast of countenance.
Among the professors, Godfrey Cradlebow's mother, Aunt Sibylla, with quite as much fire and less delicacy of expression than characterized the speech of the strange lame man, was always ready to warn, threaten, and exhort.
Grandpa Keeler, too, though not subjected to the renovating and rejuvenating processes of the Sabbath, but just touched up a little here and there, enough to give him a slight "odor of sanctity," and a saving sense of personal discomfort, was always led to the meeting, and kept close by Grandma Keeler's side on the most prominent bench.
When there was one of those frightful pauses which sometimes occurred even in the cheerful concourse of the Wallencampers, casting a depressing influence over all hearts, Grandma Keeler by a series of covert pokes and nudges, would signify to Grandpa that now was the appointed moment for him to arise and let his light shine.
And Grandpa Keeler was not a timid man, but since the event of his clarification, he had shown a stronger dislike than ever to being pestered, and was abnormally quick to detect and resist any advances of that kind. So his movements on these occasions were marked by an angry deliberation, though the old sea-captain never failed in the end, to arise and "hand in his testimony."
His remarks were (originally) clear cut and terse.
"There's no need o' my gittin' up. You all know how I stand" (an admonitory nudge from Grandma)—"What's the matter now, ma?" I could hear the old man swear, mentally, but he went on with the amendment—"or try to. I'm afeered that even the best on us, at some time or nuther, have been up to some devil"—(sly, but awfully emphatic nudge from Grandma) "ahem! we're all born under a cuss!" persisted Grandpa, with irate satisfaction. "I've steered through a good many oceans," he continued, more softly, "but thar' ain't none so—misty—as this—a—" (portentous nudge from Grandma,) "as this pesky ocean of Life! We've got to keep a sharp look-out" (another nudge from Grandma), "ahem, steer clear of the rocks," (persistent nudges from Grandma), "ahem! ahem! trust in God Almighty!" admitted Grandpa with telling force, and sat down.
As for Grandma, she was herself always prompt and faithful in the discharge of duty, however trying the circumstances. She was no hypocrite, this dear old soul! She could not have feigned sentiments which she did not feel, yet it was invariably the case that, as she rose in meeting, her usually cheerful face became in the highest degree tearful and lugubrious. The thought of so many precious souls drifting toward destruction filled her tender heart with woe. She besought them in the gentlest and most persuasive terms to "turn to Jesus." She dwelt long upon His love, standing always with hands reverently clasped before her, and eyes downcast with awe.
I used to long to hear her speak. The sound of that low, tender monotone was in itself inexpressibly soothing. But Grandma's tongue had its mild edge, as well.
Once, when she was speaking, a number of the young people—it was a common occurrence—rose to go out.
Grandma went on talking without raising either her voice or her eyes; but when they had reached the door, "What—" said she, in that tone which, though so mild, somehow unaccountably arrested their progress; "what—poor, wanderin' creeturs—if your understandin's should give out!" meaning, what if you should suddenly be deprived of the use of your legs! "Have you never heered," she continued; "the story of Antynias and Sapfiry?"
But she did not recount the tale. If possible, she would rather use words of love than of malediction.
I shall never forget the faithful manner in which she narrated Abraham's intercession with the Lord for Sodom and Gomorrah.
"And Abraham said to the Lord, 'Periodventure there be fifty righteous found,' he said; 'willest thou destroy the city, and them in it? Oh, no! that ain't like the Lord,' he says; 'for to slay the righteous and the wicked together—fur be it.' And the Lord says; 'No. If I find fifty righteous I'll spare all the rest,' he says, 'on account o' them fifty,' he says, and Abraham says, 'O Lord, now I've begun,' he says, 'and you don't seem so very much put out with me as I expected, I've a good mind to keep on askin' ye a little more, jest to see what ye'll say,' he says; 'O Lord, periodventure what if there shouldn't be but forty-five?' he says."
Grandma went through the list of "periodventures," depicting Abraham's growing fear and obsequiousness in the most tragic manner until she got to the hypothetical ten.
"And Abraham said; 'O Lord, I know you won't like it this time, but I've gone so fur now, that I'm going to out with't; and don't—don't git put out, O Lord! and I won't put it one mite lower. Periodventure, O Lord, what if there shouldn't be but ten?' and the Lord said, 'If there wasn't but ten, he wouldn't destroy them wicked cities.' Now," continued Grandma, with tearful impressiveness, "if Abraham had even a ventured to put it down one five more, what more chance do you think there'd be for us here in Wallencamp?"
After the meeting, Captain Sartell and Bachelor Lot held their usual theological levee, outside the school-house.
"Wall, Bachelder," said the captain, who always took the initiative with extreme recklessness; "if it was a goin' to take ten to clear Sodom and Germorrer, how many righteous men do you calkalate it 'ud take ter lift the mortgage off'n this ere peninsheler, eh?"
Bachelor Lot was unusually thoughtful.
"Heh!" said he, in his thin drawl. "The Lord knew he was seafe enough—knew he'd a been seafe enough if he'd a said tew; knew he'd a been seafe enough if he'd a said eone, for there's his own statement to the effect—heh!—that there wasn't a righteous man eanywhere, no, not eone."
"Not much leeway, that's a fact, Bachelder," said Captain Sartell, who had an embarrassed way, particularly when discussing subjects of a religious nature, of twisting his powerful blonde head about, and swallowing very hard. "D——d little leeway, I must confess,—wall—all the same for you and me, Bachelder."
Bachelor Lot smiled a little.
"Heh! What was it about that couple, Almiry (Grandma Keeler) was tellin' about—Antynias and Sapfiry—heh, Captain? What streuck 'em eany way? It wasn't because they went out o' meetin', was it? I think it would be a satisfaction to the company, Captain, if you would relate the circumstance."
The brave and honest captain craned his neck about with several hard gulps.
"Wall, to tell the truth, Bachelder, I ain't quite so well posted with the Old Testament as I be with the New, but," he continued, resolutely, "if it would be any favor to the company—as near as I calkalate, this ere Antynias heered that the Lord was a goin' by, and, as near as I calkalate, he clim' up in a tree to see him pass." The captain writhed fearfully, but did not flinch, "And, as near as I calkalate, he got on to a rotten limb, and it let him down. That is," he remarked, with concluding agony, "as near as I calkalate."
"Heh! yees, much obleeged, I'm sure," said Bachelor Lot. "I, heh! I recall the anecdote now, perfectly, but wheere—wheere was Sapfiry?"
"Wall," the captain gave a gulp that actually brought the tears to his eyes; "as near as I calkalate, Sapfiry was under the limb."
"Certainly," said Bachelor Lot; "certainly! and a veery unfortunate poseetion for Sapfiry it was, too. I weesh you would be so kind as to eenform the company in what part of the Sacred Writ this little anecdote is recorded, Captain, as I for one should very much leike to look it up."
Captain Sartell took a determined step forward. "Look y' here, Bachelder," said he; "I don't want no hard words betwixt you and me, for there never has been. But a man's word is a man's word, and a man's friends had ought to stick by it, and I want you to understand that, on this ere point, I ain't agoin' to have no lookin' up."
"Heh!" Bachelor Lot smiled and nodded his head, cheerfully. "I'd be willing to waeger my life, Captain, that if anybody's made a mistake on this point—heh—it ain't you." And with this amicable conclusion, the two stars withdrew.
George Olver sometimes rose in meeting and made a few remarks indicative of a manly spirit and much sound common sense. He was very fond of Rebecca, that was plain. Her continued indifference to him made him sore at heart, and the people in Wallencamp suggested that on this account he was more serious than he would otherwise have been.
As for Rebecca, they said she had given up "seekin' religion," and had returned to the world. She did not rise for prayers any more, and she did not "lead the singin'" any more. And it was true that she seemed to me to have changed, somehow. I knew that she was as girlishly devoted to me as ever, as thoughtful as ever to please me. One Saturday morning, knowing that I had letters in the West Wallen Post Office, which I was anxious to get before Sunday, she walked the whole distance alone to get them, and sent them up to me by one of the school children, so that I should not know who went after them. She was careful lest I should notice any change in her. But I caught a reckless, mocking gleam in her eyes, at times, that had never shone there when I knew her first. She associated more with the "other girls," now. I heard her talking and laughing with them in as loud and careless a tone as their own. She even whispered and laughed in the evening meetings. And this, after all the earnest, serious discourse I had had with her, the "refining," "elevating" influences I had tried to throw around her, having first taken her so graciously under my wing! She knew what belonged to agreeable manners, and the advantage of paying a graceful obedience to the dictates of one's moral sense! Something must be very innately wrong in Rebecca, I thought, something I Had not hitherto suspected, else why should she fail in any degree under so admirable a method!
"My dear," I said to her: "I am often tempted to do wrong—especially because my life has been hitherto so vain and thoughtless—but, having resolved to struggle with temptation, and to repel my own selfish inclinations, I will not be content until I come off conqueror; I will not fall out or loiter by the way; I have trials and perplexities, but I will not submit to them, nor be driven from my purpose. Now, are you struggling to resist the little temptations that come to you day by day? Are you striving to make the very best of yourself, Becky?"
I knew how easily I could move Rebecca, either to laughter or tears, so I was not surprised to see her lip tremble, and her eyes fill; but I was surprised at the look of intense anguish, almost of horror, that came into her face. I had not supposed that she was capable of such strong emotion, and I marvelled greatly, what could be the cause.
"Oh," she said; "you don't know, teacher, you don't know! It never seemed so bad before I knew you. I was different brought up from you, and I loved you, and when I knew, oh, then I could die, but I couldn't tell you! Oh, you wouldn't kiss me again, ever, if you knew; and I wish you wouldn't, for it hurts, it hurts worse than if you didn't!"
Rebecca had turned very pale, and drew her breath in long gasping sobs.