Seated primly on a chair in Miss Evelina's kitchen, Miss Mehitable gave
a full account of her sentiments toward Doctor Ralph Dexter. She began
with his birth and remarked that he was a puny infant, and, for a time,
it was feared that he was "light headed."
"He got his senses after a while, though," she continued, grudgingly,
"that is, such as they are."
She proceeded through his school-days, repeated unflattering opinions
which his teachers had expressed to her, gave an elaborate description
of the conflict that ensued when she caught him stealing green apples
from her incipient, though highly promising, orchard, alluded darkly to
his tendency to fight with his schoolmates, suggested that certain
thefts of chickens ten years and more ago could, if the truth were
known, safely be attributed to Ralph Dexter, and speculated upon the
trials and tribulations a scapegrace son might cause an upright and
respected father.
All the dead and buried crimes of the small boys of the village were
excavated from the past and charged to Ralph Dexter. Miss Mehitable
brought the record fully up to the time he left Rushton for college,
having been prepared for entrance by his father. Then she began with
Araminta.
First upon the schedule were Miss Mehitable's painful emotions when
Barbara Smith had married Henry Lee. She croaked anew all her
raven-like prophecies of misfortune which had added excitement to the
wedding, and brought forth the birth of Araminta in full proof. Full
details of Barbara's death were given, and the highly magnified events
which had led to her adoption of the child. Condescending for a moment
to speak of the domestic virtues, Miss Mehitable explained, with proper
pride, how she had "brought up" Araminta. The child had been kept
close at the side of her guardian angel, never had been to school, had
been carefully taught at home, had not been allowed to play with other
children; in short, save at extremely rare intervals, Araminta had seen
no one unless in the watchful presence of her counsellor.
"And if you don't think that's work," observed Miss Hitty, piously,
"you just keep tied to one person for almost nineteen years, day and
night, never lettin' 'em out of your sight, and layin' the foundation
of their manners and morals and education, and see how you'll feel when
a blackmailing sprig of a play-doctor threatens to collect a hundred
dollars from you if you dast to nurse your own niece!"
Miss Evelina, silent as always, was moving restlessly about the
kitchen. Unaccustomed since her girlhood to activity of any
description, she found her new tasks hard. Muscles, long unused, ached
miserably from exertion. Yet Araminta had to be taken care of and her
room kept clean.
The daily visits of Doctor Ralph, who was almost painfully neat, had
made Miss Evelina ashamed of her house, though he had not appeared to
notice that anything was wrong. She avoided him when she could, but it
was not always possible, for directions had to be given and reports
made. Miss Evelina never looked at him directly. One look into his
eyes, so like his father's, had made her so faint that she would have
fallen, had not Doctor Ralph steadied her with his strong arm.
To her, he was Anthony Dexter in the days of his youth, though she
continually wondered to find it so. She remembered a story she had
read, a long time ago, of a young woman who lost her husband of a few
weeks in a singularly pathetic manner. In exploring a mountain, he
fell into a crevasse, and his body could not be recovered. Scientists
calculated that, at the rate the glacier was moving, his body might be
expected to appear at the foot of the mountain in about twenty-three
years; so, grimly, the young bride set herself to wait.
At the appointed time, the glacier gave up its dead, in perfect
preservation, owing to the intense cold. But the woman who had waited
for her husband thus was twenty-three years older; she had aged, and he
was still young. In some such way had Anthony Dexter come back to her;
eager, boyish, knowing none of life except its joy, while she, a
quarter of a century older, had borne incredible griefs, been wasted by
long vigils, and now stood, desolate, at the tomb of a love which was
not dead, but continually tore at its winding sheet and prayed for
release.
To Evelina, at times, the past twenty-five years seemed like a long
nightmare. This was Anthony Dexter--this boy with the quick, light
step, the ringing laugh, the broad shoulders and clear, true eyes. No
terror lay between them, all was straight and right; yet the
realisation still enshrouded her like a black cloud.
"And," said Miss Hitty, mournfully, "after ail my patience and hard
work in bringing up Araminta as a lady should be brought up, and having
taught her to beware of men and even of boys, she's took away from me
when she's sick, and nobody allowed to see her except a blackmailing
play-doctor, who is putting Heaven knows what devilment into her head.
I suppose there's nothing to prevent me from finishing the
housecleaning, if I don't speak to my own niece as I pass her door?"
She spoke inquiringly, but Miss Evelina did not reply.
"Most folks," continued Miss Hitty, with asperity, "is pleased enough
to have their houses cleaned for 'em to say 'thank you,' but I'm some
accustomed to ingratitude. What I do now in the way of cleanin' will
be payin' for the nursin' of Araminta."
Still Miss Evelina did not answer, her thoughts being far away.
"Maybe I did speak cross to Minty," admitted Miss Hitty, grudgingly,
"at a time when I had no business to. If I did, I'm willin' to tell
her so, but not that blackmailing play-doctor with a hundred-dollar
bill for a club. I was clean out of patience with Minty for falling
off the ladder, but I guess, as he says, she didn't go for to do it.
'T ain't in reason for folks to step off ladders or out of windows
unless they're walkin' in their sleep, and I've never let Minty sleep
in the daytime."
Unceasingly, Miss Mehitable prattled on. Reminiscence, anecdote, and
philosophical observations succeeded one another with startling
rapidity, ending always in vituperation and epithet directed toward
Araminta's physician. Dark allusions to the base ingratitude of
everybody with whom Miss Hitty had ever been concerned alternately
cumbered her speech. At length the persistent sound wore upon Miss
Evelina, much as the vibration of sound may distress one totally deaf.
The kitchen door was open and Miss Evelina went outdoors. Miss
Mehitable continued to converse, then shortly perceived that she was
alone. "Well, I never!" she gasped. "Guess I'll go home!"
Her back was very stiff and straight when she marched downhill, firmly
determined to abandon Evelina, scorn Doctor Ralph Dexter, and leave
Araminta to her well-deserved fate. One thought and one only
illuminated her gloom. "He ain't got his four dollars and a half,
yet," she chuckled, craftily. "Mebbe he'll get it and mebbe he won't.
We'll see."
While straying about the garden. Miss Evelina saw her unwelcome guest
take her militant departure, and reproached herself for her lack of
hospitality. Miss Mehitable had been very kind to her and deserved
only kindness in return. She had acted upon impulse and was ashamed.
Miss Evelina meditated calling her back, but the long years of
self-effacement and inactivity had left her inert, with capacity only
for suffering. That very suffering to which she had become accustomed
had of late assumed fresh phases. She was hurt continually in new
ways, yet, after the first shock of returning to her old home, not so
much as she had expected. It is a way of life, and one of its inmost
compensations--this finding of a reality so much easier than our fears.
April had come over the hills, singing, with a tinkle of rain and a
rush of warm winds, and yet the Piper had not returned. His tools were
in the shed, and the mountain of rubbish was still in the road in front
of the house. Half of the garden had not been touched. On one side of
the house was the bare brown earth, with tiny green shoots springing up
through it, and on the other was a twenty-five years' growth of weeds.
Miss Evelina reflected that the place was not unlike her own life; half
of it full of promise, a forbidding wreck in the midst of it, and,
beyond it, desolation, ended only by a stone wall.
"Did you think," asked a cheerful voice at her elbow, "that I was never
coming back to finish my job?"
Miss Evelina started, and gazed into the round, smiling face of Piper
Tom, who was accompanied, as always, by his faithful dog.
"'T is not our way," he went on, including the yellow mongrel in the
pronoun, "to leave undone what we've set our hands and paws to do, eh,
Laddie?"
He waited a moment, but Miss Evelina did not speak.
"I got some seeds for my garden," he continued, taking bulging parcels
from the pockets of his short, shaggy coat. "The year's sorrow is at
an end."
"Sorrow never comes to an end," she cried, bitterly.
"Doesn't it," he asked. "How old is yours?"
"Twenty-five years," she answered, choking. The horror of it was
pressing heavily upon her.
"Then," said the Piper, very gently, "I'm thinking there is something
wrong. No sorrow should last more than a year--'t is written all
around us so."
"Written? I have never seen it written."
"No," returned the Piper, kindly, "but 't is because you have not
looked to see. Have you ever known a tree that failed to put out its
green leaves in the Spring, unless it had died from lightning or old
age? When a rose blossoms, then goes to sleep, does it wait for more
than a year before it blooms again? Is it more than a year from bud to
bud, from flower to flower, from fruit to fruit? 'T is God's way of
showing that a year of darkness is enough,--at a time."
The Piper's voice was very tender; the little dog lay still at his
feet. She leaned against the crumbling wall, and turned her veiled
face away.
"'T is not for us to be happy without trying," continued the Piper,
"any more than it is for a tree to bear fruit without effort. All the
beauty and joy in the world are the result of work--work for each other
and in ourselves. When you see a butterfly over a field of clover, 't
is because he has worked to get out of his chrysalis. He was not
content to abide within his veil."
"Suppose," said Miss Evelina, in a voice that was scarcely audible,
"that he couldn't get out?"
"Ah, but he could," answered the Piper. "We can get out of anything,
if we try. I'm not meaning by escape, but by growth. You put an acorn
into a crevice in a rock. It has no wings, it cannot fly out, nobody
will lift it out. But it grows, and the oak splits the rock; even
takes from the rock nourishment for its root."
"People are not like acorns and butterflies," she stammered. "We are
not subject to the same laws."
"Why not?" asked the Piper. "God made us all, and I'm thinking we're
all brothers, having, in a way, the same Father. 'T is not for me to
hold myself above Laddie here, though he's a dog and I'm a man. 'T is
not for me to say that men are better than dogs; that they're more
honest, more true, more kind. The seed that I have in my hand, here,
I'm thinking 't is my brother, too. If I plant it, water it, and keep
the weeds away from it, 't will give me back a blossom. 'T is service
binds us all into the brotherhood."
"Did you never," asked Evelina, thickly, "hear of chains?"
"Aye," said the Piper, "chains of our own making. 'T is like the
ancient people in one of my ragged books. When one man killed another,
they chained the dead man to the living one, so that he was forever
dragging his own sin. When he struck the blow, he made his own chain."
"I am chained," cried Evelina, piteously, "but not to my own sin."
"'T is wrong," said the Piper; "I'm thinking there's a loose link
somewhere that can be slipped off."
"I cannot find it," she sobbed; "I've hunted for it in the dark for
twenty-five years."
"Poor soul," said the Piper, softly. "'T is because of the darkness,
I'm thinking. From the distaff of Eternity, you take the thread of
your life, but you're sitting in the night, and God meant you to be a
spinner in the sun. When the day breaks for you, you'll be finding the
loose link to set yourself free."
"When the day breaks," repeated Evelina, in a whisper. "There is no
day."
"There is day. I've come to lead you to it. We'll find the light
together and set the thread to going right again."
"Who are you?" cried Evelina, suddenly terror stricken.
The Piper laughed, a low, deep friendly laugh. Then he doffed his grey
hat and bowed, sweeping the earth with the red feather, in cavalier
fashion. "Tom Barnaby, at your service, but most folks call me Piper
Tom. 'T is the flute, you know," he continued in explanation, "that
I'm forever playing on in the woods, having no knowledge of the
instrument, but sort of liking the sound."
Miss Evelina turned and went into the house, shaken to her inmost soul.
More than ever, she felt the chains that bound her. Straining against
her bonds, she felt them cutting deep into her flesh. Anthony Dexter
had bound her; he alone could set her free. From this there seemed no
possible appeal.
Meanwhile the Piper mowed down the weeds in the garden, whistling
cheerily. He burned the rubbish in the road, and the smoke made a blue
haze on the hill. He spaded and raked and found new stones for the
broken wall, and kept up a constant conversation with the dog.
It was twilight long before he got ready to make the flower beds, so he
carried the tools back into the shed and safely stored away the seeds.
Miss Evelina watched him from the grimy front window as he started
downhill, but he did not once look back.
There was something jaunty in the Piper's manner, aside from the
drooping red feather which bobbed rakishly as he went home, whistling.
When he was no longer to be seen, Miss Evelina sighed. Something
seemed to have gone out of her life, like a sunbeam which has suddenly
faded. In a safe shadow of the house, she raised her veil, and wiped
away a tear.
When out of sight and hearing, the Piper stopped his whistling. "'T is
no need to be cheerful, Laddie," he explained to the dog, "when there's
none to be saddened if you're not. We don't know about the loose link,
and perhaps we can never find it, but we're going to try. We'll take
off the chain and put the poor soul in the sun again before we go away,
if we can learn how to do it, but I'm thinking 't is a heavy chain and
the sun has long since ceased to shine."
After supper, he lighted a candle and absorbed himself in going over
his stock. He had made a few purchases in the city and it took some
time to arrange them properly.
Last of all, he took out a box and opened it. He held up to the
flickering light length after length of misty white chiffon--a fabric
which the Piper had never bought before.
"'T is expensive, Laddie," he said; "so expensive that neither of us
will taste meat again for more than a week, though we walked both ways,
but I'm thinking she'll need more sometime and there was none to be had
here. We'll not be in the way of charging for it since her gown is
shabby and her shoes are worn."
Twilight deepened into night and still the Piper sat there, handling
the chiffon curiously and yet with reverence. It was silky to his
touch, filmy, cloud-like. He folded it into small compass, and crushed
it in his hands, much surprised to find that it did not crumple. All
the meaning of chiffon communicated itself to him--the lightness and
the laughter, the beauty and the love. Roses and moonlight seemed to
belong with it, youth and a singing heart.
"'T is a rare stuff, I'm thinking, Laddie," he said, at length, not
noting that the dog was asleep. "'T is a rare, fine stuff, and well
suited to her wearing, because she is so beautiful that she hides her
face."