THE OLD AND THE NEW
When she reached home she found Beverly, seated before a light blaze in
the dining-room, plunged in the condition of pious indolence which
constituted his single observance of the Sabbath. To do nothing had
always seemed to him in its way as religious as to attend church, and so
he sat now perfectly motionless, with the box of dominoes reposing
beside his tobacco pouch on the mantel above his head. The room was in
great confusion, and the threadbare carpet, ripped up in places, was
littered with the broken bindings of old books and children's toys made
of birchwood or corncob, upon which Beverly delighted to work during the
six secular days of the week. At his left hand the table was already
laid for supper, which consisted of a dish of batter-bread, a half bared
ham bone and a pot of coffee, from which floated a thin and cheap aroma.
A wire shovel for popping corn stood at one side of the big brick
fireplace, and on the hearth there was a small pile of half shelled red
and yellow ears. Between the two long windows a tall mahogany clock, one
of the few pieces left by the collector of old furniture, ticked with a
loud, monotonous sound, which seemed to increase in volume with each
passage of the hands.
"Did you hear any news, my dear?" inquired Beverly, as Emily entered,
for in spite of the fact that he rarely left his fireside, he was an
insatiable consumer of small bits of gossip.
"I didn't see anybody," answered Emily in her cheerful voice. "Shall I
pour the coffee?"
She went to the head of the table, while her brother, after shelling an
ear of corn into the wire shovel, began shaking it slowly over the
hickory log.
"I thought you might have heard if Milly Trend had really made up her
mind to marry that young tobacco merchant," he observed.
Before Emily could reply the door opened and the three children rushed
in, pursued by Aunt Mehitable, who announced that "Miss Meely" had gone
to bed with one of her sick headaches and would not come down to supper.
The information afforded Beverly some concern, and he rose to leave the
room with the intention of going upstairs to his wife's chamber; but
observing, as he did so, that the corn was popping finely, he sat down
again and devoted his attention to the shovel, which he began to shake
more rapidly.
"The terrapin's sick, papa," piped one of the children, a little girl
called Lila, as she pulled back her chair with a grating noise and
slipped into her seat. "Do you s'pose it would like a little molasses
for its supper?"
"Terrapins don't eat molasses," said the boy, whose name was Blair.
"They eat flies--I've seen 'em."
"My terrapin shan't eat flies," protested Bella, the second little girl.
"It ain't your terrapin!"
"It is."
"It ain't her terrapin, is it, papa?"
Beverly, having finished his task, unfastened the lid of the shovel with
the poker, and suggested that the terrapin might try a little popcorn
for a change. As he stood there with his white hair and his flushed face
in the red firelight, he made a picture of beautiful and serene
domesticity.
"I shouldn't wonder if he'd get quite a taste for popcorn if you could
once persuade him to try it," he remarked, his mind having wandered
whimsically from his wife to the terrapin.
Emily had given the children batter-bread and buttermilk, and she sat
now regarding her brother's profile as it was limned boldly in shadow
against the quivering flames. It was impossible; she discovered, to
survey Beverly's character with softness or his profile with severity.
"Don't you think," she ventured presently, after a wholesome effort to
achieve diplomacy, "that you might try to-morrow to spade the seed rows
in the garden. Adam can't find anybody, and if the corn isn't dropped
this week we'll probably get none until late in the summer."
"'I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed,'" quoted Beverly, as he drank his
coffee. "It would lay me up for a week, Emily, I am surprised that you
ask it."
She was surprised herself, the moment after she had put the question,
so hopeless appeared any attempt to bend Beverly to utilitarian
purposes.
"Well, the tomatoes which I had counted on for the market will come too
late," she said with a barely suppressed impatience in her voice.
"I shouldn't worry about it if I were you," returned Beverly, "there's
nothing that puts wrinkles in a pretty face so soon as little worries. I
remember Uncle Bolingbroke (he used to be my ideal as a little boy) told
me once that he had lived to be upward of ninety on the worries from
which he had been saved. As a small child I was taken to see him once
when he had just come to absolute ruin and had been obliged to sell his
horses and his house and even his wife's jewellery for debt. A red flag
was flying at the gate, but inside sat Uncle Bolingbroke, drinking port
wine and cracking nuts with two of his old cronies. 'Yes, I've lost
everything, my boy,' he cried, 'but it doesn't worry me a bit!' At that
instant I remember noticing that his forehead was the smoothest I had
ever seen."
"But his wife had to take in dressmaking," commented Emily, "and his
children grew up without a particle of education."
"Ah, so they did," admitted Beverly, with sadness, "the details had
escaped me."
As they had escaped him with equal success all his life, the fact seemed
to Emily hardly deserving of comment, and leaving him to his supper, she
went upstairs to find Mrs. Brooke prostrate, in a cold room, with her
head swathed in camphor bandages. In answer to Emily's inquiries, she
moaned plaintively that the pantry shelves needed scouring and that she
must get up at daybreak and begin the work. "I've just remembered lying
here that I planned to clean them last week," she said excitedly, "and
will you remind me, Emily, as soon as I get up that Beverly's old brown
velveteen coat needs a patch at the elbow?"
"Don't think of such things now, Amelia, there's plenty of time. You are
shivering all over--I'll start the fire in a moment. It has turned quite
cool again."
"But I wanted to save the pine knots until Beverly came up," sighed Mrs.
Brooke, "he is so fond of them."
Without replying to her nervous protest, Emily knelt on the hearth and
kindled a blaze which leaped rosily over the knots of resinous pine. Of
the two family failings with which she was obliged to contend, she had
long ago decided that Beverly's selfishness was less harmful in its
results than Amelia's self-sacrifice. Inordinate at all times, it waxed
positively violent during her severe attacks of headache, and between
two spasms of pain her feverish imagination conjured up dozens of small
self-denials which served to increase her discomfort while they
conferred no possible benefit upon either her husband or her children.
Her temperament had fitted her for immolation; but the character of the
age in which she lived had compelled her to embrace a domestic rather
than a religious martyrdom. The rack would have been to her morally a
bed of roses, and some exalted grace belonging to the high destiny that
she had missed was visible at times in her faded gray eyes and impassive
features.
"Mehitable brought me an egg," she groaned presently, growing more
comfortable in spite of her resolve, as the rosy fire-light penetrated
into the chill gloom where she lay, "but I sent it down to Blair--I
heard him coughing."
"He didn't want it. There was plenty of batter-bread."
"Yes, but the poor boy is fond of eggs and he so seldom has one. It is
very sad. Emily, have you noticed how inert and lifeless Mr. Brooke has
grown?"
"It's nothing new, Amelia, he has always been that way. Can't you sleep
now?"
"Oh, but if you could have seen him when we became engaged, Emily--such
life! such spirits! I remember the first time I dined at your
father's--that was before Beverly's mother died, so, of course, your
mother wasn't even thought of in the family. I suppose second marriages
are quite proper, since the Lord permits them, but they always seem to
me like trying to sing the same hymn over again with equal fervour.
Well, I was going to say that when your father asked me what part of the
fowl I preferred and I answered 'dark meat, sir,' he fairly rapped the
table in his delight: 'Oh, Amelia, what a capital wife you'll make for
Beverly,' he cried, 'if you will only continue to prefer dark meat!'"
She stopped breathlessly, lay silent for a moment, and then began to
moan softly with pain. Emily swept the hearth, and after putting on a
fresh log, went out, closing the door after her. There was no light in
her room, but she reflected with a kind of desperation that there was no
Beverly and no Amelia. The weight of the family had left her bruised and
helpless, yet she knew that she must go downstairs again, remove the
supper things, and send the three resisting children off to bed. She was
quite equal to the task she had undertaken, yet there were moments when,
because of her youth and her vitality, she found it harder to control
her temper than to accomplish her work.
At ten o'clock, when she had coaxed the children to sleep, and persuaded
Amelia to drink a cup of gruel, she came to her room again and began to
undress slowly by the full moonlight which streamed through the window.
Outside, beyond the lilac bushes, she could see the tangled garden, with
the dried stubble of last year's corn protruding from the unspaded rows.
This was the last sight upon which her eyes turned before she climbed
into the high tester bed and fell into the prompt and untroubled sleep
of youth.
Awaking at six o'clock she went again to the window, and at the first
glance it seemed to her that she must have slipped back into some
orderly and quiet dream--for the corn rows which had presented a
blighted aspect under the moonlight were now spaded and harrowed into
furrows ready for planting. The suggestion that Beverly had prepared a
surprise for her occurred first to her mind, but she dismissed this the
next instant and thought of Adam, Micah, even of the demented Aunt
Mehitable. The memory of the fairy godmother in the story book brought a
laugh to her lips, and as she dressed herself and ran downstairs to the
garden gate, she half expected to see the pumpkin chariot disappearing
down the weed-grown path and over the fallen fence. The lilac blossoms
shed a delicious perfume into her face, and leaning against the rotting
posts of the gate, she looked with mingled delight and wonder upon the
freshly turned earth, which flushed faintly pink in the sunshine. A
heavy dew lay over the landscape and as the sun rose slowly higher the
mist was drawn back from the green fields like a sheet of gauze that is
gathered up.
"Beverly? Micah? Mehitable?" each name was a question she put to
herself, and after each she answered decisively, "No, it is impossible."
Micah, who appeared at the moment, doting, half blind and wholly
rheumatic, shook his aged head helplessly in response to her eager
inquiries. There was clearly no help to be had from him except the
bewildered assistance he rendered in the afternoon by following on her
footsteps with a split basket while she dropped the grains of corn into
the opened furrows. His help in this case even was hardly more than a
hindrance, for twice in his slow progress he stumbled and fell over a
trailing brier in the path, and Emily was obliged to stop her work and
gather up the grain which he had scattered.
"Dese yer ole briers is des a-layin' out fur you," he muttered as he sat
on the ground rubbing the variegated patch on his rheumatic knee. When
the planting was over he went grumbling back to his cabin, while Emily
walked slowly up and down the garden path and dreamed of the vegetables
which would ripen for the market. In the midst of her business
calculations she remembered the little congregation in the green field
on Sunday afternoon and the look of generous enthusiasm in the face of
the man who passed her in the road. Why had she thought of him? she
wondered idly, and why should that group of listeners gathered out of
doors in the faint sunshine awake in her a sentiment which was
associated with some religious emotion of which she had been half
unconscious?
The next night she awoke from a profound sleep with the same memory in
her mind, and turning on her pillow, lay wide awake in the moonlight,
which brought with it a faint spring chill from the dew outside. On the
ivy the light shone almost like dawn, and as she could not fall asleep
again, she rose presently, and slipping into her flannel dressing-gown,
crossed to the window and looked out upon the shining fields, the garden
and the blossoming lilacs at the gate. The shadow of the lilacs lay
thick and black along the garden walk, and her eyes were resting upon
them, when it seemed to her that a portion of the darkness detached
itself and melted out into the moonlight. At first she perceived only
the moving shadow; then gradually a figure was outlined on the bare rows
of the garden, and as her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she saw
that the figure had assumed a human shape, though it was still followed
so closely by its semblance upon the ground that it was impossible at a
distance to distinguish the living worker from his airy double. Yet she
realised instantly that her mysterious gardener was at work before her
eyes, and hastening into her clothes, she caught up her cape from a
chair, and started toward the door with an impulsive determination to
discover his identity. With her hand on the knob, she hesitated and
stopped, full of perplexity, upon the threshold. Since he had wished to
remain undiscovered was it fair, she questioned, to thrust recognition
upon his kindness? On the other hand was it not more than unfair--was it
not positively ungrateful--to allow his work to pass without any sign of
acceptance or appreciation? In the chill white moonlight outside she
could see the pointed tops of the cedars rising like silver spires. As
the boughs moved the wind entered, bringing mingled odours of cedar
berries, lilacs and freshly turned soil. For an instant longer her
hesitation lasted; then throwing aside her cape, she undressed quickly,
without glancing again down into the garden. When she fell asleep now it
was to dream of the shadowy gardener spading in the moonlight among the
lilacs.