Euphemia could hardly have said what it was that had brought her
home,--some vague yet potent impulse, some occult, unimagined power
of divination, some subjection to her mother’s will constraining her,
or simply the intuition that there was some opportunity for mischief
unimproved. Tubal Cain Sims shook his head dubiously as he canvassed
each theory. He ventured to ask the views of Mrs. Sims, after he had
partaken of the supper set aside for him--for the meal was concluded
before his return--and had lighted his pipe.
“What brung her home? Them stout leetle brogans,--that’s what,” said
Mrs. Sims, chuckling between the whiffs of her own pipe.
“Course I know the chile walked. I reckon she’ll hev stone-bruises a
plenty arter this,--full twelve mile. But what put it inter her head
ter kem? She ’lowed ter me she ain’t dreamed o’ nuthin’, ’ceptin’
Spot hed a new calf, which she ain’t got. Reckon ’twar a leadin’ or a
warnin’ or”--
“I reckon ’twar homesickness. Young gals always pine fur home, special
ef thar ain’t nuthin’ spry goin’ on in a new place.” And once more
Jane Ann Sims, in the plenitude of her triumph, chuckled.
It chanced, that afternoon, that when the red sunset was aflare over
the bronze-green slopes that encircled the Cove, and the great pine
near at hand began to sway and to sing and to cast forth the rich
benison of its aroma to the fresh rain-swept air, the juggler roused
himself, pushed back his hat from his eyes, and gazed with listless
melancholy about him. Somehow the sweet peace of the secluded place
appealed to his world-weary senses. The sounds,--the distant, mellow
lowing of the kine, homeward wending; the tinkle of a sheep-bell; the
rhythmic dash of the river; the ecstatic cadenzas of a mocking-bird,
so intricate, delivered with such dashing _élan_, so marvelously
clear and sweet and high as to give an effect as of glitter,--all
were so harmoniously bucolic. He was soothed in a measure, or dulled,
as he drew a long sigh of relief and surcease of pain, and began to
experience that facile renewal of interest common to youth with all
its recuperative faculties. It fights a valiant fight with sorrow or
trouble, and only the years conquer it at last. For the first time he
noted among the budding willows far down the stream a roof all aslant,
which he divined at once was the mill. He rose to his feet with a
quickening curiosity. As he released the futile fishing-rod and wound
up the line he remarked the unbaited hook. His face changed abruptly
with the thought of his absorption and trouble. He pitied himself.
The road down which he took his way described many a curve seeking to
obviate the precipitousness of the descent. The rocks rose high on
either side for a time, and when the scene beyond broke upon him in
its entirety it was as if a curtain were suddenly lifted. How shadowy,
how fragrant the budding woods above the calm and lustrous water! The
mill, its walls canted askew, dark and soaked with the rain, and its
mossy roof awry, was sombre and silent. Over the dam the water fell
in an unbroken crystal sheet so smooth and languorous that it seemed
motionless, as if under a spell. Ferns were thick on a marshy slope
opposite, where scattered boulders lay, and one quivering blossomy
bough of a dogwood-tree leaned over its white reflection in the water,
fairer than itself, like some fond memory embellishing the thing it
images.
With that sudden sense of companionship in loneliness by which a
presence is felt before it is perceived, he turned sharply back as he
was about to move away, and glanced again toward the mill. A young girl
was standing in the doorway in an attitude of arrested poise, as if in
surprise.
Timidity was not the juggler’s besetting sin. He lifted his hat with a
courteous bow, the like of which had never been seen in Etowah Cove,
and thus commending himself to her attention, he took his way toward
her along the slant of the corduroy road; for this fleeting glimpse
afforded to him a more vivid suggestion of interest than the Cove had
as yet been able to present. For the first time since reaching its
confines it occurred to him that it might be possible to live along
awhile yet. Nevertheless, he contrived to keep his eyes decorously
void of expression, and occupied them for the most part in aiding his
feet to find their way among the crevices and obstacles with which the
road abounded. When he paused, he asked, suffering his eyes to rest
inquiringly on the girl, “Beg pardon, but will you kindly inform me
where is the miller?”
The glimpse that had so attracted him was, he felt, all inadequate,
as he stood and gazed, privileged by virtue of his simulated interest
in the absent miller. He could not have seen from the distance how
fair, how dainty, was her complexion, nor the crinkles and sparkles
of gold in her fine brown hair. It waved upward from her low brow
in a heavy undulation which he would have discriminated as “à la
Pompadour,” but its contour was compassed by wearing far backward a
round comb, the chief treasure of her possessions, the heavy masses
of hair rising smoothly toward the front, and falling behind in long,
loose ringlets about her shoulders. She had a delicate chin with a
deep dimple,--which last reminded him unpleasantly of Mrs. Sims, for
dimples were henceforth at a discount; a fine, thin, straight nose;
two dark silken eyebrows, each describing a perfect arc; and surely
there were never created for the beguilement of man two such large,
lustrous gray-blue eyes, long-lashed, deep-set, as those which served
Euphemia Sims for the comparatively unimportant function of vision. He
had hardly been certain whether her attire was more or less grotesque
than the costume of the other mountain women until she lifted these
eyes and completed the charm of the unique apparition. She wore a
calico bought by the yard at the store, and accounted but a flimsy
fabric by the homespun-weaving mountain women. It was of a pale green
tint, and had once been sprinkled over with large dark green leaves.
Lye soap and water had done their merciful work. The strong crude
color of the leaves had been subdued to a tint but little deeper than
the ground of the material, and while the contour of the foliage was
retained, it was mottled into a semblance of light and shade here and
there where the dye strove to hold fast. The figure which it draped
was pliant and slender; the feet which the full skirt permitted to be
half visible were small, and arrayed in brown hose and the stout little
brogans which had brought her so nimbly from Piomingo Cove. Partly
amused, partly contemptuous, partly admiring, the juggler remarked her
hesitation and embarrassment, and relished it as of his own inspiring.
“Waal,” she drawled at last, “I don’t rightly know.” She gazed at him
doubtfully. “Air ye wantin’ ter see him special?”
He had a momentary terror lest she should ask him for his grist and
unmask his subterfuge. He sought refuge in candor. “Well, I was
admiring the mill. This is a pretty spot, and I wished to ask the
miller’s name.”
There was a flash of laughter in her eyes, although her lips were
grave. “His name be Tubal Sims; an’ ef he don’t prop up his old mill
somehows, it’ll careen down on him some day.” She added, with asperity,
“I dunno what ye be admirin’ it fur, ’thout it air ter view what a
s’prisin’ pitch laziness kin kem ter.”
“That’s what I admire. I’m a proficient, a professor of the science of
laziness.”
She lifted her long black lashes only a little as she gazed at him
with half-lowered lids. “Ye won’t find no pu_pils_ in that science
hyar about. The Cove’s done graduated.” She smiled slightly, as if
to herself. The imagery of her response, drawn from her slender
experience at the schoolhouse, pleased her for the moment, but she had
no disposition toward further conversational triumphs. There ensued
a short silence, and then she looked at him in obvious surprise that
he did not take himself off. It would seem that he had got what he
had come for,--the miller’s name and the opportunity to admire the
mill. He experienced in his turn a momentary embarrassment. He was so
conscious of the superiority of his social status, knowledge of the
world, and general attainments that her apparent lack of comprehension
of his condescension in lingering to admire also the miller’s daughter
was subversive in some sort of his wonted aplomb. It rallied promptly,
however, and he went on with a certain half-veiled mocking courtesy,
of which the satire of the sentiment was only vaguely felt through the
impervious words.
“I presume you are the miller’s daughter?”
She looked at him in silent acquiescence.
“Then I am happy to make an acquaintance which kind fortune has been
holding in store for me, for my stay in the Cove is at the miller’s
hospitable home.” He concluded with a smiling flourish. But her
bewitching eyes gazed seriously at him.
“What be yer name?” she demanded succinctly.
“Leonard,--John Leonard,--very much at your service,” he replied, with
an air half banter, half propitiation.
“Ye be the juggler that mam’s been talkin’ ’bout,” she said as if to
herself, completing his identification. “I drawed the idee from what
mam said ez ye war a old pusson--at least cornsider’ble on in years.”
“And so I am!” he cried, with a sudden change of tone. “If life is
measured by what we feel and what we suffer, I am old,”--he paused with
a sense of self-betrayal,--“some four or five hundred at least,” he
added, relapsing into his wonted light tone.
She shook her head sagely. “’Pears like ter me ez it mought be medjured
by the sense folks gather ez they go. I hev knowed some mighty young
fools at sixty.”
The color showed in his face; her unconscious intimation of his youth
according to this method of estimate touched his vanity, even evoked a
slight resentment.
“You are an ancient dame, on that theory! I bow to your wisdom,
madam,--quite the soberest party I have seen since I entered the
paradisaical seclusion of Etowah Cove.”
She appreciated the belligerent note in his voice, although she
scarcely apprehended the _casus belli_. There was, however, a
responsive flash in her eye, which showed she was game in any quarrel.
No tender solicitude animated her lest unintentionally she had wounded
the feelings of this pilgrim and stranger. He had taken the liberty to
be offended when no offense was intended, and perhaps with the laudable
desire to give him, as it were, something to cry for, she struck back
as best she might.
“Not so sober ez some o’ them folks ye gin yer show afore, over yander
at the Notch. I hearn they war fit ter weep an’ pray arterward. Mam
’lowed ye made ’em sober fur sure.”
He was genuinely nettled at this thrust. His feats of jugglery had
resulted so contrary to his expectations, had roused so serious a
danger, that he did not even in his own thoughts willingly revert to
them. He turned away on one heel of the pointed russet shoes that had
impressed the denizens of Etowah Cove hardly less unpleasantly than a
cloven hoof, and looked casually down the long darkly lustrous vista
of the river; for the mill so projected over the water that the point
of view was as if it were anchored in midstream. The green boughs
leaned far over the smooth shadowy current; here and there, where a
half-submerged rock lifted its jagged summit above the surface, the
water foamed preternaturally white in the sylvan glooms. He had a
cursory impression of many features calculated to give pleasure to the
eye, were his mind at ease to enjoy such trifles, and his sense alert
to mark them: the moss on the logs, and the lichen; the tangle of the
trumpet-vines, all the budding tendrils blowing with the breeze, that
clambered over the rickety structure, and hung down from the apex of
the high roof, and swayed above the portal; even the swift motion of a
black snake swimming sinuously in the clear water, and visible through
the braiding of the currents as through corrugated glass.
“No,” he said, his teeth set together, his eyes still far down the
stream, “I did my little best, but my entertainment was not a success;
and if that fact makes you merry, I wish you joy of your mirth.”
His eyes returned to her expectantly; he was not altogether unused to
sounding the cultivated feminine heart, trained to sensibility and
susceptible to many a specious sophistry. Naught he had found more
efficacious than an appeal for sympathy to those who have sympathy
in bulk and on call. The attribution, also, of a motive trenching on
cruelty, and unauthorized by fact, was usually wont to occasion a
flutter of protest and contrition.
Euphemia Sims met his gaze in calm silence. She had intended no mirth
at his expense, and if he were minded to evolve it gratuitously he
was welcome to his illusion. Aught that she had said had been to
return or parry a blow. She spoke advisedly. There was no feigning of
gentleness in her, no faltering nor turning back. She stood stanchly
ready to abide by her words. She had known no assumption of that pretty
superficial feminine _tendresse_, so graceful a garb of identity, and
she could not conceive of him as an object of pity because her sarcasm
had cut deeper than his own. He had an impression that he had indeed
reached primitive conditions. The encounter with an absolute candor
shocked his mental prepossessions as a sudden dash of cold water might
startle the nerves.
He was all at once very tired of the mill, extremely tired of his
companion. The very weight of the fishing-rod and its unbaited hook
was a burden. He was making haste to take himself off--he hardly
knew where--from one weariness of spirit to another. Despite the
lesson he had had, that he would receive of her exactly the measure
of consideration that he meted out, he could not refrain from a
half-mocking intimation as he said, “And do you propose to take up
your abode down here, that you linger so long in this watery place,--a
nymph, a naiad, or a grace?” He glanced slightingly down the dusky
bosky vista.
She was not even discomfited by his manner. “I kem down hyar,” she
remarked, the interest of her errand paramount for the moment, “I kem
down ter the mill ter see ef I couldn’t find some seconds. They make a
sort o’ change arter eatin’ white flour awhile.”
He was not culinary in his tastes, and he had no idea what “seconds”
might be, unless indeed he encountered them in their transmogrified
estate as rolls on the table.
“And having found them, may I crave the pleasure of escorting you up
the hill to the paternal domicile? I observe the shadows are growing
very long.”
“You-uns may kerry the bag,” she replied, with composure, “an’ I’ll
kerry the fishin’-pole.”
Thus it was he unexpectedly found himself plodding along the romantic
road he had so lately traversed, with a bag of “seconds” on his
shoulder,--“a veritable beast of burden,” he said sarcastically to
himself,--while Euphemia Sims’s light, airy figure loitered along the
perfumed ways in advance of him, her cloudy curls waving slightly with
the motion and the breeze; the fishing-rod was over her shoulder, and
on the end of it where the unbaited hook was wound with the line her
green sunbonnet was perched, flouncing like some great struggling thing
that the angler had caught.
It did not occur to him, so impressed was he with the grotesque office
to which he had descended and the absurd result of the interview, that
her errand to the mill must have anticipated some burlier strength
than her own to carry the “seconds” home, until as they turned an
abrupt curve where the high rocks rose on either side they met a man
with an axe in his hand walking rapidly toward them. He paused abruptly
at the sight of them, and the juggler laughed aloud in scornful
derision of his burden.
Then recognizing Ormsby he cried out cheerily, “Hello, friend, whither
bound?” So acute had his sensibilities become that he had a sense of
recoil from the surly mutinous stare with which his friendly young
acquaintance of the previous evening received his greeting. Ormsby
mumbled something about a fish-trap and passed on swiftly toward the
river. Swift as he was it was obviously impossible that he could even
have gained the margin and returned without a pause when he passed
again, walking with a long rapid stride, swinging his axe doggedly, his
hat pulled down over his brow, his eyes downcast, and with not even a
flimsy affectation of an exchange of civilities.
“Now, the powers forbid,” thought the juggler, “that I shall run into
any such hornet’s nest as interfering with this Corydon and Phyllis.
Surely sufficient vials of wrath have been poured out on my head
without uncorking this peculiar and deadly essence of jealousy which
all three of us cannot hope to survive.”
He looked anxiously up from his bent posture, carrying the bag well
up on his shoulders, at the quickly disappearing figure of the young
mountaineer. He did not doubt that Ormsby knew that Euphemia’s domestic
errands would probably bring her to the mill at this hour, and the
bearing home of the bag of “seconds” was his precious dévoir most
ruthlessly usurped. “I only wish, my friend,” thought the juggler,
“that you had the heavy thing now with all its tender associations.” He
glanced with some solicitude at the delicate lovely face of the girl.
It was placidity itself. He had begun to be able to read it. There was
an implication of exactions in its soft firmness. She would make no
concessions. She would assume no blame not justly and fairly to be laid
at her door. She would not rend her heart with those tender lies of
false self-accusation common to loving women who find it less bitter
to censure themselves than those they love, and sometimes indeed more
politic. She would not bewail herself that she had not lingered, that
Ormsby, who came daily to examine his fish-traps, might have had the
opportunity of a long talk with her which he coveted, and the precious
privilege of going home like a mule with a flour-bag on his back. It
was his own fault that he was too late. She could not heft the bag. If
he were angry he was a fool. On every principle it is a bad thing to be
a fool. If God Almighty has not seen fit to make a man a fool, it is an
ill turn for a man to make one of himself.
As the juggler divined her mental processes and the possible
indifference of her sentiments toward the disappointed Ormsby, he
realized that naught was to be hoped from her, but that probably Ormsby
himself might be less obdurate. Doubtless he had had experience of the
stern and unyielding quality of her convictions, and had learned that
it was the part of wisdom to accommodate himself to them. Surely he
would not indulge so futile an anger, for it would not move her. After
an interval of solitary sulking in the dank cool woods his resentment
would wane, his jealousy would prompt a more zealous rivalry, and
he would come to her father’s house as the evening wore on with an
incidental expression of countenance and a lamblike manner. The juggler
made haste because of this sanguine expectation to leave the field
clear for the reconciliation of the parties in interest. He deprecated
the loss of one of the very few friends, among the many enemies, he had
made since his advent into Etowah Cove. The frank, bold, kindly young
mountaineer had, in the absence of all other prepossessions, somewhat
won the good opinion of the juggler. With that attraction which mere
youth has for youth, he valued Ormsby above the other denizens of
the Cove. Jane Ann Sims was possessed of more sterling worth as a
friend than a battalion of such as Ormsby. But the juggler was a man
of prejudices. Mrs. Sims’s unwieldy bulk offended his artistic views
of proportion. The slow shuffle of her big feet on the floor as she
went about irritated his nerves. The creases and dimples of her broad
countenance obscured for him its expression of native astuteness and
genuine good will. Therefore, despite her appreciation of the true
intent of the feats of a prestidigitator he was impatient of her
presence and undervalued her hearty prepossessions in his favor. He
heard with secret annoyance her voice vaguely wheezing a hymn, much
off the key, as after supper she sat knitting a shapeless elephantine
stocking beside the dying embers, for the night was chilly. Her husband
now and again yawned loudly over his pipe, as much from perplexity as
fatigue. Outside Euphemia was sitting alone on the step of the passage.
The juggler had no inclination to linger by her side. Except for a
lively appreciation of the difference in personal appearance she was
not more attractive to him than was her mother. He passed stiffly by,
with a sense of getting out of harm’s way, and ascended to his room in
the roof, where for a long time he lay in the floundering instabilities
of the feather-bed, which gave him now and again a sensation as of
drowning in soft impalpable depths,--a sensation especially revolting
to his nerves. Nevertheless, it was but vaguely that he realized that
Ormsby did not come, that he heard the movements downstairs as the
doors were closed, and when he opened his eyes again it was morning,
and the new day marked a change.
If anything were needed to further his alienation from the beautiful
daughter of the house, it might have been furnished by her own voice,
the first sounds of which that reached his ears were loud and somewhat
unfilial.
“It’s a plumb sin not ter milk a cow reg’lar ter the minit every day,”
she averred dictatorially.
“Show me the chapter an’ verse fur that, ef it’s a sin; ye air
book-l’arned,” wheezed her mother, on the defensive.
“I ain’t lookin’ in the Bible fur cow-l’arnin’,” retorted Euphemia.
“There’s nuthin’ in the Bible ter make a fool of saint or sinner.”
“Thar’s mo’ cows spoke of in the Bible ’n ever you see,” persisted
Mrs. Sims, glad of the diversion. “Jacob hed thousands o’ cattle, an’
Aberham thousands, an’ Laban thousands, not ter count Joseph’s ten lean
kine an’ ten fat kine, what I reckon war never viewed out’n a dream,
an’ mought be accounted visions.”
“Waal, I ain’t ez well pervided with cattle ez them folks, neither
sleepin’ nor wakin’,” said Euphemia. “I ’lowed ye’d milk pore Spot
reg’lar like I does, else I wouldn’t hev gone away.”
“I slep’ till nigh supper-time,” apologized Mrs. Sims unctuously,
pricked in conscience at last, “else I’d hev done it. Want me ter go
walkin’ in my sleep, an’ milk the cow?”
Euphemia said no more, but there rose an energetic clashing of pans and
kettles, intimating that the explanation had not mitigated the enormity
of the offense. It was with a distinct sentiment of apprehension that
the juggler made himself ready and descended the stairs. The place was
evidently under martial law. The slipshod, easy-going liberty which
had characterized it was a thing of the past. He might hardly have
recognized it, so different was the atmosphere, but for the fixtures.
The perfumed air swept through and through the rooms that he had found
so close, from open window to open door. The floors had been scrubbed
white, and were still but half dry. The breakfast-table was set in the
passage, and the graceful vines which grew over the aperture at the
rear showed the morning sunshine only in tiny interstices, as they
waved back and forth with a fluctuating glimmer and an undertone of
rustlings and murmurs; through the drooping boughs of the elm at the
opposite entrance might be caught glimpses of the silver river and the
gray rocks and the purple mountains afar off.
Here he found Euphemia and her parents. The irate flush was still red
on the young girl’s cheeks, and her eyes were bright with the stern
elation of victory. But if submission entailed on Mrs. Sims no effort,
she was not averse to subjugation. The juggler was pleased for once to
perceive no diminution in the number and depth of her dimples as she
welcomed him.
“Ye’ll hev ter put up with Phemie’s cookin’, now. I don’t b’lieve in no
old ’oman cookin’ whenst she hev got a spry young darter ter do it fur
her. I reckon ye’ll manage ter make out. She does toler’ble well fur
her, bein’ inexperienced an’ sech; but I can’t sense it into the gal
how ter git some sure enough strong rich taste on ter the vittles.”
Old Sims’s grizzled, stubbly, unshaven countenance expressed a rigid
neutrality, as if he intended to abide by this impartiality or perish
in the attempt. His art had sufficed to keep him out of the engagement
this morning, and his success had confirmed his resolution.
It seemed afterward to the juggler that this meal saved his life.
He ate as if he had not tasted food for a week. He partook of
mountain trout broiled on the coals, and of “that most delicate cate”
constructed of Indian meal and called the corn dodger. The potatoes
were roasted in the ashes with their jackets on, and crumbled to powder
at the touch of a fork. He drank cream instead of buttermilk,--it had
been too much trouble for Mrs. Sims to skim the big pans when she could
tilt the churn instead; and there was a kind of dry, crisp, crusty
roll compounded of the seconds that he had brought to the house on his
shoulder yesterday, and which was eaten with honey and the honeycomb.
He watched the river shimmer between the green willows of the banks.
He noted the white mists rise on the purple mountain sides, glitter
prismatically in the sun, tenuously dissolve in fleecy fragments, and
vanish in mid-air. The faint tinkle of a sheep-bell sounded,--pastoral,
peaceful; he heard a thrush singing with so fresh, so matutinal a
delight in its tones.
“If this is the line of march,” he said to himself, as he maintained
a decorous silence, for the state of the temper of the family was too
precarious to admit of conversation, “I don’t care how soon I fall into
ranks.”
It is supposed by those who affect to know that the seat of the
intellectual faculties is the cerebrum situated in the brain-pan.
Still, science cannot deny that the stomach is a singularly intelligent
organ. Through its processes alone the juggler perceived how well
subjection becomes parents, especially a female parent addicted to
the use of the frying-pan; realized Euphemia’s strength of character,
unusual in so young a person, and conceived a deep respect for her
mental and industrial capacities. He appreciated an incongruity in
his bantering style and his mocking high-sounding phrases. His manner
toward her became characterized by a studious although apparently
incidental courtesy, which was, however, compatible with a certain
cautious avoidance.
These days passed eventlessly to him. Much of the time he strolled
listlessly about, so evidently immersed in some absorbing mental
perturbation that Tubal Sims marveled that its indicia should not
attract the attention of the womenfolk, who esteemed themselves so
keen of discernment in such matters. He still affected to angle at
times, but his hook was hardly less efficient when it dangled bare and
farcical in the deep dark pool than when the forlorn minnow it pierced
stirred an eddy in the shadowy depths. He did not seem annoyed by
his non-success. Mrs. Sims’s banter scarcely grated on his nerves or
touched his pride. But indeed Mrs. Sims herself did not think ill of
the unachieving; somehow the aggressive capability of Euphemia made
her lenient. If there were more people like Euphemia, Mrs. Sims might
have felt in conscience bound to move on herself. As to the daughter,
her little world hastily conformed itself to its dictator, and she
ruled it with an absolute sway. Triumphs of baking or butter-making
ministered amply to her pride. Even the dumb creatures seemed ambitious
to meet her expectations and avoid her censure. The dogs, who had
sat so thick around the hearthstone in her absence as to edge away
the human household, and had so independently tracked mud over the
floors, now never ventured nearer than the threshold; yet there was
much complimentary wagging of tails when she appeared on the porch.
Sometimes the clatter of the treadle and the thumping of the batten
told that the great loom in the shed-room was astir. Sometimes the
spinning-wheel whirred. Occasionally she was busily carding cotton, and
again she was hackling flax.
One afternoon he found her differently employed. She sat near the
window and caught the waning light upon the newspaper which she held
with both arms half outstretched as she read aloud. Mrs. Sims glanced
up at the young man with a radiance of maternal pride that duplicated
every crease and every dimple. Even Tubal Sims, who, as the juggler
had fancied of late, was wont to look at his guest askance, lifted his
eyes now with a smile distending his gruff, lined countenance, as he
sat with his arms folded in his shirt-sleeves across his breast, his
chair tilted back on its hind legs against the frame of the opposite
window, his gaze reverting immediately to the young elocutionist. With
a good-natured impulse to minister to the satisfaction of the old
couple, the juggler silently took a chair hard by, and suppressed his
rising sense of ridicule.
For, alack, Euphemia’s accomplishments were indeed of manual
achievement. He listened with surprise that this should be the extent
of her vaunted book-learning, knowing naught of how scanty were
her opportunities, and what labor this poor proficiency had cost.
Subjugation is possible only to superior force. In the instant his
former attitude of mind toward her had returned, on this pitiful
exhibition of incapacity which she herself and her prideful parents
were totally incompetent to realize. She droned on in a painful
sing-song, now floundering heavily among unaccustomed words, now
spelling aloud one more difficult than the others, while he had much
ado to keep the contemptuous laugh from his face, aware that now and
again his countenance was anxiously yet triumphantly perused by the
delighted old people, to lose no token of his appreciation and wonder.
To bear this scrutiny more successfully he sought to occupy his
thoughts in other matters. His practiced eye noted even at the
distance that the newspaper must be some county sheet,--published
perhaps in the town of Colbury. He congratulated himself that the girl
had evidently exhausted the columns of local news, and was now deep
in the contents of what is known as the “patent outside.” Otherwise
his polite martyrdom might have been of greater duration. He felt that
neither her interest nor that of her audience would long sustain her
in the wider range of subjects and the more varied and unaccustomed
vocabulary of the articles, copied from many sources, which made up
this portion of the journal.
The next moment he could have torn it from her hands. His heart gave
a great bound and seemed to stand still. His eyes were fixed and
shining. He half rose from his chair; then by an absolute effort
resumed his seat and resolutely held himself still. In the throe of an
inexpressible suspense every fibre of his being was stretched to its
extremest tension as, slowly, laboriously, pausing often, the drawling
voice read on anent “Young Lucien Royce. Details of his Terrible
Death.” For so the head-lines ran.