nature in a small way, and she got some slight comfort out of a
shrewd suspicion that the heart of a man might love and suffer on a
somewhat different principle from the heart of a woman. "It may be,"
thought Evelina, sitting idle over her embroidery with far-away blue
eyes, "that a man's heart can always turn a while from love to other
things as weighty and serious, although he be just as fond, while a
woman's heart is always fixed one way by loving, and cannot be turned
unless it breaks. And it may be wise," thought young Evelina, "else
how could the state be maintained and governed, battles for
independence be fought, and even souls be saved, and the gospel
carried to the heathen, if men could not turn from the concerns of
their own hearts more easily than women? Women should be patient,"
thought Evelina, "and consider that if they suffer 't is due to the
lot which a wise Providence has given them." And yet tears welled up
in her earnest blue eyes and fell over her fair cheeks and wet the
embroidery--when the elder Evelina was not looking, as she seldom
was. The elder Evelina was kind to her young cousin, but there were
days when she seemed to dwell alone in her own thoughts, apart from
the whole world, and she seldom spoke either to Evelina or her old
servant-man.
Young Evelina, trying to atone for her former indiscretion and
establish herself again on her height of maiden reserve in Thomas
Merriam's eyes, sat resolutely in the meeting-house of a Sabbath day,
with her eyes cast down, and after service she glided swiftly down
the aisle and was out of the door before the young minister could
much more than descend the pulpit stairs, unless he ran an indecorous
race.
And young Evelina never at twilight strolled up the road in the
direction of Thomas Merriam's home, where she might quite reasonably
hope to meet him, since he was wont to go to the store when the
evening stage-coach came in with the mail from Boston.
Instead she paced the garden paths, or, when there was not too heavy
a dew, rambled across the fields; and there was also a lane where she
loved to walk. Whether or not Thomas Merriam suspected this, or had
ever seen, as he passed the mouth of the lane, the flutter of
maidenly draperies in the distance, it so happened that one evening
he also went a-walking there, and met Evelina. He had entered the
lane from the highway, and she from the fields at the head. So he saw
her first afar off, and could not tell fairly whether her light
muslin skirt might not be only a white-flowering bush. For, since his
outlook upon life had been so full of Evelina, he had found that
often the most common and familiar things would wear for a second a
look of her to startle him. And many a time his heart had leaped at
the sight of a white bush ahead stirring softly in the evening wind,
and he had thought it might be she. Now he said to himself
impatiently that this was only another fancy; but soon he saw that it
was indeed Evelina, in a light muslin gown, with a little lace
kerchief on her head. His handsome young face was white; his lips
twitched nervously; but he reached out and pulled a spray of white
flowers from a bush, and swung it airily to hide his agitation as he
advanced.
As for Evelina, when she first espied Thomas she started and half
turned, as if to go back; then she held up her white-kerchiefed head
with gentle pride and kept on. When she came up to Thomas she walked
so far to one side that her muslin skirt was in danger of catching
and tearing on the bushes, and she never raised her eyes, and not a
flicker of recognition stirred her sweet pale face as she passed him.
But Thomas started as if she had struck him, and dropped his spray of
white flowers, and could not help a smothered cry that was half a
sob, as he went on, knocking blindly against the bushes. He went a
little way, then he stopped and looked back with his piteous hurt
eyes. And Evelina had stopped also, and she had the spray of white
flowers which he had dropped, in her hand, and her eyes met his. Then
she let the flowers fall again, and clapped both her little hands to
her face to cover it, and turned to run; but Thomas was at her side,
and he put out his hand and held her softly by her white arm.
"Oh," he panted, "I--did not mean to be--too presuming, and offend
you. I--crave your pardon--"
Evelina had recovered herself. She stood with her little hands
clasped, and her eyes cast down before him, but not a quiver stirred
her pale face, which seemed turned to marble by this last effort of
her maiden pride. "I have nothing to pardon," said she. "It was I,
whose bold behavior, unbecoming a modest and well-trained young
woman, gave rise to what seemed like presumption on your part." The
sense of justice was strong within her, but she made her speech
haughtily and primly, as if she had learned it by rote from some
maiden school-mistress, and pulled her arm away and turned to go; but
Thomas's words stopped her.
"Not--unbecoming if it came--from the heart," said he, brokenly,
scarcely daring to speak, and yet not daring to be silent.
Then Evelina turned on him, with a sudden strange pride that lay
beneath all other pride, and was of a nobler and truer sort. "Do you
think I would have given you the look that I did if it had not come
from my heart?" she demanded. "What did you take me to be--false and
a jilt? I may be a forward young woman, who has overstepped the
bounds of maidenly decorum, and I shall never get over the shame of
it, but I am truthful, and I am no jilt." The brilliant color flamed
out on Evelina's cheeks. Her blue eyes met Thomas's with that courage
of innocence and nature which dares all shame. But it was only for a
second; the tears sprang into them. "I beg you to let me go home,"
she said, pitifully; but Thomas caught her in his arms, and pressed
her troubled maiden face against his breast.
"Oh, I love you so!" he whispered--"I love you so, Evelina, and I was
afraid you were angry with me for it."
"And I was afraid," she faltered, half weeping and half shrinking
from him, "lest you were angry with me for betraying the state of my
feelings, when you could not return them." And even then she used
that gentle formality of expression with which she had been taught by
her maiden preceptors to veil decorously her most ardent emotions.
And, in truth, her training stood her in good stead in other ways;
for she presently commanded, with that mild dignity of hers which
allowed of no remonstrance, that Thomas should take away his arm from
her waist, and give her no more kisses for that time.
"It is not becoming for any one," said she, "and much less for a
minister of the gospel. And as for myself, I know not what Mistress
Perkins would say to me. She has a mind much above me, I fear."
"Mistress Perkins is enjoying her mind in Boston," said Thomas
Merriam, with the laugh of a triumphant young lover.
But Evelina did not laugh. "It might be well for both you and me if
she were here," said she, seriously. However, she tempered a little
her decorous following of Mistress Perkins's precepts, and she and
Thomas went hand in hand up the lane and across the fields.
There was no dew that night, and the moon was full. It was after nine
o'clock when Thomas left her at the gate in the fence which separated
Evelina Adams's garden from the field, and watched her disappear
between the flowers. The moon shone full on the garden. Evelina
walked as it were over a silver dapple, which her light gown seemed
to brush away and dispel for a moment. The bushes stood in sweet
mysterious clumps of shadow.
Evelina had almost reached the house, and was close to the great
althea bush, which cast a wide circle of shadow, when it seemed
suddenly to separate and move into life.
The elder Evelina stepped out from the shadow of the bush. "Is that
you, Evelina?" she said, in her soft, melancholy voice, which had in
it a nervous vibration.
"Yes, Cousin Evelina."
The elder Evelina's pale face, drooped about with gray curls, had an
unfamiliar, almost uncanny, look in the moonlight, and might have
been the sorrowful visage of some marble nymph, lovelorn, with
unceasing grace. "Who--was with you?" she asked.
"The minister," replied young Evelina.
"Did he meet you?"
"He met me in the lane, Cousin Evelina."
"And he walked home with you across the field?"
"Yes, Cousin Evelina."
Then the two entered the house, and nothing more was said about the
matter. Young Evelina and Thomas Merriam agreed that their affection
was to be kept a secret for a while. "For," said young Evelina, "I
cannot leave Cousin Evelina yet a while, and I cannot have her
pestered with thinking about it, at least before another spring, when
she has the garden fairly growing again."
"That is nearly a whole year; it is August now," said Thomas, half
reproachfully, and he tightened his clasp of Evelina's slender
fingers.
"I cannot help that," replied Evelina. "It is for you to show
Christian patience more than I, Thomas. If you could have seen poor
Cousin Evelina, as I have seen her, through the long winter days,
when her garden is dead, and she has only the few plants in her
window left! When she is not watering and tending them she sits all
day in the window and looks out over the garden and the naked bushes
and the withered flower-stalks. She used not to be so, but would read
her Bible and good books, and busy herself somewhat over fine
needle-work, and at one time she was compiling a little floral book,
giving a list of the flowers, and poetical selections and sentiments
appropriate to each. That was her pastime for three winters, and it
is now nearly done; but she has given that up, and all the rest, and
sits there in the window and grows older and feebler until spring. It
is only I who can divert her mind, by reading aloud to her and
singing; and sometimes I paint the flowers she loves the best on
card-board with water-colors. I have a poor skill in it, but Cousin
Evelina can tell which flower I have tried to represent, and it
pleases her greatly. I have even seen her smile. No, I cannot leave
her, nor even pester her with telling her before another spring, and
you must wait, Thomas," said young Evelina.
And Thomas agreed, as he was likely to do to all which she proposed
which touched not his own sense of right and honor. Young Evelina
gave Thomas one more kiss for his earnest pleading, and that night
wrote out the tale in her journal. "It may be that I overstepped the
bounds of maidenly decorum," wrote Evelina, "but my heart did so
entreat me," and no blame whatever did she lay upon Thomas.
Young Evelina opened her heart only to her journal, and her cousin
was told nothing, and had little cause for suspicion. Thomas Merriam
never came to the house to see his sweetheart; he never walked home
with her from meeting. Both were anxious to avoid village gossip,
until the elder Evelina could be told.
Often in the summer evenings the lovers met, and strolled hand in
hand across the fields, and parted at the garden gate with the one
kiss which Evelina allowed, and that was all.
Sometimes when young Evelina came in with her lover's kiss still warm
upon her lips the elder Evelina looked at her wistfully, with a
strange retrospective expression in her blue eyes, as if she were
striving to remember something that the girl's face called to mind.
And yet she could have had nothing to remember except dreams.
And once, when young Evelina sat sewing through a long summer
afternoon and thinking about her lover, the elder Evelina, who was
storing rose leaves mixed with sweet spices in a jar, said, suddenly,
"He looks as his father used to."
Young Evelina started. "Whom do you mean, Cousin Evelina?" she asked,
wonderingly; for the elder Evelina had not glanced at her, nor even
seemed to address her at all.
"Nothing," said the elder Evelina, and a soft flush stole over her
withered face and neck, and she sprinkled more cassia on the rose
leaves in the jar.
Young Evelina said no more; but she wondered, partly because Thomas
was always in her mind, and it seemed to her naturally that nearly
everything must have a savor of meaning of him, if her cousin Evelina
could possibly have referred to him and his likeness to his father.
For it was commonly said that Thomas looked very like his father,
although his figure was different. The young man was taller and more
firmly built, and he had not the meek forward curve of shoulder which
had grown upon his father of late years.
When the frosty nights came Thomas and Evelina could not meet and
walk hand in hand over the fields behind the Squire's house, and they
very seldom could speak to each other. It was nothing except a
"good-day" on the street, and a stolen glance, which set them both
a-trembling lest all the congregation had noticed, in the
meeting-house. When the winter set fairly in they met no more, for
the elder Evelina was taken ill, and her young cousin did not leave
her even to go to meeting. People said they guessed it was Evelina
Adams's last sickness, and they furthermore guessed that she would
divide her property between her cousin Martha Loomis and her two
girls and Evelina Leonard, and that Evelina would have the house as
her share.
Thomas Merriam heard this last with a satisfaction which he did not
try to disguise from himself, because he never dreamed of there being
any selfish element in it. It was all for Evelina. Many a time he had
looked about the humble house where he had been born, and where he
would have to take Evelina after he had married her, and striven to
see its poor features with her eyes--not with his, for which
familiarity had tempered them. Often, as he sat with his parents in
the old sitting-room, in which he had kept so far an unquestioning
belief, as in a friend of his childhood, the scales of his own
personality would fall suddenly from his eyes. Then he would see, as
Evelina, the poor, worn, humble face of his home, and his heart would
sink. "I don't see how I ever can bring her here," he thought. He
began to save, a few cents at a time, out of his pitiful salary, to
at least beautify his own chamber a little when Evelina should come.
He made up his mind that she should have a little dressing-table,
with an oval mirror, and a white muslin frill around it, like one he
had seen in Boston. "She shall have that to sit before while she
combs her hair," he thought, with defiant tenderness, when he stowed
away another shilling in a little box in his trunk. It was money
which he ordinarily bestowed upon foreign missions; but his Evelina
had come between him and the heathen. To procure some dainty
furnishings for her bridal-chamber he took away a good half of his
tithes for the spread of the gospel in the dark lands. Now and then
his conscience smote him, he felt shamefaced before his deacons, but
Evelina kept her first claim. He resolved that another year he would
hire a piece of land, and combine farming with his ministerial work,
and so try to eke out his salary, and get a little more money to
beautify his poor home for his bride.
Now if Evelina Adams had come to the appointed time for the closing
of her solitary life, and if her young cousin should inherit a share
of her goodly property and the fine old mansion-house, all necessity
for anxiety of this kind was over. Young Evelina would not need to be
taken away, for the sake of her love, from all these comforts and
luxuries. Thomas Merriam rejoiced innocently, without a thought for
himself.
In the course of the winter he confided in his father; he couldn't
keep it to himself any longer. Then there was another reason. Seeing
Evelina so little made him at times almost doubt the reality of it
all. There were days when he was depressed, and inclined to ask
himself if he had not dreamed it. Telling somebody gave it substance.
His father listened soberly when he told him; he had grown old of
late.
"Well," said he, "she 'ain't been used to living the way you have,
though you have had advantages that none of your folks ever had; but
if she likes you, that's all there is to it, I s'pose."
The old man sighed wearily. He sat in his arm-chair at the kitchen
fireplace; his wife had gone in to one of the neighbors, and the two
were alone.
"Of course," said Thomas, simply, "if Evelina Adams shouldn't live,
the chances are that I shouldn't have to bring her here. She wouldn't
have to give up anything on my account--you know that, father."
Then the young man started, for his father turned suddenly on him
with a pale, wrathful face. "You ain't countin' on that!" he shouted.
"You ain't countin' on that--a son of mine countin' on anything like
that!"
Thomas colored. "Why, father," he stammered, "you don't think--you
know, it's all for _her_--and they say she can't live anyway. I had
never thought of such a thing before. I was wondering how I could
make it comfortable for Evelina here."
But his father did not seem to listen. "Countin' on that!" he
repeated. "Countin' on a poor old soul, that 'ain't ever had anything
to set her heart on but a few posies, dyin' to make room for other
folks to have what she's been cheated out on. Countin' on that!" The
old man's voice broke into a hoarse sob; he got up, and went
hurriedly out of the room.
"Why, father!" his son called after him, in alarm. He got up to
follow him, but his father waved him back and shut the door hard.
"Father must be getting childish," Thomas thought, wonderingly. He
did not bring up the subject to him again.
Evelina Adams died in March. One morning the bell tolled seventy long
melancholy tones before people had eaten their breakfasts. They ran
to their doors and counted. "It's her," they said, nodding, when they
had waited a little after the seventieth stroke. Directly Mrs. Martha
Loomis and her two girls were seen hustling importantly down the
road, with their shawls over their heads, to the Squire's house.
"Mis' Loomis can lay her out," they said. "It ain't likely that young
Evelina knows anything about such things. Guess she'll be thankful
she's got somebody to call on now, if she 'ain't mixed much with the
Loomises." Then they wondered when the funeral would be, and the
women furbished up their black gowns and bonnets, and even in a few
cases drove to the next town and borrowed from relatives; but there
was a great disappointment in store for them.
Evelina Adams died on a Saturday. The next day it was announced from
the pulpit that the funeral would be private, by the particular
request of the deceased. Evelina Adams had carried her delicate
seclusion beyond death, to the very borders of the grave. Nobody,
outside the family, was bidden to the funeral, except the doctor, the
minister, and the two deacons of the church. They were to be the
bearers. The burial also was to be private, in the Squire's family
burial-lot, at the north of the house. The bearers would carry the
coffin across the yard, and there would not only be no funeral, but
no funeral procession, and no hearse. "It don't seem scarcely
decent," the women whispered to each other; "and more than all that,
she ain't goin' to be _seen_." The deacons' wives were especially
disturbed by this last, as they might otherwise have gained many
interesting particulars by proxy.
Monday was the day set for the burial. Early in the morning old
Thomas Merriam walked feebly up the road to the Squire's house.
People noticed him as he passed. "How terribly fast he's grown old
lately!" they said. He opened the gate which led into the Squire's
front yard with fumbling fingers, and went up the walk to the front
door, under the Corinthian pillars, and raised the brass knocker.
Evelina opened the door, and started and blushed when she saw him.
She had been crying; there were red rings around her blue eyes, and
her pretty lips were swollen. She tried to smile at Thomas's father,
and she held out her hand with shy welcome.
"I want to see her," the old man said, abruptly.
Evelina started, and looked at him wonderingly. "I--don't believe--I
know who you mean," said she. "Do you want to see Mrs. Loomis?"
"No; I want to see her."
"_Her?_"
"Yes, _her_."
Evelina turned pale as she stared at him. There was something strange
about his face. "But--Cousin Evelina," she faltered--"she--didn't
want-- Perhaps you don't know: she left special directions that
nobody was to look at her."
"I _want to see her_," said the old man, and Evelina gave way. She
stood aside for him to enter, and led him into the great north
parlor, where Evelina Adams lay in her mournful state. The shutters
were closed, and one on entering could distinguish nothing but that
long black shadow in the middle of the room. Young Evelina opened a
shutter a little way, and a slanting shaft of spring sunlight came in
and shot athwart the coffin. The old man tiptoed up and leaned over
and looked at the dead woman. Evelina Adams had left further
instructions about her funeral, which no one understood, but which
were faithfully carried out. She wished, she had said, to be attired
for her long sleep in a certain rose-colored gown, laid away in rose
leaves and lavender in a certain chest in a certain chamber. There
were also silken hose and satin shoes with it, and these were to be
put on, and a wrought lace tucker fastened with a pearl brooch.
It was the costume she had worn one Sabbath day back in her youth,
when she had looked across the meeting-house and her eyes had met
young Thomas Merriam's; but nobody knew nor remembered; even young
Evelina thought it was simply a vagary of her dead cousin's.
"It don't seem to me decent to lay away anybody dressed so," said
Mrs. Martha Loomis; "but of course last wishes must be respected."
The two Loomis girls said they were thankful nobody was to see the
departed in her rose-colored shroud.
Even old Thomas Merriam, leaning over poor Evelina, cold and dead in
the garb of her youth, did not remember it, and saw no meaning in it.
He looked at her long. The beautiful color was all faded out of the
yellow-white face; the sweet full lips were set and thin; the closed
blue eyes sunken in dark hollows; the yellow hair showed a line of
gray at the edge of her old woman's cap, and thin gray curls lay
against the hollow cheeks. But old Thomas Merriam drew a long breath
when he looked at her. It was like a gasp of admiration and wonder; a
strange rapture came into his dim eyes; his lips moved as if he
whispered to her, but young Evelina could not hear a sound. She
watched him, half frightened, but finally he turned to her. "I 'ain't
seen her--fairly," said he, hoarsely--"I 'ain't seen her, savin' a
glimpse of her at the window, for over forty year, and she 'ain't
changed, not a look. I'd have known her anywheres. She's the same as
she was when she was a girl. It's wonderful--wonderful!"
Young Evelina shrank a little. "We think she looks natural," she
said, hesitatingly.
"She looks jest as she did when she was a girl and used to come into
the meetin'-house. She _is_ jest the same," the old man repeated, in
his eager, hoarse voice. Then he bent over the coffin, and his lips
moved again. Young Evelina would have called Mrs. Loomis, for she was
frightened, had he not been Thomas's father, and had it not been for
her vague feeling that there might be some old story to explain this
which she had never heard. "Maybe he was in love with poor Cousin
Evelina, as Thomas is with me," thought young Evelina, using her own
leaping-pole of love to land straight at the truth. But she never
told her surmise to any one except Thomas, and that was long
afterwards, when the old man was dead. Now she watched him with her
blue dilated eyes. But soon he turned away from the coffin and made
his way straight out of the room, without a word. Evelina followed
him through the entry and opened the outer door. He turned on the
threshold and looked back at her, his face working.
"Don't ye go to lottin' too much on what ye're goin' to get through
folks that have died an' not had anything," he said; and he shook his
head almost fiercely at her.
"No, I won't. I don't think I understand what you mean, sir,"
stammered Evelina.
The old man stood looking at her a moment. Suddenly she saw the tears
rolling over his old cheeks. "I'm much obliged to ye for lettin' of
me see her," he said, hoarsely, and crept feebly down the steps.