So the little widow and her baby became the wards of the town of
Muscatel. After one or two unsuccessful attempts to learn the
particulars of her husband's last illness, the good women of the place
decided that her bereavement was too recent to be made a subject of
conversation.
The baby, on the contrary, being a topic all the more absorbing by
reason of its newness, they held long and enthusiastic conferences with
the young mother concerning his care, clothing, and diet. With that
gentle receptivity which makes some natures the defenseless targets of
advice, the inefficient little mother felt herself at times between the
upper and the nether millstones of condensed milk and Caudle's food, but
her weak, appealing face always brightened into tremulous delight when
the rival factions united, as they invariably did, on the subject of the
baby's undoubted precocity in the matter of "noticing."
Enoch was called in many times to give counsel which seemed to gain from
his masculinity what it might be supposed to lack by reason of his
ignorance concerning the ailments and accomplishments of the small
stranger who held the heart of the community in his tiny purple fist. It
was to Enoch that the young mother brought her small woes, and it was
with Enoch that she left them.
The song of the hay-balers and the whir of the threshing-machine had
died out of the valley, and the raisin-making had come on. The trays
were spread in the vineyards, and the warm white air was filled with the
fruity smell of the grapes, browning and sweetening beneath the October
sun.
One drowsy afternoon Enoch was in the back room of the store, weighing
barley and marking the weight on the sacks. Suddenly there was a quick
step, and a voice in the outer room, and the old man turned slowly, with
the brush in his hand, and confronted a man in the doorway.
"Jerry!"
"Yes, uncle, here I am; slightly disfigured, but still in the ring.
How's the market? Long on barley, I see. I"--he broke off suddenly, and
assumed an air of the deepest dejection. "I've had a great deal of
trouble since I saw you, uncle. I've lost my wife."
He turned to the window and pretended to look through the cobwebbed
glass.
"She went off very sudden, but she was conscious to the last."
Enoch stood still and slowly stirred the paint in the paint-pot until
his companion turned and caught the glance of his keen blue eye.
"Does thee think she will stay lost, Jerry?" he asked quietly.
The young fellow came close to Enoch's side.
"You bet," he said, with low, husky intensity; "the law settled that.
She was a cursed fraud anyway," he went on, with hurrying wrath; "she
ran away with--I thought she was dead--I'll swear by"--
"Thee needn't swear, Jerry," interrupted Enoch quietly; "if thy word is
good for nothing, thy blasphemy will not help it any."
The young man's face relaxed. There was a little silence.
"Has thee been up to thy house?" asked Enoch presently.
"Yes, yes," said Jerry lightly; "I dropped right in on the family
circle. The widow seems to be a nice, tidy little person, and the
kid--did you ever see anything to beat that kid, uncle?"
Enoch had been appealed to on this subject before.
"He's a very nice baby," he said gravely.
"They seem to be settled rather comfortably, and I guess I'll get a tent
and pitch it on some of these vacant lots, and not disturb them. The
little woman isn't really well enough to move, and besides, the kid
might kick if he had to give up the cradle; perfect fit, isn't it?"
* * * * *
"Enoch," said Rachel Embody to her husband, as they drove their
flea-bitten gray mare to the Friends' meeting on First Day, "what does
thee think of Jerry Sullivan and the widow Hart marrying as they did?
Doesn't thee think it was a little sudden for both of them?"
Enoch slapped the lines on the gray's callous back.
"I don't know, Rachel," he said; "there are some subjects which I do not
find profitable for reflection."