AT sunset of the same day Madam Carroll was in her dining-room; she had
changed her dress, and now wore a fresh muslin, with a bunch of violets
in her belt. Sara, coming down the stairs, saw the bright little figure
through the open door; Judith Inches was bringing in the kettle (for
Madam Carroll always made the tea herself), and on the table were one or
two hot dishes of a delicate sort, additions to the usual meal. Sara
recognized in these added dishes the never-failing touch of the
mistress's hand upon the household helm. The four-o'clock dinner had
come and gone, but no summons had been sent to her--that pitiless
summons which in so many households remains inflexible, though stricken
hearts may be longing for solitude, for a respite, however brief, from
the petty duties of the day. Through the long hours of the afternoon
there had been no knock, not so much even as a footstep outside her
door. But now, in the cool of the evening, the one who had thus
protected her seclusion was hoping that she would of her own accord
come down and take again her accustomed place at the family table. Sara
did this. She did more. She had put away the signs of her grief so
completely that, save for an added pallor and the dark half-circle under
her eyes, she was quite herself again. Her soft hair was smooth, her
black dress made less severe by a little white scarf which encircled the
narrow linen collar. Scar was sitting on the bottom stair as she came
down. She put her hand on his head. "Where is papa?" she said.
"Papa is in the library. I think he is not coming out to tea," answered
the child.
"Oh, but we must make him come--the dining-room is so dull without papa.
Let us go and ask him." She took his hand, and they went together to the
library. Madam Carroll, who had heard their words through the open door,
watched them go. She did not interfere. She told Judith Inches to take
back the hot dishes to the kitchen.
The Major was sitting in his easy-chair, looking at the pictures in an
old book. He closed the volume and hastily drew off his spectacles as
his daughter came in. "It has been a beautiful afternoon," he remarked,
speaking promptly and decidedly. "Have you been out? or were you at home
with a book--in your old way? What do you find to read nowadays? I find
almost nothing." And he folded his arms with a critical air.
"I find little that can be compared with the old English authors, the
ones you like," answered his daughter. "The old books are better than
the new."
"So they are, so they are," replied the Major, with satisfaction. "I
have often made the remark myself."
"Now that I am at home again," continued Sara, "I want to look over all
those old books I used to have before I went to Longfields--those that
were called mine. I hope we have them still?"
"Yes," said Scar, in his deliberate little voice, "we have. I read them
now. And the long words I look out in the dictionary."
"It is a very good exercise for him. I suggested it," said the Major.
"I want to see all their old pictures again," pursued Sara. "I know I
shall care a great deal about them; they will be like dear old friends."
"Very natural; I quite understand the feeling," said the Major,
encouragingly. "And as Scar reads the books, perhaps you will find some
of them lying about this very room. Let me see--didn't I have one just
now? Yes, here it is; what was it?" And taking up the volume he had laid
down a moment before, he opened it, and read, or repeated with the air
of reading (for his spectacles were off), "'The Life and Adventures of
Robinson Crusoe and his Servant-man Friday. Defoe. London.'"
Sara came to his side and looked at the title-page. "Yes, that is my
dear old book. I loved it better than any other, excepting, perhaps,
'Good Queen Bertha's Honey-Broth.' I wonder if the old pictures are all
there?"
"I think they are," said the Major, turning the leaves. They looked at
one or two together, recalling reminiscences of the days when she used
to talk about them as a child. "You always insisted that this print of
Friday's foot was not of the right shape, and once you even went out in
the garden, took off your shoe and stocking, and made a print in a
flower-bed to show me," said the Major, laughing.
"Let us look them all over after tea, and 'Good Queen Bertha' too," said
Sara. "For Scar and I have come to take you out to tea, father; the
dining-room is so dull without you. Besides, I want you to give me some
peach preserves, and then say, 'No, Sara, not again,' when I ask for
more; and then, after a few minutes, put a large table-spoonful on my
plate with your head turned away, while talking to some one else, as
though unconscious of what you were doing."
Scar laughed over this anecdote, and so did Scar's father. "But perhaps
we shall have no peach preserve," he said, rising.
"We will ask mamma to give us some," answered Sara. She took his arm,
and Scar took his other hand; thus together they entered the
dining-room.
Madam Carroll welcomed them; but placidly, as though the Major's coming
was a matter of course. Since his daughter's return, however, it had not
been a matter of course: first for this reason, then for that, his meals
had almost always been sent to the library. Now he was tired; and now
the dining-room floor might be damp after Judith Inches'
scrubbing-brush; now there was an east wind, and now there was a west;
or else he was not feeling well, and some one might "drop in," in which
case, as the dining-room opened only into the hall, which was wide, like
a room, he should not be able to escape. In actual fact, however, there
was very little "dropping in" at Carroll Farms, unless one should give
that name to the visits of the rector, Mr. Owen. Once in a while, in the
evening, when the weather was decisively pleasant, the junior warden
came to see them. But all their other acquaintances came to the
receptions, made a brief call upon the first Thursday afternoon
following, and that was all. The sweet little mistress of the mansion
had never uttered one syllable upon the subject, yet each member of the
circle of Far Edgerley society knew as well as though it had been
proclaimed through the town by a herald with a silver trumpet emblazoned
with the Carroll arms, that these bimonthly receptions (which were so
delightful) and the brief following call comprised all the visits they
were expected to pay at Carroll Farms. And surely, when one considered
the great pleasure and also improvement derived from these receptions,
the four visits a month at the Farms were worth more than forty times
four visits at any other residence in the village or its neighborhood.
True, Mrs. Hibbard endeavored to maintain an appearance of importance at
her mansion of yellow wood called Chapultepec; but as General Hibbard
(of the Mexican War) had now been dead eight years, and as his old house
had not been opened for so much as the afternoon sewing society since
his departure, its importance, socially considered, existed only in the
imagination of his relict--which was, however, in itself quite a domain.
Judith Inches, tall and serious, now brought back the hot dishes, Madam
Carroll made the tea (with many pretty little motions and attitudes,
which her husband watched), and the meal began. The Major was in
excellent spirits. He told stories of Sara's childhood, her obstinacy,
her never-failing questions. "She came to me once, Scar," he said, "and
announced that Galileo was a humbug. When I asked her why, she said that
there was good King David, who knew all about astronomy long before he
did; for didn't he say, 'the round world, and they that dwell therein'?
We sang it every Sunday. So that proved plain as day that David knew
that the world was round, and that it moved, and all about it, of
course. Yet here was this old Italian taking everything to himself! Just
like Amerigo Vespucci, another old Italian, who had all America named
after himself, leaving poor Columbus, the real discoverer, with nothing
but 'Hail, Columbia!' to show for it. She announced all this
triumphantly and at the top of her voice, from a window; for I was in
the garden. When I told her that the word 'round,' upon which all her
argument had been founded, was not in the original text, you should have
seen how crest-fallen she was. She said she should never sing that chant
again."
Scar laughed over this story. He did not laugh often, but when he did,
it was a happy little sound, which made every one join in it by its
merry glee.
"I am afraid I was a very self-conceited little girl, Scar," his sister
said.
As the meal went on, the Major's manner grew all the time more easy. His
eyes were no longer restless. His old attention returned, too, in a
measure; he kept watch of his wife's plate to ask if she would not have
something more; he remembered that Sara preferred bread to the beat
biscuit, and placed it near her. The meal ended, they went back to the
library. Sara found her old copy of "Good Queen Bertha's Honey-Broth,"
and she and her father looked at the pictures together, as well as at
those of "Robinson Crusoe." Each had its association, a few recalled by
him, but many more by her. After Scar had gone to bed, and the books had
been laid aside, she still sat there talking to him. She talked of her
life at Longfields, telling stories in connection with it--stories not
long--bright and amusing. The Major's wife meanwhile sat near them,
sewing; she sat with her back to the lamp, in order that the light might
fall over her shoulder upon the seam. The light did the work she
assigned to it, but it also took the opportunity to play over her curls
in all sorts of winsome ways, to gleam on her thimble, to glide down her
rosy muslin skirt, and touch her little slipper. She said hardly
anything; but, as they talked on, every now and then she looked up
appreciatively, and smiled. At last she folded up her work, replacing it
in her neat rose-lined work-basket; then she sat still in her low chair,
with her feet on a footstool, listening.
The old clock, with its fierce gilt corsair climbing over a glass rock,
struck ten.
"Bed-time," said Sara, pausing.
"Not for me," observed the Major. "My time for sleep is always brief;
five or six hours are quite enough."
"I remember," said his daughter. And the memory, as a memory, was a true
one. Until recently the Major's sleep had been as he described it. He
had forgotten, or rather he had never been conscious of, the long nights
of twelve or thirteen hours' rest which had now become a necessity to
him.
"I am afraid I am not like you, father. I am very apt to be sleepy about
ten," said Sara. "And I suspect it is the same with mamma."
Madam Carroll did not deny this assertion. The Major, laughing at the
early somnolence of the two ladies, rose to light a candle for his
daughter, in the old way. As she took it, and bent to kiss her
stepmother good-night, Madam Carroll's eyes met hers, full of an
expression which made them bright (ordinarily they were not bright, but
soft); the expression was that of warm congratulation.
The next day dawned fair and cloudless--Trinity Sunday. The mountain
breeze and the warm sun together made an atmosphere fit for a heaven. On
the many knolls of Far Edgerley the tall grass, carrying with it the
slender stalks of the buttercups, was bending and waving merrily; the
red clover, equally abundant, could not join in this dance, because it
had crowded itself so greedily into the desirable fields that all that
its close ranks could do was to undulate a little at the top, like a
swell passing over a pond. Madam Carroll, the Major, and Scar were to
drive to church as usual, in the equipage. Sara had preferred to walk.
She started some time before the hour for service, having a fancy to
stroll under the churchyard pines for a while by herself. These pines
were noble trees; they had belonged to the primitive forest, and had
been left standing along the northern border of the churchyard by the
Carroll who had first given the land for the church a hundred years
before. The ground beneath them was covered with a thick carpet of their
own brown aromatic needles. There were no graves here save one, of an
Indian chief, who slept by himself with his face towards the west, while
all his white brethren on the other side turned their closed eyes
towards the rising sun. It was a beautiful rural God's-acre, stretching
round the church in the old-fashioned way, so that the shadow of the
cross on the spire passed slowly over all the graves, one by one, as the
sun made his journey from the peak of Chillawassee across to Lonely
Mountain, behind whose long soft line he always sank, and generally in
such a blaze of beautiful light that the children of the village grew up
in the vague belief that the edge of the world must be just there, that
there it rounded and went downward into a mysterious golden atmosphere,
in which, some day, when they had wings, they, too, should sport and
float like birds.
Early though it was, Miss Carroll discovered when she entered the church
gate that she was not the first comer; the choir ladies were practising
within, and other ladies of floral if not musical tastes were arranging
mountain laurel in the font and chancel--to the manifest disapproval of
Flower, the disapproval being expressed in the eye he had fixed upon
them, his "mountain eye," as he called his best one. "It be swep, and it
be dustered," he said to himself. "What more do the reasonless female
creatures want?" Miss Carroll had not joined the choir, although the
rector, prompted by his junior warden, had suggested it; Miss Sophia
Greer would, therefore, continue to sing the solos undisturbed. She was
trying one now. And the other ladies were talking. But this music, this
conversation, this arrangement of laurel, and this disapproval of Flower
went on within the church. The new-comer had the churchyard to herself;
she went over to the pines on its northern side, and strolled to and
fro at the edge of the slope, looking at the mountains, whose peaks rose
like a grand amphitheatre all round her against the sky.
Her face was sad, but the bitterness, the revolt, were gone; her eyes
were quiet and sweet. She had accepted her sorrow. It was a great one.
At first it had been overwhelming; for all the brightness of the past
had depended upon her father, all her plans for the present, her hopes
for the future. His help, his comprehension, his dear affection and
interest, had made up all her life, and she did not know how to go on
without them, how to live. Never again could she depend upon him for
guidance, never again have the exquisite happiness of his perfect
sympathy--for he had always understood her, and no one else ever had, or
at least so she thought. She had cared only for him, she had found all
her companionship in him; and now she was left alone.
But after a while Love rose, and turned back this tide. The sharp
personal pain, the bitter loneliness, gave way to a new tenderness for
the stricken man himself. Evidently he was at times partly conscious of
this lethargy which was fettering more and more his mental powers, for
he exerted himself, he tried to remember, he tried to be brighter, to
talk in the old way. And who could tell but that he perceived his
failure to accomplish this? Who could tell, when he was silent so often,
sitting with his eyes on the carpet, that he was not brooding over it
sadly? For a man such as he had been, this must be deep suffering--deep,
even though vague--like the sensation of falling in a dream, falling
from a height, and continuing to fall, without ever reaching bottom.
Probably he did not catch the full reality; it constantly eluded him;
yet every now and then some power of his once fine mind might be awake
long enough to make him conscious of a lack, a something that gave him
pain, he knew not why. As she thought of this, all her heart went out to
him with a loving, protecting tenderness which no words could express;
she forgot her own grief in thinking of his, and her trouble took the
form of a passionate desire to make him happy; to keep even this dim
consciousness always from him, if possible; to shield him from contact
with the thoughtless and unfeeling; to so surround his life with love,
like a wall, that he should never again remember anything of his loss,
never again feel that inarticulate pain, but be like one who has entered
a beautiful, tranquil garden, to leave it no more.
This morning, under the pines, she was thinking of all this, as she
walked slowly to and fro past the Indian's grave. Flower came out to
ring his first bell. His "first bell" was unimportant, made up of
short, business-like notes; he rang it in his working jacket, an old
mountain homespun coat, whose swallow-tails had been cut off, so that it
now existed as a roundabout. But when, twenty minutes later, he issued
forth a second time, he was attired in a coat of thin but shining black,
with butternut trousers and a high pink calico vest. Placing his hat
upon the ground beside him, he took the rope in his hand, made a solemn
grimace or two to get his mouth into position, and then, closing his
eyes, brought out with gravity the first stroke of his "second bell."
His second bell consisted of dignified solo notes, with long pauses
between. Flower's theory was that each of these notes echoed resonantly
through its following pause. But as the bell of St. John's was not one
of size or resonance, he could only make the pauses for the echoes which
should have been there.
As the first note of this second bell sounded from the elm, all the
Episcopal doors of Far Edgerley opened almost simultaneously, and forth
came the congregation, pacing with Sunday step down their respective
front paths, opening their gates, and proceeding decorously towards St.
John's in groups of two or three, or a family party of father, mother,
and children, the father a little in advance. They all arrived in good
season, passed the semi-unconscious Flower ringing his bell, and
entered the church. Next, after an interval, came "clatter," "clatter:"
they knew that "the equipage" was coming up the hill. Then "clank,"
"clank:" the steps were down.
All now turned their heads, but only to the angle which was considered
allowable--less than profile, about a quarter view of the face, with a
side glance from one eye. To them, thus waiting, now entered their
senior warden, freshly dressed, gloved, carrying his hat and his large
prayer-book; and as he walked up the central aisle, a commanding figure,
with noble head, gray hair, and military bearing, he was undoubtedly a
remarkably handsome, distinguished-looking man.
Behind him, but not too near, came the small figures of Madam Carroll
and Scar, the lady in a simple summer costume of lavender muslin, with
many breezy little ruffles, and lavender ribbons on her gypsy hat, the
delicate hues causing the junior warden to exclaim (afterwards) that she
looked like "a hyacinth, sir; a veritable hyacinth!" Scar, in a black
velvet jacket (she had made it for him out of an old cloak), carrying
his little straw hat, held his mother's hand. The Major stopped at his
pew, which was the first, near the chancel; he turned, and stood waiting
ceremoniously for his wife to enter. She passed in with Scar; he
followed, and they took their seats. Then the congregation let its chin
return to a normal straightness, the bell stopped, Alexander Mann (to
use his own expression) "blew up," and Miss Millie began.
Miss Carroll came in a minute or two late. But there was no longer much
curiosity about Miss Carroll. It was feared that she was "cold;" and it
was known that she was "silent;" she had almost no "conversation." Now,
Far Edgerley prided itself upon its conversation. It never spoke of its
domestic affairs in company; light topics of elegant nature were then in
order. Mrs. Greer, for instance, had Horace Walpole's Letters--which
never failed. Other ladies preferred the cultivation of flowers, garden
rock-work, and their bees (they allowed themselves to go as far as bees,
because honey, though of course edible, was so delicate). Mrs.
Rendlesham, who was historical, had made quite a study of the
characteristics of Archbishop Laud. And the Misses Farren were greatly
interested in Egyptian ceramics. Senator Ashley, among many subjects,
had also his favorite; he not infrequently turned his talent for talking
loose upon the Crimean War. This was felt to be rather a modern topic.
But the junior warden was, on the whole, the most modern man they had.
Too modern, some persons thought.