The weather turned suddenly cold and raw that Fall, and almost in one day,
the trees that had been green, or yellowing in the sunshine, put on their
autumn garments of defeat, flaunted them for a brief hour, and dropped
them early in despair. The pleasant woods, to which Marcia had fled in her
dismay, became a mass of finely penciled branches against a wintry sky,
save for the one group of tall pines that hung out heavy above the rest,
and seemed to defy even snowy blasts.
Marcia could see those pines from her kitchen window, and sometimes as she
worked, if her heart was heavy, she would look out and away to them, and
think of the day she laid her head down beneath them to sob out her
trouble, and awoke to find comfort. Somehow the memory of that little talk
that she and David had then grew into vast proportions in her mind, and
she loved to cherish it.
There had come letters from home. Her stepmother had written, a stiff, not
unloving letter, full of injunctions to be sure to remember this, and not
do that, and on no account to let any relative or neighbor persuade her
out of the ways in which she had been brought up. She was attempting to do
as many mothers do, when they see the faults in the child they have
brought up, try to bring them up over again. At some of the sentences a
wild homesickness took possession of her. Some little homely phrase about
one of the servants, or the mention of a pet hen or cow, would bring the
longing tears to her eyes, and she would feel that she must throw away
this new life and run back to the old one.
School was begun at home. Mary Ann and Hanford would be taking the long
walk back and forth together twice a day to the old school-house. She half
envied them their happy, care-free life. She liked to think of the shy
courting that she had often seen between scholars in the upper classes.
Her imagination pleased itself sometimes when she was going to sleep,
trying to picture out the school goings and home comings, and their sober
talk. Not that she ever looked back to Hanford Weston with regret, not
she. She knew always that he was not for her, and perhaps, even so early
as that in her new life, if the choice had been given her whether she
would go back to her girlhood again and be as she was before Kate had run
away, or whether she would choose to stay here in the new life with David,
it is likely she would have chosen to stay.
There were occasional letters from Squire Schuyler. He wrote of politics,
and sent many messages to his son-in-law which Marcia handed over to David
at the tea table to read, and which always seemed to soften David and
bring a sweet sadness into his eyes. He loved and respected his
father-in-law. It was as if he were bound to him by the love of some one
who had died. Marcia thought of that every time she handed David a letter,
and sat and watched him read it.
Sometimes little Harriet or the boys printed out a few words about the
family cat, or the neighbors’ children, and Marcia laughed and cried over
the poor little attempts at letters and longed to have the eager childish
faces of the writers to kiss.
But in all of them there was never a mention of the bright, beautiful,
selfish girl around whom the old home life used to centre and who seemed
now, judging from the home letters, to be worse than dead to them all. But
since the afternoon upon the hill a new and pleasant intercourse had
sprung up between David and Marcia. True it was confined mainly to
discussions of the new railroad, the possibilities of its success, and the
construction of engines, tracks, etc. David was constantly writing up the
subject for his paper, and he fell into the habit of reading his articles
aloud to Marcia when they were finished. She would listen with breathless
admiration, sometimes combating a point ably, with the old vim she had
used in her discussion over the newspaper with her father, but mainly
agreeing with every word he wrote, and always eager to understand it down
to the minutest detail.
He always seemed pleased at her praise, and wrote on while she put away
the tea-things with a contented expression as though he had passed a high
critic, and need not fear any other. Once he looked up with a quizzical
expression and made a jocose remark about “our article,” taking her into a
sort of partnership with him in it, which set her heart to beating
happily, until it seemed as if she were really in some part at least
growing into his life.
But after all their companionship was a shy, distant one, more like that
of a brother and sister who had been separated all their lives and were
just beginning to get acquainted, and ever there was a settled sadness
about the lines of David’s mouth and eyes. They sat around one table now,
the evenings when they were at home, for there were still occasional
tea-drinkings at their friends’ houses; and there was one night a week
held religiously for a formal supper with the aunts, which David kindly
acquiesced in—more for the sake of his Aunt Clarinda than the
others,—whenever he was not detained by actual business. Then, too, there
was the weekly prayer meeting held at “early candle light” in the dim old
shadowed church. They always walked down the twilighted streets together,
and it seemed to Marcia there was a sweet solemnity about that walk. They
never said much to each other on the way. David seemed preoccupied with
holy thoughts, and Marcia walked softly beside him as if he had been the
minister, looking at him proudly and reverently now and then. David was
often called upon to pray in meeting and Marcia loved to listen to his
words. He seemed to be more intimate with God than the others, who were
mostly old men and prayed with long, rolling, solemn sentences that put
the whole community down into the dust and ashes before their Creator.
Marcia rather enjoyed the hour spent in the sombreness of the church, with
the flickering candle light making grotesque forms of shadows on the wall
and among the tall pews. The old minister reminded her of the one she had
left at home, though he was more learned and scholarly, and when he had
read the Scripture passages he would take his spectacles off and lay them
across the great Bible where the candle light played at glances with the
steel bows, and say: “Let us pray!” Then would come that soft stir and
hush as the people took the attitude of prayer. Marcia sometimes joined in
the prayer in her heart, uttering shy little petitions that were vague and
indefinite, and had to do mostly with the days when she was troubled and
homesick, and felt that David belonged wholly to Kate. Always her clear
voice joined in the slow hymns that quavered out now and again, lined out
to the worshippers.
Marcia and David went out from that meeting down the street to their home
with the hush upon them that must have been upon the Israelites of old
after they had been to the solemn congregation.
But once David had come in earlier than usual and had caught Marcia
reading the Scottish Chiefs, and while she started guiltily to be found
thus employed he smiled indulgently. After supper he said: “Get your book,
child, and sit down. I have some writing to do, and after it is done I
will read it to you.” So after that, more and more often, it was a book
that Marcia held in her hands in the long evenings when they sat together,
instead of some useful employment, and so her education progressed. Thus
she read Epictetus, Rasselas, The Deserted Village, The Vicar of
Wakefield, Paradise Lost, the Mysteries of the Human Heart, Marshall’s
Life of Columbus, The Spy, The Pioneers, and The Last of the Mohicans.
She had been asked to sing in the village choir. David sang a sweet high
tenor there, and Marcia’s voice was clear and strong as a blackbird’s,
with the plaintive sweetness of the wood-robin’s.
Hannah Heath was in the choir also, and jealously watched her every move,
but of this Marcia was unaware until informed of it by Miranda. With her
inherited sweetness of nature she scarcely credited it, until one Sunday,
a few weeks after the departure of Harry Temple, Hannah leaned forward
from her seat among the altos and whispered quite distinctly, so that
those around could hear—it was just before the service—“I’ve just had a
letter from your friend Mr. Temple. I thought you might like to know that
his cousin got well and he has gone back to New York. He won’t be
returning here this year. On some accounts he thought it was better not.”
It was all said pointedly, with double emphasis upon the “your friend,”
and “some accounts.” Marcia felt her cheeks glow, much to her vexation,
and tried to control her whisper to seem kindly as she answered
indifferently enough.
“Oh, indeed! But you must have made a mistake. Mr. Temple is a very slight
acquaintance of mine. I have met him only a few times, and I know nothing
about his cousin. I was not aware even that he had gone away.”
Hannah raised her speaking eyebrows and replied, quite loud now, for the
choir leader had stood up already with his tuning-fork in hand, and one
could hear it faintly twang:
“Indeed!”—using Marcia’s own word—and quite coldly, “I should have thought
differently from what Harry himself told me,” and there was that in her
tone which deepened the color in Marcia’s cheeks and caused it to stay
there during the entire morning service as she sat puzzling over what
Hannah could have meant. It rankled in her mind during the whole day. She
longed to ask David about it, but could not get up the courage.
She could not bear to revive the memory of what seemed to be her shame. It
was at the minister’s donation party that Hannah planted another thorn in
her heart,—Hannah, in a green plaid silk with delicate undersleeves of
lace, and a tiny black velvet jacket.
She selected a time when Lemuel was near, and when Aunt Amelia and Aunt
Hortense, who believed that all the young men in town were hovering about
David’s wife, sat one on either side of Marcia, as if to guard her for
their beloved nephew—who was discussing politics with Mr. Heath—and who
never seemed to notice, so blind he was in his trust of her.
So Hannah paused and posed before the three ladies, and with Lemuel
smiling just at her elbow, began in her affected way:
“I’ve had another letter from New York, from your friend Mr. Temple,” she
said it with the slightest possible glance over her shoulder to get the
effect of her words upon the faithful Lemuel, “and he tells me he has met
a sister of yours. By the way, she told him that David used to be very
fond of her before she was married. I suppose she’ll be coming to visit
you now she’s so near as New York.”
Two pairs of suspicious steely eyes flew like stinging insects to gaze
upon her, one on either side, and Marcia’s heart stood still for just one
instant, but she felt that here was her trying time, and if she would help
David and do the work for which she had become his wife, she must protect
him now from any suspicions or disagreeable tongues. By very force of will
she controlled the trembling of her lips.
“My sister will not likely visit us this winter, I think,” she replied as
coolly as if she had had a letter to that effect that morning, and then
she deliberately looked at Lemuel Skinner and asked if he had heard of the
offer of prizes of four thousand dollars in cash that the Baltimore and
Ohio railroad had just made for the most approved engine delivered for
trial before June first, 1831, not to exceed three and a half tons in
weight and capable of drawing, day by day, fifteen tons inclusive of
weight of wagons, fifteen miles per hour. Lemuel looked at her blankly and
said he had not heard of it. He was engaged in thinking over what Hannah
had said about a letter from Harry Temple. He cared nothing about
railroads.
“The second prize is thirty-five hundred dollars,” stated Marcia eagerly,
as though it were of the utmost importance to her.
“Are you thinking of trying for one of the prizes?” sneered Hannah,
piercing her with her eyes, and now indeed the ready color flowed into
Marcia’s face. Her ruse had been detected.
“If I were a man and understood machinery I believe I would. What a grand
thing it would be to be able to invent a thing like an engine that would
be of so much use to the world,” she answered bravely.
“They are most dangerous machines,” said Aunt Amelia disapprovingly. “No
right-minded Christian who wishes to live out the life his Creator has
given him would ever ride behind one. I have heard that boilers always
explode.”
“They are most unnecessary!” said Aunt Hortense severely, as if that
settled the question for all time and all railroad corporations.
But Marcia was glad for once of their disapproval and entered most
heartily into a discussion of the pros and cons of engines and steam,
quoting largely from David’s last article for the paper on the subject,
until Hannah and Lemuel moved slowly away. The discussion served to keep
the aunts from inquiring further that evening about the sister in New
York.
Marcia begged them to go with her into the kitchen and see the store of
good things that had been brought to the minister’s house by his loving
parishioners. Bags of flour and meal, pumpkins, corn in the ear, eggs, and
nice little pats of butter. A great wooden tub of doughnuts, baskets of
apples and quinces, pounds of sugar and tea, barrels of potatoes, whole
hams, a side of pork, a quarter of beef, hanks of yarn, and strings of
onions. It was a goodly array. Marcia felt that the minister must be
beloved by his people. She watched him and his wife as they greeted their
people, and wished she knew them better, and might come and see them
sometimes, and perhaps eventually feel as much at home with them as with
her own dear minister.
She avoided Hannah during the remainder of the evening. When the evening
was over and she went upstairs to get her wraps from the high four-poster
bedstead, she had almost forgotten Hannah and her ill-natured, prying
remarks. But Hannah had not forgotten her. She came forth from behind the
bed curtains where she had been searching for a lost glove, and remarked
that she should think Marcia would be lonely this first winter away from
home and want her sister with her a while.
But the presence of Hannah always seemed a mental stimulus to the spirit
of Marcia.
“Oh, I’m not in the least lonely,” she laughed merrily. “I have a great
many interesting things to do, and I love music and books.”
“Oh, yes, I forgot you are very fond of music. Harry Temple told me about
it,” said Hannah. Again there was that disagreeable hint of something more
behind her words, that aggravated Marcia almost beyond control. For an
instant a cutting reply was upon her lips and her eyes flashed fire; then
it came to her how futile it would be, and she caught the words in time
and walked swiftly down the stairs. David watching her come down saw the
admiring glances of all who stood in the hall below, and took her under
his protection with a measure of pride in her youth and beauty that he did
not himself at all realize. All the way home he talked with her about the
new theory of railroad construction, quite contented in her companionship,
while she, poor child, much perturbed in spirit, wondered how he would
feel if he knew what Hannah had said.
David fell into a deep study with a book and his papers about him, after
they had reached home. Marcia went up to her quiet, lonely chamber, put
her face in the pillow and thought and wept and prayed. When at last she
lay down to rest she did not know anything she could do but just to go on
living day by day and helping David all she could. At most there was
nothing to fear for herself, save a kind of shame that she had not been
the first sister chosen, and she found to her surprise that that was
growing to be deeper than she had supposed.
She wished as she fell asleep that her girl-dreams might have been left to
develop and bloom like other girls’, and that she might have had a real
lover,—like David in every way, yet of course not David because he was
Kate’s. But a real lover who would meet her as David had done that night
when he thought she was Kate, and speak to her tenderly.
One afternoon David, being wearied with an unusual round of taxing cares,
came home to rest and study up some question in his library.
Finding the front door fastened, and remembering that he had left his key
in his other pocket, he came around to the back door, and much preoccupied
with thought went through the kitchen and nearly to the hall before the
unusual sounds of melody penetrated to his ears. He stopped for an instant
amazed, forgetting the piano, then comprehending he wondered who was
playing. Perhaps some visitor was in the parlor. He would listen and find
out. He was weary and dusty with the soil of the office upon his hands and
clothes. He did not care to meet a visitor, so under cover of the music he
slipped into the door of his library across the hall from the parlor and
dropped into his great arm-chair.
Softly and tenderly stole the music through the open door, all about him,
like the gentle dropping of some tender psalms or comforting chapter in
the Bible to an aching heart. It touched his brow like a soft soothing
hand, and seemed to know and recognize all the agonies his heart had been
passing through, and all the weariness his body felt.
He put his head back and let it float over him and rest him. Tinkling
brooks and gentle zephyrs, waving of forest trees, and twitterings of
birds, calm lazy clouds floating by, a sweetness in the atmosphere, bells
far away, lowing herds, music of the angels high in heaven, the soothing
strain from each extracted and brought to heal his broken heart. It fell
like dew upon his spirit. Then, like a fresh breeze with zest and life
borne on, came a new strain, grand and fine and high, calling him to
better things. He did not know it was a strain of Handel’s music grown
immortal, but his spirit recognized the higher call, commanding him to
follow, and straightway he felt strengthened to go onward in the course he
had been pursuing. Old troubles seemed to grow less, anguish fell away
from him. He took new lease of life. Nothing seemed impossible.
Then she played by ear one or two of the old tunes they sang in church,
touching the notes tenderly and almost making them speak the words. It
seemed a benediction. Suddenly the playing ceased and Marcia remembered it
was nearly supper time.
He met her in the doorway with a new look in his eyes, a look of high
purpose and exultation. He smiled upon her and said: “That was good,
child. I did not know you could do it. You must give it to us often.”
Marcia felt a glow of pleasure in his kindliness, albeit she felt that the
look in his eyes set him apart and above her, and made her feel the child
she was. She hurried out to get the supper between pleasure and a nameless
unrest. She was glad of this much, but she wanted more, a something to
meet her soul and satisfy.