MISS LAVENDER MAKES A GUESS.
There were signs of spring all over the land, and Gilbert resumed his
farm-work with the fresh zest which the sense of complete ownership
gave. He found a purchaser for his wagon, sold one span of horses, and
thus had money in hand for all the coming expenses of the year. His days
of hauling, of anxiety, of painful economy, were over; he rejoiced
in his fully developed and recognized manhood, and was cheered by the
respect and kindly sympathy of his neighbors.
Meanwhile, the gossip, not only of Kennett, but of Marlborough,
Pennsbury, and New-Garden, was as busy as ever. No subject of country
talk equalled in interest the loves of Gilbert Potter and Martha Deane.
Mark, too open-hearted to be intrusted with any secret, was drawn upon
wherever he went, and he revealed more (although he was by no means
Martha's confidant) than the public had any right to know. The idlers at
the Unicorn had seen Gilbert enter Dr. Deane's house, watched his return
therefrom, made shrewd notes of the Doctor's manner when he came forth
that evening, and guessed the result of the interview almost as well as
if they had been present.
The restoration of Gilbert's plundered money, and his hardly acquired
independence as a landholder, greatly strengthened the hands of his
friends. There is no logic so convincing as that of good luck; in
proportion as a man is fortunate (so seems to run the law of the world),
he attracts fortune to him. A good deed would not have helped Gilbert so
much in popular estimation, as this sudden and unexpected release from
his threatened difficulties. The blot upon his name was already growing
fainter, and a careful moral arithmetician might have calculated the
point of prosperity at which it would cease to be seen.
Nowhere was the subject discussed with greater interest and excitement
than in the Fairthorn household. Sally, when she first heard the news,
loudly protested her unbelief; why, the two would scarcely speak to each
other, she said; she had seen Gilbert turn his back on Martha, as if he
couldn't bear the sight of her; it ought to be, and she would be glad if
it was, but it wasn't!
When, therefore, Mark confirmed the report, and was led on, by degrees,
to repeat Gilbert's own words, Sally rushed out into the kitchen with a
vehemence which left half her apron hanging on the door-handle, torn off
from top to bottom in her whirling flight, and announced the fact to her
mother.
Joe, who was present, immediately cried out,--
“O, Sally! now I may tell about Mark, mayn't I?”
Sally seized him by the collar, and pitched him out the kitchen-door.
Her face was the color of fire.
“My gracious, Sally!” exclaimed Mother Fairthorn, in amazement; “what's
that for?”
But Sally had already disappeared, and was relating her trouble to
Mark, who roared with wicked laughter, whereupon she nearly cried with
vexation.
“Never mind,” said he; “the boy's right. I told Gilbert this very
afternoon that it was about time to speak to the old man; and he allowed
it was. Come out with me and don't be afeard--I'll do the talkin'.”
Hand in hand they went into the kitchen, Sally blushing and hanging
back a little. Farmer Fairthorn had just come in from the barn, and
was warming his hands at the fire. Mother Fairthorn might have had her
suspicions, but it was her nature to wait cheerfully, and say nothing.
“See here, Daddy and Mammy!” said Mark, “have either o' you any
objections to Sally and me bein' a pair?”
Farmer Fairthorn smiled, rubbed his hands together, and turning to his
wife, asked,--“What has Mammy to say to it?”
She looked up at Mark with her kindly eyes, in which twinkled something
like a tear, and said,--“I was guessin' it might turn out so between you
two, and if I'd had anything against you, Mark, I wouldn't ha' let it
run on. Be a steady boy, and you'll make Sally a steady woman. She's had
pretty much her own way.”
Thereupon Farmer Fairthorn, still rubbing his hands, ventured to
remark,--“The girl might ha' done worse.” This was equivalent to a
hearty commendation of the match, and Mark so understood it. Sally
kissed her mother, cried a little, caught her gown on a corner of the
kitchen-table, and thus the betrothal was accepted as a family fact.
Joe and Jake somewhat disturbed the bliss of the evening, it is true, by
bursting into the room from time to time, staring significantly at the
lovers, and then rushing out again with loud whoops and laughter.
Sally could scarcely await the coming of the next day, to visit Martha
Deane. At first she felt a little piqued that she had not received the
news from Martha's own lips, but this feeling speedily vanished in
the sympathy with her friend's trials. She was therefore all the more
astonished at the quiet, composed bearing of the latter. The tears she
had expected to shed were not once drawn upon.
“O, Martha!” she cried, after the first impetuous outburst of
feeling,--“to think that it has all turned out just as I wanted! No, I
don't quite mean that; you know I couldn't wish you to have crosses; but
about Gilbert! And it's too bad--Mark has told me dreadful things, but I
hope they're not all true; you don't look like it; and I'm so glad, you
can't think!”
Martha smiled, readily untangling Sally's thoughts, and said,--“I
mustn't complain, Sally. Nothing has come to pass that I had not
prepared my mind to meet. We will only have to wait a little longer than
you and Mark.”
“No you won't!” Sally exclaimed. “I'll make Mark wait, too! And
everything must be set right--somebody must do something! Where's Betsy
Lavender?”
“Here!” answered the veritable voice of the spinster, through the open
door of the small adjoining room.
“Gracious, how you frightened me!” cried Sally. “But, Betsy, you seem
to be able to help everybody; why can't you do something for Martha and
Gilbert?”
“Martha and Gilbert. That's what I ask myself, nigh onto a hundred times
a day, child. But there's things that takes the finest kind o' wit to
see through, and you can't make a bead-purse out of a sow's-ear, neither
jerk Time by the forelock, when there a'n't a hair, as you can see, to
hang on to. I dunno as you'll rightly take my meanin'; but never mind,
all the same, I'm flummuxed, and it's the longest and hardest flummux o'
my life!”
Miss Betsy Lavender, it must here be explained, was more profoundly
worried than she was willing to admit. Towards Martha she concealed the
real trouble of her mind under the garb of her quaint, jocular speech,
which meant much or little, as one might take it. She had just returned
from one of her social pilgrimages, during which she had heard nothing
but the absorbing subject of gossip. She had been questioned and
cross-questioned, entreated by many, as Sally had done, to do something
(for all had great faith in her powers), and warned by a few not to
meddle with what did not concern her. Thus she had come back that
morning, annoyed, discomposed, and more dissatisfied with herself than
ever before, to hear Martha's recital of what had taken place during her
absence.
In spite of Martha's steady patience and cheerfulness, Miss Lavender
knew that the painful relation in which she stood to her father would
not be assuaged by the lapse of time. She understood Dr. Deane's nature
quite as well as his daughter, and was convinced that, for the present,
neither threats nor persuasions would move his stubborn resistance.
According to the judgment of the world (the older part of it, at least),
he had still right on his side. Facts were wanted; or, rather, the _one_
fact upon which resistance was based must be removed.
With all this trouble, Miss Lavender had a presentiment that there was
work for her to do, if she could only discover what it was. Her faith
in her own powers of assistance was somewhat shaken, and she therefore
resolved to say nothing, promise nothing, until she had both hit upon a
plan and carried it into execution.
Two or three days after Sally's visit, on a mild, sunny morning in the
beginning of April, she suddenly announced her intention of visiting the
Potter farm-house.
“I ha'n't seen Mary since last fall, you know, Martha,” she said; “and
I've a mortal longin' to wish Gilbert joy o' his good luck, and maybe
say a word to keep him in good heart about you. Have you got no message
to send by me?”
“Only my love,” Martha answered; “and tell him how you left me. He knows
I will keep my word; when I need his counsel, I will go to him.”
“If more girls talked and thought that way, us women'd have fairer
shakes,” Miss Lavender remarked, as she put on her cloak and pattens.
When she reached the top of the hill overlooking the glen, she noticed
fresh furrows in the field on her left. Clambering through the fence,
she waited until the heads of a pair of horses made their appearance,
rising over the verge of the hill. As she conjectured, Gilbert Potter
was behind them, guiding the plough-handle. He was heartily glad to see
her, and halted his team at the corner of the “land.”
“I didn't know as you'd speak to me,” said she, with assumed grimness.
“Maybe you wouldn't, if I didn't come direct from _her._ Ah, you needn't
look wild; it's only her love, and what's the use, for you had it
already; but never mind, lovyers is never satisfied; and she's chipper
and peart enough, seein' what she has to bear for your sake, but she
don't mind that, on the contrary, quite the reverse, and I'm sure you
don't deserve it!”
“Did she tell you what passed between us, the last time?” Gilbert asked.
“The last time. Yes. And jokin' aside, which often means the contrary in
my crooked ways o' talkin', a'n't it about time somethin' was done?”
“What can be done?”
“I dunno,” said Miss Lavender, gravely. “You know as well as I do what's
in the way, or rather none of us knows _what_ it is, only _where_ it is;
and a thing unbeknown may be big or little; who can tell? And latterly
I've thought, Gilbert, that maybe your mother is in the fix of a man
I've heerd tell on, that fell into a pit, and ketched by the last bush,
and hung on, and hung on, till he could hold on no longer; so he gev
himself up to death, shet his eyes and let go, and lo and behold! the
bottom was a matter o' six inches under his feet! Leastways, everything
p'ints to a sort o' skeary fancy bein' mixed up with it, not a thing
to laugh at, I can tell you, but as earnest as sin, for I've seen the
likes, and maybe easy to make straight if you could only look into it
yourself; but you think there's no chance o' that?”
“No,” said Gilbert. “I've tried once too often, already; I shall not try
again.”
“Try again,” Miss Lavender repeated. “Then why not?”--but here she
paused, and seemed to meditate. The fact was, she had been tempted to
ask Gilbert's advice in regard to the plan she was revolving in her
brain. The tone of his voice, however, was discouraging; she saw that
he had taken a firm and gloomy resolution to be silent,--his uneasy air
hinted that he desired to avoid further talk on this point. So, with a
mental reprimand of the indiscretion into which her sympathy with him
had nearly betrayed her, she shut her teeth and slightly bit her tongue.
“Well, well,” she said; “I hope it'll come out before you're both old
and sour with waitin', that's all! I don't want such true-love as
your'n to be like firkin-butter at th' end; for as fresh, and firm, and
well-kep' as you please, it ha'n't got the taste o' the clover and the
sweet-grass; but who knows? I may dance at your weddin', after all,
sooner'n I mistrust; and so I'm goin' down to spend the day with y'r
mother!”
She strode over the furrow and across the weedy sod, and Gilbert resumed
his ploughing. As she approached the house, Miss Lavender noticed that
the secured ownership of the property was beginning to express itself
in various slight improvements and adornments. The space in front of the
porch was enlarged, and new flower-borders set along the garden-paling;
the barn had received a fresh coat of whitewash, as well as the trunks
of the apple-trees, which shone like white pillars; and there was a
bench with bright straw bee-hives under the lilac-bush. Mary Potter was
at work in the garden, sowing her early seeds.
“Well, I do declare!” exclaimed Miss Lavender, after the first cordial
greetings were over. “Seems almost like a different place, things is so
snugged up and put to rights.”
“Yes,” said Mary Potter; “I had hardly the heart, before, to make it
everything that we wanted; and you can't think what a satisfaction I
have in it now.”
“Yes, I can! Give me the redishes, while you stick in them beets. I've
got a good forefinger for plantin' 'em,--long and stiff; and I can't
stand by and see you workin' alone, without fidgets.”
Miss Lavender threw off her cloak and worked with a will. When the
gardening was finished, she continued her assistance in the house, and
fully earned her dinner before she sat down to it. Then she insisted on
Mary Potter bringing out her sewing, and giving her something more to
do; it was one of her working-days, she said; she had spent rather an
idle winter; and moreover, she was in such spirits at Gilbert's good
fortune, that she couldn't be satisfied without doing something for him,
and to sew up the seams of his new breeches was the very thing! Never
had she been so kind, so cheerful, and so helpful, and Mary Potter's
nature warmed into happy content in her society.
No one should rashly accuse Miss Lavender if there was a little design
in this. The task she had set herself to attempt was both difficult and
delicate. She had divided it into two portions, requiring very different
tactics, and was shrewd enough to mask, in every possible way, the
one from which she had most hopes of obtaining a result. She made no
reference, at first, to Gilbert's attachment to Martha Deane, but seemed
to be wholly absorbed in the subject of the farm; then, taking wide
sweeps through all varieties of random gossip, preserving a careless,
thoughtless, rattling manner, she stealthily laid her pitfalls for the
unsuspecting prey.
“I was over't Warren's t' other day,” she said, biting off a thread,
“and Becky had jist come home from Phildelphy. There's new-fashioned
bonnets comin' up, she says. She stayed with Allen's, but who they are
I don't know. Laws! now I think on it, Mary, you stayed at Allen's, too,
when you were there!”
“No,” said Mary Potter, “it was at--Treadwell's.”
“Treadwell's? I thought you told me Allen's. All the same to me, Allen
or Treadwell; I don't know either of 'em. It's a long while since I've
been in Phildelphy, and never likely to go ag'in. I don't fancy trampin'
over them hard bricks, though, to be sure, a body sees the fashions; but
what with boxes tumbled in and out o' the stores, and bar'ls rollin',
and carts always goin' by, you're never sure o' y'r neck; and I was
sewin' for Clarissa Lee, Jackson that was, that married a dry goods man,
the noisiest place that ever was; you could hardly hear yourself talk;
but a body gets used to it, in Second Street, close't to Market, and
were you anywheres near there?”
“I was in Fourth Street,” Mary Potter answered, with a little
hesitation. Miss Lavender secretly noticed her uneasiness, which, she
also remarked, arose not from suspicion, but from memory.
“What kind o' buttons are you goin' to have, Mary?” she asked. “Horn
splits, and brass cuts the stuff, and mother o' pearl wears to eternity,
but they're so awful dear. Fourth Street, you said? One street's like
another to me, after you get past the corners. I'd always know Second,
though, by the tobacco-shop, with the wild Injun at the door, liftin'
his tommyhawk to skulp you--ugh!--but never mind, all the same, skulp
away for what I care, for I a'n't likely ever to lay eyes on you ag'in!”
Having thus, with perhaps more volubility than was required, covered up
the traces of her design, Miss Lavender cast about how to commence the
second and more hopeless attack. It was but scant intelligence which she
had gained, but in that direction she dared not venture further. What
she now proposed to do required more courage and less cunning.
Her manner gradually changed; she allowed lapses of silence to occur,
and restricted her gossip to a much narrower sweep. She dwelt, finally,
upon the singular circumstances of Sandy Flash's robbery of Gilbert, and
the restoration of the money.
“Talkin' o' Deb. Smith,” she then said, “Mary, do you mind when I was
here last harvest, and the talk we had about Gilbert? I've often thought
on it since, and how I guessed right for once't, for I know the ways o'
men, if I am an old maid, and so it's come out as I said, and a finer
couple than they'll make can't be found in the county!”
Mary Potter looked up, with a shadow of the old trouble on her face.
“You know all about it, Betsy, then?” she asked.
“Bless your soul, Mary, everybody knows about it! There's been nothin'
else talked about in the neighborhood for the last three weeks; why,
ha'n't Gilbert told you o' what passed between him and Dr. Deane, and
how Martha stood by him as no woman ever stood by a man?”
An expression of painful curiosity, such as shrinks from the knowledge
it craves, came into Mary Potter's eyes. “Gilbert has told me nothing,”
she said, “since--since that time.”
“That time. I won't ask you _what_ time; it's neither here nor there;
but you ought to know the run o' things, when it's common talk.” And
therewith Miss Lavender began at the beginning, and never ceased until
she had brought the history, in all its particulars, down to that very
day. She did not fail to enlarge on the lively and universal Interest in
the fortunes of the lovers which was manifested by the whole community.
Mary Potter's face grew paler and paler as she spoke, but the tears
which some parts of the recital called forth were quenched again, as it
seemed, by flashes of aroused pride.
“Now,” Miss Lavender concluded, “you see just how the matter stands.
I'm not hard on you, savin' and exceptin' that facts is hard, which
they sometimes are I don't deny; but here we're all alone with our two
selves, and you'll grant I'm a friend, though I may have queer ways
o' showin' it; and why shouldn't I say that all the trouble comes o'
Gilbert bearin' your name?”
“Don't I know it!” Mary Potter cried. “Isn't my load heaped up heavier
as it comes towards the end? What can I do but wait till the day when I
can give Gilbert his father's name?”
“His father's name! Then you can do it, some day? I suspicioned as much.
And you've been bound up from doin' it, all this while,--and that's
what's been layin' so heavy on your mind, wasn't it?”
“Betsy,” said Mary Potter, with sudden energy, “I'll say as much as
I dare, so that I may keep my senses. I fear, sometimes, I'll break
together for want of a friend like you, to steady me while I walk the
last steps of my hard road. Gilbert was born in wedlock; I'm not bound
to deny that; but I committed a sin,--not the sin people charge me
with,--and the one that persuaded me to it has to answer for more than
I have. I bound myself not to tell the name of Gilbert's father,--not to
say where or when I was married, not to do or say anything to put
others On the track, until--but there's the sin and the trouble and the
punishment all in one. If I told that, you might guess the rest. You
know what a name I've had to bear, but I've taken my cross and fought
my way, and put up with all things, that I might deserve the fullest
justification the Lord has in His hands. If I had known all beforehand,
Betsy,--but I expected the release in a month or two, and it hasn't come
in twenty-five years!”
“Twenty-five years!” repeated Miss Lavender, heedless of the drops
running down her thin face. “If there was a sin, Mary, even as big as a
yearlin' calf, you've worked off the cost of it, years ago! If you break
your word now, you'll stand justified in the sight o' the Lord, and of
all men, and even if you think a scrimption of it's left, remember your
dooty to Gilbert, and take a less justification for his sake!”
“I've been tempted that way, Betsy, but the end I wanted has been set
in my mind so long I can't get it out. I've seen the Lord's hand so
manifest in these past days, that I'm fearsome to hurry His judgments.
And then, though I try not to, I'm waiting from day to day,--almost from
hour to hour,--and it seems that if I was to give up and break my
vow, He would break it for me the next minute afterwards, to punish my
impatience!”
“Why,” Miss Lavender exclaimed, “it must be your husband's death you're
waitin' for!”
Mary Potter started up with a wild look of alarm. “No--no--not his
death!” she cried. “I should want him to--be living! Ask me no more
questions; forget what I've said, if it don't incline you to encourage
me! That's why I've told you so much!”
Miss Lavender instantly desisted from further appeal. She rose, put her
arm around Mary Potter's waist, and said,--“I didn't mean to frighten or
to worry you, deary. I may think your conscience has worked on itself,
like, till it's ground a bit too sharp; but I see just how you're
fixed, and won't say another word, without it's to give comfort. An open
confession's good for the soul, they say, and half a loaf's better than
no bread, and you haven't violated your word a bit, and so let it do you
good!”
In fact, when Mary Potter grew calm, she was conscious of a relief the
more welcome because it was so rare in her experience. Miss Lavender,
moreover, hastened to place Gilbert's position in a more cheerful light,
and the same story, repeated for a different purpose, now assumed quite
another aspect. She succeeded so well, that she left behind her only
gratitude for the visit.
Late in the afternoon she came forth from the farmhouse, and commenced
slowly ascending the hill. She stopped frequently and looked about her;
her narrow forehead was wrinkled, and the base of her long nose was set
between two deep furrows. Her lips were twisted in a pucker of great
perplexity, and her eyes were nearly closed in a desperate endeavor to
solve some haunting, puzzling question.
“It's queer,” she muttered to herself, when she had nearly reached
the top of the hill,--“it's mortal queer! Like a whip-poor-will on
a moonlight night: you hear it whistlin' on the next fence-rail, it
doesn't seem a yard off; you step up to ketch it, and there's nothin'
there; then you step back ag'in, and 'whip-poor-will! whip-poor-will!'
whistles louder 'n ever,--and so on, the whole night, and some folks
says they can throw their voices outside o' their bodies, but that's
neither here nor there.
“Now why can't I ketch hold o' this thing? It isn't a yard off me, I'll
be snaked! And I dunno what ever she said that makes me think so, but
I feel it in my bones, and no use o' callin' up words; it's one o' them
things that comes without callin', when they come at all, and I'm so
near guessin' I'll have no peace day or night.”
With many similar observations she resumed her walk, and presently
reached the border of the ploughed land. Gilbert's back was towards her;
he was on the descending furrow. She looked at him, started, suddenly
lost her breath, and stood with open mouth and wide, fixed eyes.
“HA-HA-A! HA-HA-A-A!”
Loud and shrill her cry rang across the valley. It was like the yell of
a war-horse, scenting the battle afar off. All the force of her lungs
and muscles expended itself in the sound.
The next instant she dropped upon the moist, ploughed earth, and sat
there, regardless of gown and petticoat. “Good Lord!” she repeated to
herself, over and over again. Then, seeing Gilbert approaching, startled
by the cry, she slowly arose to her feet.
“A good guess,” she said to herself, “and what's more, there's ways
o' provin' it. He's comin', and he mustn't know; you're a fool, Betsy
Lavender, not to keep your wits better about you, and go rousin' up the
whole neighborhood; good look that your face is crooked and don't show
much o' what's goin' on inside!”
“What's the matter, Betsy?” asked Gilbert.
“Nothin'--one o' my crazy notions,” she said. “I used to holler like a
kildeer when I was a girl and got out on the Brandywine hills alone,
and I s'pose I must ha' thought about it, and the yell sort o' come
of itself, for it just jerked me off o' my feet; but you needn't tell
anybody that I cut such capers in my old days, not that folks'd much
wonder, but the contrary, for they're used to me.”
Gilbert laughed heartily, but he hardly seemed satisfied with the
explanation. “You're all of a tremble,” he said.
“Am I? Well, it's likely,--and my gownd all over mud; but there's one
favor I want to ask o' you, and no common one, neither, namely, the loan
of a horse for a week or so.”
“A horse?” Gilbert repeated.
“A horse. Not Roger, by no means; I couldn't ask that, and he don't
know me, anyhow; but the least rough-pacin' o' them two, for I've got
considerable ridin' over the country to do, and I wouldn't ask you, but
it's a busy time o' year, and all folks isn't so friendly.”
“You shall have whatever you want, Betsy,” he said. “But you've heard
nothing?”--
“Nothin' o' one sort or t'other. Make yourself easy, lad.”
Gilbert, however, had been haunted by new surmises in regard to Dr.
Deane. Certain trifles had returned to his memory since the interview,
and rather than be longer annoyed with them, he now opened his heart to
Miss Lavender.
A curious expression came over her face. “You've got sharp eyes and ears
Gilbert,” she said. “Now supposin' I wanted your horse o' purpose to
clear up your doubts in a way to satisfy you, would you mind lettin' me
have it?”
“Take even Roger!” he exclaimed.
“No, that bay'll do. Keep thinkin' _that's_ what I'm after, and ask me
no more questions.”
She crossed the ploughed land, crept through the fence, and trudged up
the road. When a clump of bushes on the bank had hid Gilbert from
her sight, she stopped, took breath, and chuckled with luxurious
satisfaction.
“Betsy Lavender,” she said, with marked approval, “you're a cuter old
thing than I took you to be!”