It was early in August when Mrs. Wealthy Brooks announced her speedy
return from Boston to Edgewood.
“It's jest as well Rose is comin' back,” said Mr. Wiley to his wife. “I
never favored her goin' to Boston, where that rosy-posy Claude feller
is. When he was down here he was kep' kind o' tied up in a box-stall,
but there he's caperin' loose round the pastur'.”
“I should think Rose would be ashamed to come back, after the way she's
carried on,” remarked Mrs. Wiley, “but if she needed punishment I guess
she's got it bein' comp'ny-keeper to Wealthy Ann Brooks. Bein' a church
member in good an' reg'lar standin', I s'pose Wealthy Ann'll go to
heaven, but I can only say that it would be a sight pleasanter place for
a good many if she did n't.”
“Rose has be'n foolish an' flirty an' wrong-headed,” allowed her
grandfather; “but it won't do no good to treat her like a hardened
criminile, same's you did afore she went away. She ain't hardly got her
wisdom teeth cut, in love affairs! She ain't broke the laws of the
State o' Maine, nor any o' the ten commandments; she ain't disgraced the
family, an' there's a chance for her to reform, seein' as how she ain't
twenty year old yet. I was turrible wild an' hot-headed myself afore you
ketched me an' tamed me down.”
“You ain't so tame now as I wish you was,” Mrs. Wiley replied testily.
“If you could smoke a clay pipe 't would calm your nerves, mother, an'
help you to git some philosophy inter you; you need a little philosophy
turrible bad.”
“I need patience consid'able more,” was Mrs. Wiley's withering retort.
“That's the way with folks,” said Old Kennebec reflectively, as he went
on peacefully puffing. “If you try to indoose 'em to take an int'rest in
a bran'-new virtue, they won't look at it; but they 'll run down a side
street an' buy half a yard more o' some turrible old shop-worn trait
o' character that they've kep' in stock all their lives, an' that
everybody's sick to death of. There was a man in Gard'ner--”
But alas! the experiences of the Gardiner man, though told in the same
delightful fashion that had won Mrs. Wiley's heart many years
before, now fell upon the empty air. In these years of Old Kennebec's
“anecdotage,” his pipe was his best listener and his truest confidant.
Mr. Wiley's constant intercessions with his wife made Rose's home-coming
somewhat easier, and the sight of her own room and belongings soothed
her troubled spirit, but the days went on, and nothing happened to
change the situation. She had lost a lover, that was all, and there were
plenty more to choose from, or there always had been; but the only one
she wanted was the one who made no sign. She used to think that she
could twist Stephen around her little finger; that she had only to
beckon to him and he would follow her to the ends of the earth. Now fear
had entered her heart. She no longer felt sure, because she no longer
felt worthy, of him, and feeling both uncertainty and unworthiness, her
lips were sealed and she was rendered incapable of making any bid for
forgiveness.
So the little world of Pleasant River went on, to all outward seeming,
as it had ever gone. On one side of the stream a girl's heart was
longing, and pining, and sickening, with hope deferred, and growing,
too, with such astonishing rapidity that the very angels marveled! And
on the other, a man's whole vision of life and duty was widening and
deepening under the fructifying influence of his sorrow.
The corn waved high and green in front of the vacant riverside cottage,
but Stephen sent no word or message to Rose. He had seen her once, but
only from a distance. She seemed paler and thinner, he thought,--the
result, probably, of her metropolitan gayeties. He heard no rumor of any
engagement and he wondered if it were possible that her love for Claude
Merrill had not, after all, been returned in kind. This seemed a wild
impossibility. His mind refused to entertain the supposition that any
man on earth could resist falling in love with Rose, or, having fallen
in, that he could ever contrive to climb out. So he worked on at his
farm harder than ever, and grew soberer and more careworn daily. Rufus
had never seemed so near and dear to him as in these weeks when he had
lived under the shadow of threatened blindness. The burning of the barn
and the strain upon their slender property brought the brothers together
shoulder to shoulder.
“If you lose your girl, Steve,” said the boy, “and I lose my eyesight,
and we both lose the barn, why, it'll be us two against the world, for a
spell!”
The “To Let” sign on the little house was an arrant piece of hypocrisy.
Nothing but the direst extremity could have caused him to allow an alien
step on that sacred threshold. The ploughing up of the flower-beds and
planting of the corn had served a double purpose. It showed the too
curious public the finality of his break with Rose and her absolute
freedom; it also prevented them from suspecting that he still entered
the place. His visits were not many, but he could not bear to let the
dust settle on the furniture that he and Rose had chosen together; and
whenever he locked the door and went back to the River Farm, he thought
of a verse in the Bible: “Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the
Garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.”
It was now Friday of the last week in August.
The river was full of logs, thousands upon thousands of them covering
the surface of the water from the bridge almost up to the Brier
Neighborhood. The Edgewood drive was late, owing to a long drought and
low water; but it was to begin on the following Monday, and Lije Dennett
and his under boss were looking over the situation and planning the
campaign. As they leaned over the bridge-rail they saw Mr. Wiley driving
clown the river road. When he caught sight of them he hitched the old
white horse at the corner and walked toward them, filling his pipe the
while in his usual leisurely manner. “We're not busy this forenoon,”
said Lije Dennett. “S'pose we stand right here and let Old Kennebec have
his say out for once. We've never heard the end of one of his stories,
an' he's be'n talkin' for twenty years.”
“All right,” rejoined his companion, with a broad grin at the idea. “I'm
willin', if you are; but who's goin' to tell our fam'lies the reason
we've deserted 'em? I bate yer we shan't budge till the crack o' doom.
The road commissioner'll come along once a year and mend the bridge
under our feet, but Old Kennebec'll talk straight on till the day o'
jedgment.”
Mr. Wiley had one of the most enjoyable mornings of his life, and felt
that after half a century of neglect his powers were at last appreciated
by his fellow citizens.
He proposed numerous strategic movements to be made upon the logs,
whereby they would move more swiftly than usual. He described several
successful drives on the Kennebec, when the logs had melted down the
river almost by magic, owing to his generalship; and he paid a tribute,
in passing, to the docility of the boss, who on that occasion had never
moved a single log without asking his advice.
From this topic he proceeded genially to narrate the life-histories
of the boss, the under boss, and several Indians belonging to the
crew,--histories in which he himself played a gallant and conspicuous
part. The conversation then drifted naturally to the exploits of
river-drivers in general, and Mr. Wiley narrated the sorts of feats in
log-riding, pick-pole-throwing, and the shooting of rapids that he had
done in his youth. These stories were such as had seldom been heard by
the ear of man; and, as they passed into circulation instantaneously, we
are probably enjoying some of them to this day.
They were still being told when a Crambry child appeared on the bridge,
bearing a note for the old man. Upon reading it he moved off rapidly in
the direction of the store, ejaculating: “Bless my soul! I clean forgot
that saleratus, and mother's settin' at the kitchen table with the bowl
in her lap, waitin' for it! Got so int'rested in your list'nin' I never
thought o' the time.”
The connubial discussion that followed this breach of discipline began
on the arrival of the saleratus, and lasted through supper; and Rose
went to bed almost immediately afterward for very dullness and apathy.
Her life stretched out before her in the most aimless and monotonous
fashion. She saw nothing but heartache in the future; and that she
richly deserved it made it none the easier to bear.
Feeling feverish and sleepless, she slipped on her gray Shaker cloak
and stole quietly downstairs for a breath of air. Her grandfather and
grandmother were talking on the piazza, and good humor seemed to have
been restored. “I was over to the tavern tonight,” she heard him say,
as she sat down at a little distance. “I was over to the tavern tonight,
an' a feller from Gorham got to talkin' an' braggin' 'bout what a stock
o' goods they kep' in the store over there. 'An',' says I, 'I bate ye
dollars to doughnuts that there hain't a darn thing ye can ask for at
Bill Pike's store at Pleasant River that he can't go down cellar, or up
attic, or out in the barn chamber an' git for ye.' Well, sir, he took me
up, an' I borrered the money of Joe Dennett, who held the stakes, an'
we went right over to Bill Pike's with all the boys follerin' on behind.
An' the Gorham man never let on what he was going to ask for till the
hull crowd of us got inside the store. Then says he, as p'lite as a
basket o' chips, 'Mr. Pike, I'd like to buy a pulpit if you can oblige
me with one.'
“Bill scratched his head an' I held my breath. Then says he, ''Pears to
me I'd ought to hev a pulpit or two, if I can jest remember where I keep
'em. I don't never cal'late to be out o' pulpits, but I'm so plagued for
room I can't keep 'em in here with the groc'ries. Jim (that's his new
store boy), you jest take a lantern an' run out in the far corner o' the
shed, at the end o' the hickory woodpile, an' see how many pulpits we've
got in stock!' Well, Jim run out, an' when he come back he says, 'We've
got two, Mr. Pike. Shall I bring one of 'em in?'
“At that the boys all bust out laughin' an' hollerin' an' tauntin' the
Gorham man, an' he paid up with a good will, I tell ye!”
“I don't approve of bettin',” said Mrs. Wiley grimly, “but I'll try to
sanctify the money by usin' it for a new wash-boiler.”
“The fact is,” explained Old Kennebec, somewhat confused, “that the boys
made me spend every cent of it then an' there.”
Rose heard her grandmother's caustic reply, and then paid no further
attention until her keen ear caught the sound of Stephen's name. It was
a part of her unhappiness that since her broken engagement no one
would ever allude to him, and she longed to hear him mentioned, so that
perchance she could get some inkling of his movements.
“I met Stephen tonight for the first time in a week,” said Mr. Wiley.
“He kind o' keeps out o' my way lately. He's goin' to drive his span
into Portland tomorrow mornin' and bring Rufus home from the hospital
Sunday afternoon. The doctors think they've made a success of their job,
but Rufus has got to be bandaged up a spell longer. Stephen is goin' to
join the drive Monday mornin' at the bridge here, so I'll get the latest
news o' the boy. Land! I'll be turrible glad if he gets out with his
eyesight, if it's only for Steve's sake. He's a turrible good fellow,
Steve is! He said something tonight that made me set more store by him
than ever. I told you I hed n't heard an unkind word ag'in' Rose sence
she come home from Boston, an' no more I hev till this evenin'. There
was two or three fellers talkin' in the post-office, an' they did n't
suspicion I was settin' on the steps outside the screen door. That Jim
Jenkins, that Rose so everlastin'ly snubbed at the tavern dance, spoke
up, an' says he: 'This time last year Rose Wiley could 'a' hed the
choice of any man on the river, an' now I bet ye she can't get nary
one.'
“Steve was there, jest goin' out the door, with some bags o' coffee an'
sugar under his arm.
“'I guess you're mistaken about that,' he says, speakin' up jest like
lightnin'; 'so long as Stephen Waterman's alive, Rose Wiley can have
him, for one; and that everybody's welcome to know.'
“He spoke right out, loud an' plain, jest as if he was readin' the
Declaration of Independence. I expected the boys would everlastin'ly
poke fun at him, but they never said a word. I guess his eyes flashed,
for he come out the screen door, slammin' it after him, and stalked by
me as if he was too worked up to notice anything or anybody. I did n't
foller him, for his long legs git over the ground too fast for me, but
thinks I, 'Mebbe I'll hev some use for my lemonade-set after all.'”
“I hope to the land you will,” responded Mrs. Wiley, “for I'm about sick
o' movin' it round when I sweep under my bed. And I shall be glad if
Rose an' Stephen do make it up, for Wealthy Ann Brooks's gossip is too
much for a Christian woman to stand.”