Edgewood, like all the other villages along the banks of the Saco,
is full of sunny slopes and leafy hollows. There are little, rounded,
green-clad hillocks that might, like their scriptural sisters, “skip
with joy”; and there are grand, rocky hills tufted with gaunt pine
trees--these leading the eye to the splendid heights of a neighbor
State, where snow-crowned peaks tower in the blue distance, sweeping the
horizon in a long line of majesty.
Tory Hill holds its own among the others for peaceful beauty and fair
prospect, and on its broad, level summit sits the white-painted Orthodox
Meeting-House. This faces a grassy common where six roads meet, as if
the early settlers had determined that no one should lack salvation
because of a difficulty in reaching its visible source.
The old church has had a dignified and fruitful past, dating from that
day in 1761 when young Paul Coffin received his call to preach at a
stipend of fifty pounds sterling a year; answering “that never having
heard of any Uneasiness among the people about his Doctrine or manner of
life, he declared himself pleased to Settle as Soon as might be Judged
Convenient.”
But that was a hundred and fifty years ago, and much has happened since
those simple, strenuous old days. The chastening hand of time has been
laid somewhat heavily on the town as well as on the church. Some of
her sons have marched to the wars and died on the field of honor; some,
seeking better fortunes, have gone westward; others, wearying of village
life, the rocky soil, and rigors of farm-work, have become entangled
in the noise and competition, the rush and strife, of cities. When the
sexton rings the bell nowadays, on a Sunday morning, it seems to have
lost some of its old-time militant strength, something of its hope and
courage; but it still rings, and although the Davids and Solomons,
the Matthews, Marks, and Pauls of former congregations have left few
descendants to perpetuate their labors, it will go on ringing as long as
there is a Tabitha, a Dorcas, a Lois, or a Eunice left in the community.
This sentiment had been maintained for a quarter of a century, but it
was now especially strong, as the old Tory Hill Meeting-House had been
undergoing for several years more or less extensive repairs. In point
of fact, the still stronger word, “improvements,” might be used
with impunity; though whenever the Dorcas Society, being female, and
therefore possessed of notions regarding comfort and beauty, suggested
any serious changes, the finance committees, which were inevitably
male in their composition, generally disapproved of making any impious
alterations in a tabernacle, chapel, temple, or any other building used
for purposes of worship. The majority in these august bodies asserted
that their ancestors had prayed and sung there for a century and a
quarter, and what was good enough for their ancestors was entirely
suitable for them. Besides, the community was becoming less and less
prosperous, and church-going was growing more and more lamentably
uncommon, so that even from a business standpoint, any sums expended
upon decoration by a poor and struggling parish would be worse than
wasted.
In the particular year under discussion in this story, the valiant
and progressive Mrs. Jeremiah Burbank was the president of the Dorcas
Society, and she remarked privately and publicly that if her ancestors
liked a smoky church, they had a perfect right to the enjoyment of it,
but that she did n't intend to sit through meeting on winter Sundays,
with her white ostrich feather turning gray and her eyes smarting and
watering, for the rest of her natural life.
Whereupon, this being in a business session, she then and there proposed
to her already hypnotized constituents ways of earning enough money to
build a new chimney on the other side of the church.
An awe-stricken community witnessed this beneficent act of vandalism,
and, finding that no thunderbolts of retribution descended from
the skies, greatly relished the change. If one or two aged persons
complained that they could not sleep as sweetly during sermon-time in
the now clear atmosphere of the church, and that the parson's eye
was keener than before, why, that was a mere detail, and could not
be avoided; what was the loss of a little sleep compared with the
discoloration of Mrs. Jere Burbank's white ostrich feather and the
smarting of Mrs. Jere Burbank's eyes?
A new furnace followed the new chimney, in due course, and as a sense of
comfort grew, there was opportunity to notice the lack of beauty.
Twice in sixty years had some well-to-do summer parishioner painted the
interior of the church at his own expense; but although the roof had
been many times reshingled, it had always persisted in leaking, so that
the ceiling and walls were disfigured by unsightly spots and stains and
streaks. The question of shingling was tacitly felt to be outside the
feminine domain, but as there were five women to one man in the church
membership, the feminine domain was frequently obliged to extend its
limits into the hitherto unknown. Matters of tarring and waterproofing
were discussed in and out of season, and the very school-children
imbibed knowledge concerning lapping, over-lapping, and cross-lapping,
and first and second quality of cedar shingles. Miss Lobelia Brewster,
who had a rooted distrust of anything done by mere man, created strife
by remarking that she could have stopped the leak in the belfry tower
with her red flannel petticoat better than the Milltown man with his
new-fangled rubber sheeting, and that the last shingling could have been
more thoroughly done by a “female infant babe”; whereupon the person
criticized retorted that he wished Miss Lobelia Brewster had a few
infant babes to “put on the job he'd like to see 'em try.” Meantime
several male members of the congregation, who at one time or another had
sat on the roof during the hottest of the dog-days to see that shingling
operations were conscientiously and skillfully performed, were very
pessimistic as to any satisfactory result ever being achieved.
“The angle of the roof--what they call the 'pitch'--they say that that's
always been wrong,” announced the secretary of the Dorcas in a business
session.
“Is it that kind of pitch that the Bible says you can't touch without
being defiled? If not, I vote that we unshingle the roof and alter the
pitch!” This proposal came from a sister named Maria Sharp, who had
valiantly offered the year before to move the smoky chimney with her own
hands, if the “menfolks” would n't.
But though the incendiary suggestion of altering the pitch was received
with applause at the moment, subsequent study of the situation proved
that such a proceeding was entirely beyond the modest means of the
society. Then there arose an ingenious and militant carpenter in
a neighboring village, who asserted that he would shingle the
meeting-house roof for such and such a sum, and agree to drink every
drop of water that would leak in afterward. This was felt by all parties
to be a promise attended by extraordinary risks, but it was accepted
nevertheless, Miss Lobelia Brewster remarking that the rash carpenter,
being already married, could not marry a Dorcas anyway, and even if he
died, he was not a resident of Edgewood, and therefore could be more
easily spared, and that it would be rather exciting, just for a change,
to see a man drink himself to death with rain-water. The expected
tragedy never occurred, however, and the inspired shingler fulfilled
his promise to the letter, so that before many months the Dorcas
Society proceeded, with incredible exertion, to earn more money, and the
interior of the church was neatly painted and made as fresh as a rose.
With no smoke, no rain, no snow nor melting ice to defile it, the good
old landmark that had been pointing its finger Heavenward for over a
century would now be clean and fragrant for years to come, and the weary
sisters leaned back in their respective rocking-chairs and drew deep
breaths of satisfaction.
These breaths continued to be drawn throughout an unusually arduous
haying season; until, in fact, a visitor from a neighboring city was
heard to remark that the Tory Hill Meeting-House would be one of the
best preserved and pleasantest churches in the whole State of Maine, if
only it were suitably carpeted.
This thought had secretly occurred to many a Dorcas in her hours
of pie-making, preserving, or cradle-rocking, but had been promptly
extinguished as flagrantly extravagant and altogether impossible. Now
that it had been openly mentioned, the contagion of the idea spread, and
in a month every sort of honest machinery for the increase of funds had
been set in motion: harvest suppers, pie sociables, old folks' concerts,
apron sales, and, as a last resort, a subscription paper, for the
church floor measured hundreds of square yards, and the carpet committee
announced that a good ingrain could not be purchased, even with the
church discount, for less than ninety-seven cents a yard.
The Dorcases took out their pencils, and when they multiplied the
surface of the floor by the price of the carpet per yard, each Dorcas
attaining a result entirely different from all the others, there was a
shriek of dismay, especially from the secretary, who had included in her
mathematical operation certain figures in her possession representing
the cubical contents of the church and the offending pitch of the roof,
thereby obtaining a product that would have dismayed a Croesus. Time
sped and efforts increased, but the Dorcases were at length obliged to
clip the wings of their desire and content themselves with carpeting
the pulpit and pulpit steps, the choir, and the two aisles, leaving the
floor in the pews until some future year.
How the women cut and contrived and matched that hardly-bought red
ingrain carpet, in the short December afternoons that ensued after its
purchase; so that, having failed to be ready for Thanksgiving, it could
be finished for the Christmas festivities!
They were sewing in the church, and as the last stitches were being
taken, Maria Sharp suddenly ejaculated in her impulsive fashion:--
“Would n't it have been just perfect if we could have had the pews
repainted before we laid the new carpet!”
“It would, indeed,” the president answered; “but it will take us all
winter to pay for the present improvements, without any thought of fresh
paint. If only we had a few more men-folks to help along!”
“Or else none at all!” was Lobelia Brewster's suggestion. “It's havin'
so few that keeps us all stirred up. If there wa'n't any anywheres,
we'd have women deacons and carpenters and painters, and get along first
rate; for somehow the supply o' women always holds out, same as it does
with caterpillars an' flies an' grasshoppers!”
Everybody laughed, although Maria Sharp asserted that she for one was
not willing to be called a caterpillar simply because there were too
many women in the universe.
“I never noticed before how shabby and scarred and dirty the pews are,”
said the minister's wife, as she looked at them reflectively.
“I've been thinking all the afternoon of the story about the poor old
woman and the lily,” and Nancy Wentworth's clear voice broke into the
discussion. “Do you remember some one gave her a stalk of Easter lilies
and she set them in a glass pitcher on the kitchen table? After looking
at them for a few minutes, she got up from her chair and washed the
pitcher until the glass shone. Sitting down again, she glanced at
the little window. It would never do; she had forgotten how dusty and
blurred it was, and she took her cloth and burnished the panes. Then she
scoured the table, then the floor, then blackened the stove before she
sat down to her knitting. And of course the lily had done it all, just
by showing, in its whiteness, how grimy everything else was.”
The minister's wife, who had been in Edgewood only a few months, looked
admiringly at Nancy's bright face, wondering that five-and-thirty years
of life, including ten of school-teaching, had done so little to mar its
serenity.
“The lily story is as true as the gospel!” she exclaimed, “and I can see
how one thing has led you to another in making the church comfortable.
But my husband says that two coats of paint on the pews would cost a
considerable sum.”
“How about cleaning them? I don't believe they've had a good hard
washing since the flood.” The suggestion came from Deacon Miller's wife
to the president.
“They can't even be scrubbed for less than fifteen or twenty dollars,
for I thought of that and asked Mrs. Simpson yesterday, and she said
twenty cents a pew was the cheapest she could do it for.”
“We've done everything else,” said Nancy Wentworth, with a twitch of her
thread; “why don't we scrub the pews? There's nothing in the Orthodox
creed to forbid, is there?”
“Speakin' o' creeds,” and here old Mrs. Sargent paused in her work,
“Elder Ransom from Acreville stopped with us last night, an' he tells
me they recite the Euthanasian Creed every few Sundays in the Episcopal
Church. I did n't want him to know how ignorant I was, but I looked up
the word in the dictionary. It means easy death, and I can't see any
sense in that, though it's a terrible long creed, the Elder says, an'
if it's any longer 'n ourn, I should think anybody _might_ easy die
learnin' it!”
“I think the word is Athanasian,” ventured the minister's wife.
“Elder Ransom's always plumb full o' doctrine,” asserted Miss Brewster,
pursuing the subject. “For my part, I'm glad he preferred Acreville to
our place. He was so busy bein' a minister, he never got round to bein'
a human creeter. When he used to come to sociables and picnics, always
lookin' kind o' like the potato blight, I used to think how complete
he'd be if he had a foldin' pulpit under his coat-tails; they make
foldin' beds nowadays, an' I s'pose they could make foldin' pulpits, if
there was a call.”
“Land sakes, I hope there won't be!” exclaimed Mrs. Sargent. “An'
the Elder never said much of anything either, though he was always
preachin'! Now your husband, Mis' Baxter, always has plenty to say after
you think he's all through. There's water in his well when the others is
all dry!”
“But how about the pews?” interrupted Mrs. Burbank. “I think Nancy's
idea is splendid, and I want to see it carried out. We might make it a
picnic, bring our luncheons, and work all together; let every woman in
the congregation come and scrub her own pew.”
“Some are too old, others live at too great a distance,” and the
minister's wife sighed a little; “indeed, most of those who once owned
the pews or sat in them seem to be dead, or gone away to live in busier
places.”
“I've no patience with 'em, gallivantin' over the earth,” and here
Lobelia rose and shook the carpet threads from her lap. “I should n't
want to live in a livelier place than Edgewood, seem's though! We wash
and hang out Mondays, iron Tuesdays, cook Wednesdays, clean house and
mend Thursdays and Fridays, bake Saturdays, and go to meetin' Sundays. I
don't hardly see how they can do any more'n that in Chicago!”
“Never mind if we have lost members!” said the indomitable Mrs. Burbank.
“The members we still have left must work all the harder. We'll each
clean our own pew, then take a few of our neighbors', and then hire Mrs.
Simpson to do the wainscoting and floor. Can we scrub Friday and lay the
carpet Saturday? My husband and Deacon Miller can help us at the end of
the week. All in favor manifest it by the usual sign. Contrary-minded?
It is a vote.”
There never were any contrary-minded when Mrs. Jere Burbank was in the
chair. Public sentiment in Edgewood was swayed by the Dorcas Society,
but Mrs. Burbank swayed the Dorcases themselves as the wind sways the
wheat.
II. The old meeting-house wore an animated aspect when the eventful
Friday came, a cold, brilliant, sparkling December day, with good
sleighing, and with energy in every breath that swept over the dazzling
snowfields. The sexton had built a fire in the furnace on the way to
his morning work--a fire so economically contrived that it would last
exactly the four or five necessary hours, and not a second more. At
eleven o'clock all the pillars of the society had assembled, having
finished their own household work and laid out on their respective
kitchen tables comfortable luncheons for the men of the family, if they
were fortunate enough to number any among their luxuries. Water was
heated upon oil-stoves set about here and there, and there was a brave
array of scrubbing-brushes, cloths, soap, and even sand and soda, for it
had been decided and manifested-by-the-usual-sign-and-no-contrary-
minded-and-it-was--a-vote that the dirt was to come off, whether the
paint came with it or not. Each of the fifteen women present selected a
block of seats, preferably one in which her own was situated, and all
fell busily to work.
“There is nobody here to clean the right-wing pews,” said Nancy
Wentworth, “so I will take those for my share.”
“You're not making a very wise choice, Nancy,” and the minister's wife
smiled as she spoke. “The infant class of the Sunday-School sits there,
you know, and I expect the paint has had extra wear and tear. Families
don't seem to occupy those pews regularly nowadays.”
“I can remember when every seat in the whole church was filled,
wings an' all,” mused Mrs. Sargent, wringing out her washcloth in a
reminiscent mood. “The one in front o' you, Nancy, was always called the
'deef pew' in the old times, and all the folks that was hard o' hearin'
used to congregate there.”
“The next pew has n't been occupied since I came here,” said the
minister's wife.
“No,” answered Mrs. Sargent, glad of any opportunity to retail
neighborhood news. “'Squire Bean's folks have moved to Portland to
be with the married daughter. Somebody has to stay with her, and her
husband won't. The 'Squire ain't a strong man, and he's most too old to
go to meetin' now. The youngest son just died in New York, so I hear.”
“What ailed him?” inquired Maria Sharp.
“I guess he was completely wore out takin' care of his health,” returned
Mrs. Sargent. “He had a splendid constitution from a boy, but he was
always afraid it would n't last him. The seat back o' 'Squire Bean's
is the old Peabody pew--ain't that the Peabody pew you're scrubbin',
Nancy?”
“I believe so,” Nancy answered, never pausing in her labors. “It's so
long since anybody sat there, it's hard to remember.”
“It is the Peabodys', I know it, because the aisle runs right up facin'
it. I can see old Deacon Peabody settin' in this end same as if 't was
yesterday.”
“He had died before Jere and I came back here to live,” said Mrs.
Burbank. “The first I remember, Justin Peabody sat in the end seat;
the sister that died, next, and in the corner, against the wall, Mrs.
Peabody, with a crape shawl and a palmleaf fan. They were a handsome
family. You used to sit with them sometimes, Nancy; Esther was great
friends with you.”
“Yes, she was,” Nancy replied, lifting the tattered cushion from its
place and brushing it; “and I with her. What is the use of scrubbing and
carpeting, when there are only twenty pew-cushions and six hassocks in
the whole church, and most of them ragged? How can I ever mend this?”
“I should n't trouble myself to darn other people's cushions!” This
unchristian sentiment came in Mrs. Miller's ringing tones from the rear
of the church.
“I don't know why,” argued Maria Sharp. “I'm going to mend my Aunt
Achsa's cushion, and we haven't spoken for years; but hers is the next
pew to mine, and I'm going to have my part of the church look decent,
even if she is too stingy to do her share. Besides, there are n't
any Peabodys left to do their own darning, and Nancy was friends with
Esther.”
“Yes, it's nothing more than right,” Nancy replied, with a note of
relief in her voice, “considering Esther.”
“Though he don't belong to the scrubbin' sex, there is one Peabody
alive, as you know, if you stop to think, Maria; for Justin's alive, and
livin' out West somewheres. At least, he's as much alive as ever he was;
he was as good as dead when he was twenty-one, but his mother was always
too soft-hearted to bury him.”
There was considerable laughter over this sally of the outspoken Mrs.
Sargent, whose keen wit was the delight of the neighborhood.
“I know he's alive and doing business in Detroit, for I got his address
a week or ten days ago, and wrote, asking him if he'd like to give a
couple of dollars toward repairing the old church.”
Everybody looked at Mrs. Burbank with interest.
“Has n't he answered?” asked Maria Sharp. Nancy Wentworth held her
breath, turned her face to the wall, and silently wiped the paint of the
wainscoting. The blood that had rushed into her cheeks at Mrs. Sargent's
jeering reference to Justin Peabody still lingered there for any one who
ran to read, but fortunately nobody ran; they were too busy scrubbing.
“Not yet. Folks don't hurry about answering when you ask them for a
contribution,” replied the president, with a cynicism common to persons
who collect funds for charitable purposes. “George Wickham sent me
twenty-five cents from Denver. When I wrote him a receipt, I said thank
you same as Aunt Polly did when the neighbors brought her a piece of
beef: 'Ever so much obleeged, but don't forget me when you come to kill
a pig.'--Now, Mrs. Baxter, you shan't clean James Bruce's pew, or what
was his before he turned Second Advent. I'll do that myself, for he used
to be in my Sunday-School class.”
“He's the backbone o' that congregation now,” asserted Mrs. Sargent,
“and they say he's goin' to marry Mrs. Sam Peters, who sings in their
choir, as soon as his year is up. They make a perfect fool of him in
that church.”
“You can't make a fool of a man that nature ain't begun with,” argued
Miss Brewster. “Jim Bruce never was very strong-minded, but I declare it
seems to me that when men lose their wives, they lose their wits! I
was sure Jim would marry Hannah Thompson that keeps house for him. I
suspected she was lookin' out for a life job when she hired out with
him.”
“Hannah Thompson may keep Jim's house, but she'll never keep Jim, that's
certain!” affirmed the president; “and I can't see that Mrs. Peters will
better herself much.”
“I don't blame her, for one!” came in no uncertain tones from the
left-wing pews, and the Widow Buzzell rose from her knees and approached
the group by the pulpit. “If there's anything duller than cookin' three
meals a day for yourself, and settin' down and eatin' 'em by yourself,
and then gettin' up and clearin' 'em away after yourself, I'd like to
know it! I should n't want any good-lookin', pleasant-spoken man to
offer himself to me without he expected to be snapped up, that's all!
But if you've made out to get one husband in York County, you can thank
the Lord and not expect any more favors. I used to think Tom was poor
comp'ny and complain I could n't have any conversation with him, but
land, I could talk at him, and there's considerable comfort in that.
And I could pick up after him! Now every room in my house is clean, and
every closet and bureau drawer, too; I can't start drawin' in another
rug, for I've got all the rugs I can step foot on. I dried so many
apples last year I shan't need to cut up any this season. My jelly and
preserves ain't out, and there I am; and there most of us are, in this
village, without a man to take steps for and trot 'round after! There's
just three husbands among the fifteen women scrubbin' here now, and the
rest of us is all old maids and widders. No wonder the men-folks die, or
move away, like Justin Peabody; a place with such a mess o' women-folks
ain't healthy to live in, whatever Lobelia Brewster may say.”
III. Justin Peabody had once faithfully struggled with the practical
difficulties of life in Edgewood, or so he had thought, in those old
days of which Nancy Wentworth was thinking when she wiped the paint
of the Peabody pew. Work in the mills did not attract him; he had no
capital to invest in a stock of goods for store-keeping; school-teaching
offered him only a pittance; there remained then only the farm, if he
were to stay at home and keep his mother company.
“Justin don't seem to take no holt of things,” said the neighbors.
“Good Heavens!” It seemed to him that there were no things to take hold
of! That was his first thought; later he grew to think that the trouble
all lay in himself, and both thoughts bred weakness.
The farm had somehow supported the family in the old Deacon's time, but
Justin seemed unable to coax a competence from the soil. He could, and
did, rise early and work late; till the earth, sow crops; but he could
not make the rain fall nor the sun shine at the times he needed them,
and the elements, however much they might seem to favor his neighbors,
seldom smiled on his enterprises. The crows liked Justin's corn better
than any other in Edgewood. It had a richness peculiar to itself, a
quality that appealed to the most jaded palate, so that it was really
worth while to fly over a mile of intervening fields and pay it the
delicate compliment of preference.
Justin could explain the attitude of caterpillars, worms, grasshoppers,
and potato-bugs toward him only by assuming that he attracted them as
the magnet in the toy boxes attracts the miniature fishes.
“Land o' liberty! look at 'em congregate!” ejaculated Jabe Slocum, when
he was called in for consultation. “Now if you'd gone in for breedin'
insecks, you could be as proud as Cuffy an' exhibit 'em at the County
Fair! They'd give yer prizes for size an' numbers an' speed, I guess!
Why, say, they're real crowded for room--the plants ain't give 'em
enough leaves to roost on! Have you tried 'Bug Death'?”
“It acts like a tonic on them,” said Justin gloomily.
“Sho! you don't say so! Now mine can't abide the sight nor smell of it.
What 'bout Paris green?”
“They thrive on it; it's as good as an appetizer.”
“Well,” said Jabe Slocum, revolving the quid of tobacco in his mouth
reflectively, “the bug that ain't got no objection to p'ison is a bug
that's got ways o' thinkin' an' feelin' an' reasonin' that I ain't able
to cope with! P'r'aps it's all a leadin' o' Providence. Mebbe it shows
you'd ought to quit farmin' crops an' take to raisin' live stock!”
Justin did just that, as a matter of fact, a year or two later; but
stock that has within itself the power of being “live” has also rare
qualification for being dead when occasion suits, and it generally
did suit Justin's stock. It proved prone not only to all the general
diseases that cattle-flesh is heir to, but was capable even of suicide.
At least, it is true that two valuable Jersey calves, tied to stakes on
the hillside, had flung themselves violently down the bank and strangled
themselves with their own ropes in a manner which seemed to show that
they found no pleasure in existence, at all events on the Peabody farm.
These were some of the little tragedies that had sickened young Justin
Peabody with life in Edgewood, and Nancy Wentworth, even then, realized
some of them and sympathized without speaking, in a girl's poor,
helpless way.
Mrs. Simpson had washed the floor in the right wing of the church and
Nancy had cleaned all the paint. Now she sat in the old Peabody pew
darning the forlorn, faded cushion with gray carpet-thread; thread as
gray as her own life.
The scrubbing-party had moved to its labors in a far corner of the
church, and two of the women were beginning preparations for the basket
luncheons. Nancy's needle was no busier than her memory. Long years ago
she had often sat in the Peabody pew, sometimes at first as a girl of
sixteen when asked by Esther, and then, on coming home from school at
eighteen, “finished,” she had been invited now and again by Mrs. Peabody
herself, on those Sundays when her own invalid mother had not attended
service.
Those were wonderful Sundays--Sundays of quiet, trembling peace and
maiden joy.
Justin sat beside her, and she had been sure then, but had long since
grown to doubt the evidence of her senses, that he, too, vibrated with
pleasure at the nearness. Was there not a summer morning when his hand
touched her white lace mitt as they held the hymn-book together, and the
lines of the
Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,
Thy better portion trace,
became blurred on the page and melted into something indistinguishable
for a full minute or two afterward? Were there not looks, and looks,
and looks? Or had she some misleading trick of vision in those days?
Justin's dark, handsome profile rose before her: the level brows and
fine lashes; the well-cut nose and lovable mouth--the Peabody mouth and
chin, somewhat too sweet and pliant for strength, perhaps. Then the eyes
turned to hers in the old way, just for a fleeting glance, as they had
so often done at prayer-meeting, or sociable, or Sunday service. Was
it not a man's heart she had seen in them? And oh, if she could only be
sure that her own woman's heart had not looked out from hers, drawn from
its maiden shelter in spite of all her wish to keep it hidden!
Then followed two dreary years of indecision and suspense, when Justin's
eyes met hers less freely; when his looks were always gloomy and
anxious; when affairs at the Peabody farm grew worse and worse; when his
mother followed her husband, the old Deacon, and her daughter Esther to
the burying-ground in the churchyard. Then the end of all things came,
the end of the world for Nancy: Justin's departure for the West in a
very frenzy of discouragement over the narrowness and limitation and
injustice of his lot; over the rockiness and barrenness and unkindness
of the New England soil; over the general bitterness of fate and the
“bludgeonings of chance.”
He was a failure, born of a family of failures. If the world owed him a
living, he had yet to find the method by which it could be earned. All
this he thought and uttered, and much more of the same sort. In these
days of humbled pride self was paramount, though it was a self he
despised. There was no time for love. Who was he for a girl to lean
upon?--he who could not stand erect himself!
He bade a stiff goodbye to his neighbors, and to Nancy he vouchsafed
little more. A handshake, with no thrill of love in it such as might
have furnished her palm, at least, some memories to dwell upon; a few
stilted words of leave-taking; a halting, meaningless sentence or
two about his “botch” of life--then he walked away from the Wentworth
doorstep. But halfway down the garden path, where the shriveled
hollyhocks stood like sentinels, did a wave of something different sweep
over him--a wave of the boyish, irresponsible past when his heart had
wings and could fly without fear to its mate--a wave of the past
that was rushing through Nancy's mind, wellnigh burying her in its
bitter-sweet waters. For he lifted his head, and suddenly retracing his
steps, he came toward her, and, taking her hand again, said forlornly:
“You 'll see me back when my luck turns, Nancy.”
Nancy knew that the words might mean little or much, according to the
manner in which they were uttered, but to her hurt pride and sore,
shamed woman-instinct, they were a promise, simply because there was a
choking sound in Justin's voice and tears in Justin's eyes. “You 'll see
me back when my luck turns, Nancy”; this was the phrase upon which she
had lived for more than ten years. Nancy had once heard the old parson
say, ages ago, that the whole purpose of life was the growth of the
soul; that we eat, sleep, clothe ourselves, work, love, all to give the
soul another day, month, year, in which to develop. She used to wonder
if her soul could be growing in the monotonous round of her dull duties
and her duller pleasures. She did not confess it even to herself;
nevertheless she knew that she worked, ate, slept, to live until
Justin's luck turned. Her love had lain in her heart a bird without
a song, year after year. Her mother had dwelt by her side and never
guessed; her father, too; and both were dead. The neighbors also,
lynx-eyed and curious, had never suspected. If she had suffered, no one
in Edgewood was any the wiser, for the maiden heart is not commonly worn
on the sleeve in New England. If she had been openly pledged to Justin
Peabody, she could have waited twice ten years with a decent show of
self-respect, for long engagements were viewed rather as a matter of
course in that neighborhood. The endless months had gone on since that
gray November day when Justin had said goodbye. It had been just before
Thanksgiving, and she went to church with an aching and ungrateful
heart. The parson read from the eighth chapter of St. Matthew, a most
unexpected selection for that holiday. “If you can't find anything else
to be thankful for,” he cried, “go home and be thankful you are not a
leper!”
Nancy took the drastic counsel away from the church with her, and it
was many a year before she could manage to add to this slender store
anything to increase her gratitude for mercies given, though all the
time she was outwardly busy, cheerful, and helpful.
Justin had once come back to Edgewood, and it was the bitterest drop
in her cup of bitterness that she was spending that winter in Berwick
(where, so the neighbors told him, she was a great favorite in society,
and was receiving much attention from gentlemen), so that she had never
heard of his visit until the spring had come again. Parted friends
did not keep up with one another's affairs by means of epistolary
communication, in those days, in Edgewood; it was not the custom. Spoken
words were difficult enough to Justin Peabody, and written words were
quite impossible, especially if they were to be used to define his
half-conscious desires and his fluctuations of will, or to recount his
disappointments and discouragements and mistakes.
IV. It was Saturday afternoon, the 24th of December, and the weary
sisters of the Dorcas band rose from their bruised knees and removed
their little stores of carpet-tacks from their mouths. This was a
feminine custom of long standing, and as no village dressmaker had
ever died of pins in the digestive organs, so were no symptoms of
carpet-tacks ever discovered in any Dorcas, living or dead. Men wondered
at the habit and reviled it, but stood confounded in the presence of its
indubitable harmlessness.
The red ingrain carpet was indeed very warm, beautiful, and comforting
to the eye, and the sisters were suitably grateful to Providence, and
devoutly thankful to themselves, that they had been enabled to buy,
sew, and lay so many yards of it. But as they stood looking at their
completed task, it was cruelly true that there was much left to do.
The aisles had been painted dark brown on each side of the red strips
leading from the doors to the pulpit, but the rest of the church floor
was “a thing of shreds and patches.” Each member of the carpet committee
had paid (as a matter of pride, however ill she could afford it) three
dollars and sixty-seven cents for sufficient carpet to lay in her own
pew; but these brilliant spots of conscientious effort only made the
stretches of bare, unpainted floor more evident. And that was not all.
Traces of former spasmodic and individual efforts desecrated the
present ideals. The doctor's pew had a pink-and-blue Brussels on it; the
lawyer's, striped stair-carpeting; the Browns from Deerwander sported
straw matting and were not abashed; while the Greens, the Whites, the
Blacks, and the Grays displayed floor coverings as dissimilar as their
names.
“I never noticed it before!” exclaimed Maria Sharp, “but it ain't
Christian, that floor! it's heathenish and ungodly!”
“For mercy's sake, don't swear, Maria,” said Mrs. Miller nervously.
“We've done our best, and let's hope that folks will look up and not
down. It is n't as if they were going to set in the chandelier; they'll
have something else to think about when Nancy gets her hemlock branches
and white carnations in the pulpit vases. This morning my Abner picked
off two pinks from a plant I've been nursing in my dining-room for
weeks, trying to make it bloom for Christmas. I slapped his hands good,
and it's been haunting me ever since to think I had to correct him the
day before Christmas.--Come, Lobelia, we must be hurrying!”
“One thing comforts me,” exclaimed the Widow Buzzell, as she took her
hammer and tacks preparatory to leaving; “and that is that the Methodist
meetin'-house ain't got any carpet at all.”
“Mrs. Buzzell, Mrs. Buzzell!” interrupted the minister's wife, with a
smile that took the sting from her speech. “It will be like punishing
little Abner Miller; if we think those thoughts on Christmas Eve, we
shall surely be haunted afterward.”
“And anyway,” interjected Maria Sharp, who always saved the situation,
“you just wait and see if the Methodists don't say they'd rather have
no carpet at all than have one that don't go all over the floor. I know
'em!” and she put on her hood and blanket-shawl as she gave one last
fond look at the improvements.
“I'm going home to get my supper, and come back afterward to lay the
carpet in my pew; my beans and brown bread will be just right by now,
and perhaps it will rest me a little; besides, I must feed 'Zekiel.”
As Nancy Wentworth spoke, she sat in a corner of her own modest rear
seat, looking a little pale and tired. Her waving dark hair had
loosened and fallen over her cheeks, and her eyes gleamed from under it
wistfully. Nowadays Nancy's eyes never had the sparkle of gazing into
the future, but always the liquid softness that comes from looking
backward.
“The church will be real cold by then, Nancy,” objected Mrs.
Burbank.--“Good-night, Mrs. Baxter.”
“Oh, no! I shall be back by half-past six, and I shall not work long.
Do you know what I believe I'll do, Mrs. Burbank, just through the
holidays? Christmas and New Year's both coming on Sunday this year,
there'll be a great many out to church, not counting the strangers
that'll come to the special service tomorrow. Instead of putting down my
own pew carpet that'll never be noticed here in the back, I'll lay it
in the old Peabody pew, for the red aisle-strip leads straight up to it;
the ministers always go up that side, and it does look forlorn.”
“That's so! And all the more because my pew, that's exactly opposite in
the left wing, is new carpeted and cushioned,” replied the president.
“I think it's real generous of you, Nancy, because the Riverboro folks,
knowing that you're a member of the carpet committee, will be sure to
notice, and think it's queer you have n't made an effort to carpet your
own pew.”
“Never mind!” smiled Nancy wearily. “Riverboro folks never go to bed on
Saturday nights without wondering what Edgewood is thinking about them!”
The minister's wife stood at her window watching Nancy as she passed the
parsonage.
“How wasted! How wasted!” she sighed. “Going home to eat her lonely
supper and feed 'Zekiel.... I can bear it for the others, but not for
Nancy.... Now she has lighted her lamp,... now she has put fresh pine
on the fire, for new smoke comes from the chimney. Why should I sit down
and serve my dear husband, and Nancy feed 'Zekiel?”
There was some truth in Mrs. Baxter's feeling. Mrs. Buzzell, for
instance, had three sons; Maria Sharp was absorbed in her lame father
and her Sunday-School work; and Lobelia Brewster would not have
considered matrimony a blessing, even under the most favorable
conditions. But Nancy was framed and planned for other things, and
'Zekiel was an insufficient channel for her soft, womanly sympathy and
her bright activity of mind and body.
'Zekiel had lost his tail in a mowing-machine; 'Zekiel had the asthma,
and the immersion of his nose in milk made him sneeze, so he was wont
to slip his paw in and out of the dish and lick it patiently for five
minutes together. Nancy often watched him pityingly, giving him kind
and gentle words to sustain his fainting spirit, but tonight she paid no
heed to him, although he sneezed violently to attract her attention.
She had put her supper on the lighted table by the kitchen window and
was pouring out her cup of tea, when a boy rapped at the door. “Here's
a paper and a letter, Miss Wentworth,” he said. “It's the second this
week, and they think over to the store that that Berwick widower must be
settin' up and takin' notice!”
She had indeed received a letter the day before, an unsigned
communication, consisting only of the words,--
Second Epistle of John. Verse x2.