MORNING
The sun was not yet up, but the sky was brightening in lovely pale
tints, pearl and opal and rose, when Mary Sands opened the shed door and
tripped lightly down the path to the barn. She unbarred the great doors,
and entering the dim, fragrant place, was greeted by a five-fold whinny
from the stalls, and a trampling of twenty friendly hoofs.
"Good morning, hossies!" she said cheerily. "I expect you're surprised
to see me. I've got to get breakfast for all hands this mornin', and I'm
goin' to begin with you. Mornin', colty! mornin', marey! mornin', John!
mornin', old hoss! Oh! you naughty old hoss, who ever would have
thought of your actin' that way at your time of life! I _was_
surprised--my goodness! who's this in the box-stall? Calvin Parks's
Hossy? What upon earth! Why, you darlin', where's your master?"
Hossy's explanations, though fervid, and accompanied by agreeable
rubbings of a soft brown nose on her shoulder, were not lucid, and Mary
gazed about her in bewilderment.
"You never run away, hossy?" she asked; "you wouldn't do that!
Then--where is he?"
Just then a golden finger of sunshine slanted through the dusty window
and fell on the harness-room door, which stood slightly ajar. Mary Sands
ran to the door and peeped in. There, in the one chair tilted back, his
feet on the stove, his head against the farther wall, sat Calvin Parks,
sound asleep.
"Oh! you blessed creatur'!" cried Mary under her breath. She stood
looking at him, taking swift note of his appearance.
"He's sick!" she said; "or he's been through the wars somehow. He looks
completely tuckered out. There! he is not fit to be round alone, and
that's the livin' truth. Oh dear! 'tis cold as a stone here; he'll get
his death. Calvin! Mr. Parks! Wake up, won't you? Wake up!"
Now Calvin Parks had been dreaming, a thing that seldom occurred in the
simple organism of his brain. He dreamed that he was on a lonely road,
with high, rocky banks on either side; and that he was pursued by two
black hooded snakes with glittering eyes, that reared and hissed on
either side of him, and darted at him as he sped along. He tried to cry
out, but found no voice. As he panted on in terror and anguish, thinking
every moment to feel the venomed fangs in his flesh, suddenly a bird
came flying down, a blue bird with a white breast, and took the evil
creatures one after the other and flung them far from his path. And as
he looked, still panting and breathless, the bird turned into Mary Sands
in her blue dress and white apron, and she cried--"Wake up, Calvin
Parks! wake up!"
He opened his eyes, dim and bewildered with sleep. The vision was still
before him, the trim blue and white figure, the pretty brown hair, the
hazel eyes full of anxious tenderness. Still bewildered, still only half
awake, he opened his arms and gathered the little figure into them. "My
woman!" he said. "My woman, before God and while I live."
"Oh! yes, Calvin!" said Mary Sands; and she hid her head on his broad
breast and sobbed, a little happy sob.
So they stood for a moment, heaven as near to their middle-aged hearts
as to any boy and girl lovers under the sun; then suddenly Calvin put
her from him with a quick movement, and stepped back.
"I forgot!" he cried. "Mary, I forgot. I--I spoke too soon."
"Too soon!" echoed Mary Sands.
"I've no right to you yet!" he cried. "I thought I had; I forgot last
night. Mary, I won't ask for you till I have a right to. Yesterday I had
the right, or thought I had; to-day I haven't. You--you'd better forget
what I said--no! don't forget one word of it, but--but put it away
till--some day--" his voice broke, and he turned away with something
like a sob.
Mary Sands eyed him keenly; then she spoke in her usual quiet cheerful
tone.
"Mr. Parks, would you just as lives light a fire in the stove? It's
perishin' cold here."
Calvin started, and flung himself furiously at the pile of kindlings in
the corner.
"That shows!" he muttered, as he stuffed them into the stove with a
reckless hand. "That shows the kind I am, lettin' you freeze while I
talk foolishness. Here!" He took off his coat, and would have wrapped it
round her, but she put it back quietly and decidedly.
"You put that coat on again, Mr. Parks. I'll wrap this robe round me;
there! now I'm warm as toast, and I should be pleased if you would sit
down on that bucket and tell me what's happened; why you come here in
the dead of night, and--and all about it."
Calvin sat down on the bucket and looked at her helplessly.
"Mary," he said, "you know I've marked you for mine this long while
back."
"Yes!" said Mary simply. "I know that, Calvin."
"I said I wouldn't ask you to take no such rollin' stone as I've been,
until I had something laid by. I put a figger to it. I thought if I had
five hundred dollars in the bank and the route doin' well, as it has
been right along lately, I could ask you to believe that--that I'd
stopped rollin' and rovin', and you might regard me as a stiddy
character, and one that was--not worthy of you, not by a long chalk--but
aimin' so to be, and with a beginnin' made that way. Mary, yesterday
mornin' I had that five hundred dollars, and I was the happiest man in
the State of Maine. I was comin' to you to-day, after puttin' it in the
bank, and--well, no need to tell you what I was goin' to say."
"I thought you had said it!" said Mary meekly; and there was a twinkle
in her voice, though she kept her eyes resolutely cast down.
Calvin groaned. "Don't!" he said. "Don't rub it in, Mary! Last night--I
lost pretty near the half of it. Don't ask me how; it's gone, and I've
got to airn it over again. Now--" he spoke rapidly, stumbling over his
words, his eyes fixed imploringly on her. "I've got to get away, Mary. I
can't stay round here just yet awhile. I made up my mind last night,
drivin' over here from that--that place. I'm goin' a-rollin' and
a-rovin' once more, till I get that money back."
"Is that so?" asked Mary quietly. "Where was you thinkin' of goin',
Calvin?"
"I'm goin' back to the Mary Sands!" he said. "She's in port, loadin' up
with lumber for Floridy, and the skipper wants to make a change. I--I'll
be glad to see the Mary again, and I expect they'll take me on; what
say?"
"I expect they will!" said Mary dryly.
Then, all in a moment, she was laughing and crying on his shoulder.
"Calvin!" she cried. "Calvin, you foolish creatur'! you don't need to go
to Bath to find the Mary Sands. _I'm_ Mary Sands!"
"You!" said Calvin Parks.
She glanced up at him, and broke down again in laughter and tears.
"You needn't look like a stone image!" she cried. "'Tis so! I've been
Mary Sands right along. It sounded so comical your callin' me Hands, I
wouldn't let Cousins tell you. If I've stopped them once I have twenty
times. Besides, you was so mad at a woman's bein' owner of your
schooner, I couldn't help but laugh every time I thought of it. I s'pose
I've been foolish about it, but it's been a kind of play to me all this
time. Calvin, you make me act real forth-puttin', but--if you _won't_
speak for yourself--there! will you be master of the Mary Sands, afloat
and shore?"
She held out her hands with a pretty gesture. Calvin grasped them so
hard that she cried out, and his face, white again under its brown, set
in dogged lines of gentle obstinacy, the most hopeless kind.
"I can't!" he said. "Mary, all the more I can't because you are a rich
woman. You see that, don't you? I'm sure you must see that, Mary. Soon
as ever I've aimed that money again--"
"Oh! plague take the money," cried Mary, her patience giving way. "Give
it to the cat; she's fitter to take care of it than you are, Calvin
Parks. There! you do try me. You ain't fit to live alone, no more
than--and my goodness gracious me!" she cried, her voice changing
suddenly; "if I hadn't clean forgotten Cousins! Calvin, you've _got_ to
stay by us, you've just plain and simple got to! Hush! hold your
obstinate tongue and listen to me. Cousin Sam had an accident yesterday.
He was out with the old hoss of all, and they met the snow-plough, and
if that old creatur' didn't leap over the stone wall and smash the
sleigh to kindlin' wood! Cousin Sam's all stove up inside, he thinks,
but I'm in hopes not. There's no bones broke, and I guess all he got was
a good shakin' up; but anyway, he's in bed, and can't move hand or foot.
And I can't take care of him and Cousin Sim, and keep house, and see to
the stock and poultry too, Calvin Parks; now I can't! I've _got_ to have
help!"
At this moment a jingling of bells was heard outside; Mary stepped to
the window. "Who on earth comes here?" she exclaimed. "Of all the
queer-lookin' turnouts--do look here, Calvin!"
Calvin looked. In an old-fashioned high-backed sleigh, drawn by an
ancient white horse, sat a little old man so wrapped in furs that only
the tip of a frosty nose could be seen. He was waving whip and reins
wildly, and shouting "Somebody come! somebody come!"
"Gosh!" said Calvin Parks. He ran out, and Mary Sands followed him
wondering.
"Mr. Cheeseman, I want to know if this is you!"
"I got it!" gasped the old man.
"You got it!" repeated Calvin. "You've got your everlastin', I expect,
out this time o' day at your age. You come in to the fire, sir!"
Without more ado, he lifted the old man in his arms, carried him bodily
into the little room, and set him down in the chair. Mr. Cheeseman was
still breathless with frost and excitement, and gasped painfully, his
eyes starting from his head.
"I got it!" he repeated. "I got it, Calvin!"
"Fetch your breath, old gentleman," said Calvin soothingly. "You ain't
got that, anyway. What is it you have got? the rheumatiz?"
"The money!" cried the old candy-maker. "Your money, friend Calvin,
every cent of it, except what was spent, and that warn't much."
Calvin stood as if turned to stone.
"What do you mean?" he faltered.
"I mistrusted all along!" cried Mr. Cheeseman. "I kep' askin' myself all
day yesterday, where did she get that money? I never slep' last night
for askin' it. Suddin, along about four o'clock this mornin', by the
livin' Jingo, I see the whole contraption. I got up that minute of time,
hitched up old Major, and drove straight out there to tell you what I
suspicioned. You warn't there. They was awake, the two of 'em, and
scared at your bein' out all night as they thought, and when I called
and knocked they come down, and a sight they was. Talk of witches!
'Where's Calvin Parks?' I says; and they made answer you hadn't come in,
and they'd sat up 'most all night for you, and was scairt to death, and
all the rest of it. 'Show me his room!' I says. They made objections to
that, and I just cleared 'em to one side and stomped up, and they after
me. When they see your things were gone, Phrony give a screech fit to
wake the dead, and the old woman set up a gibberin' about Jordan rollin'
past, and dust and ashes, and I don't know what all. My eye and Phrony's
lit on this paper"--he held out a crumpled scrap--"the same moment, and
we run for it together, but I got my claws in it first, and read it out
loud. Then, 'Miss Marlin,' I says, quiet like, 'I'll take that money!'
'What money?' she says, and added language that ain't fit for this lady
to hear.
"'You know what money!' I says. 'I'm a special constable, and my team is
outside. You'll hand me that money or see the inside of the lock-up
within half an hour!' I says. She used awful language then; gorry! if
you'll excuse the expression, ma'am, I never heard such language, and
I'm no chicken. But the old woman throws up her hands, and screeches
out, 'A jidgment, Phrony! a jidgment! Jesus walkin' on the waves, and
Jordan rollin' past! Git it out of the bureau drawer!'
"I'm old, ma'am, but I'm tol'able spry. I got to the door and into the
front room before Phrony did; and when she see me at the bureau she gave
one awful yell and fell down in some kind of fit. I took the money. The
old woman was kind of clawin' the air over her, and sayin' 'Dust and
ashes! dust and ashes! hell fire's lightin' up!' 'Twarn't no agreeable
sight, and I come away. And--and here's the money, friend Calvin, and I
wish you joy with it."
Calvin Parks took the money with a dazed look.
"Mr. Cheeseman," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. There don't
seem to be anything _to_ say that'll express what I feel--"
"You might introduce me to this lady!" said the old man with a frosty
twinkle.
"Darn my hide!" cried Calvin Parks. "Somebody put me under the pump,
will they? Mr. Ivory Cheeseman, let me make you acquainted with Mis'
Calvin Parks as is to be! her present name is Ha--Sands!"
"Miss Hassands," said Mr. Cheeseman with a magnificent bow, "I am
pleased to meet you, I'm sure!"
Mary became rather hysterical at this, and it was necessary for Calvin
to soothe and quiet her; Mr. Cheeseman meanwhile inspected the harnesses
critically, and expressed his opinion that they was a first-rate set
out, and no mistake.
While they were thus occupied, the barn door was suddenly flung open,
and a thin, peevish voice cried, "Cousin! Cousin Mary! where in time
have you got to?"
The trio started and turned. In the doorway stood Mr. Simeon Sill, in
carpet slippers and overcoat, the latter displaying a valance of
flowered dressing-gown. A woollen shawl was tied over his head, and from
it his eyes peered disconsolately.
"Where have you got to?" he repeated querulously. "Breakfast time, and
the kittle bilin' over, and no table set, and Sam'l waitin'--"
At this moment he caught sight of the three conspirators, and stopped
open-mouthed, his eyes goggling in his head.
"Oh! Cousin Sim, you'll get cold!" cried Mary Sands, hastily smoothing
her hair. "Do go back to the house! I'm comin' right in."
"Mornin', Sim!" said Calvin Parks genially. "Come out to see the stock,
have ye? I call that smart, now!"
"Mr. Simeon Sill, I believe!" said Mr. Cheeseman with dignity. "Pleased
to make your acquaintance, sir!"
Mr. Sim looked from one to another, still gaping; and finally his gaze
fixed itself sternly on Mary Sands.
"I don't know what's goin' on in my barn," he said, "nor I don't know
what dum foolishness you folks is up to; but I give you to understand
that my brother Sam'l is waitin' for his med'cine!"
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Wooing of Calvin Parks, by Laura E. Richards