with some bustle, and taking her stand, until he should be seated,
within the darkest corner of the hearth. "I've had to turn to an' clear
up, or I shouldn't ha' found a spot as big as a hin's egg to sleep in
to-night. Maybe you don't know it, but my niece Isabel's got no more
faculty about a house 'n I have for preachin'--not a mite."
The parson had seated himself by the stove, and was laboriously removing
his arctics. Isabel's eyes danced behind her spectacles as she thought
how large and ministerial they were. She could not see them, for the
spectacles dazzled her, but she remembered exactly how they looked.
Everything about him filled her with glee, now that she was safe, though
within his reach. "'Now, infidel,'" she said noiselessly, "'I have thee
on the hip!'"
The parson had settled himself in his accustomed attitude when making
parochial calls. He put the tips of his fingers together, and opened
conversation in his tone of mild good-will:--
"I don't seem to be able to place you. A relative of Miss Isabel's, did
you say?"
She laughed huskily. She was absorbed in putting more suet into her
voice.
"You make me think of uncle Peter Nudd," she replied, "when he was took
up into Bunker Hill Monument. Albert took him, one o' the boys that
lived in Boston. Comin' down, they met a woman Albert knew, an' he
bowed. Uncle Peter looked round arter her, an' then he says to Albert,
'I dunno 's I rightly remember who that is!'"
The parson uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way. The old
lady began to seem to him a thought too discursive, if not hilarious.
"I know so many of the people in the various parishes"--he began, but he
was interrupted without compunction.
"You never'd know me. I'm from out West. Isabel's father's brother
married my uncle--no, I would say my step-niece. An' so I'm her aunt. By
adoption, 't ennyrate. We al'ays call it so, leastways when we're
writin' back an' forth. An' I've heard how Isabel was goin' on, an' so I
ketched up my bunnit, an' put for Tiverton. 'If she ever needed her own
aunt,' says I--'her aunt by adoption--she needs her now.'"
Once or twice, during the progress of this speech, the visitor had
shifted his position, as if ill at ease. Now he bent forward, and peered
at his hostess.
"Isabel is well?" he began tentatively.
"Well enough! But, my sakes! I'd ruther she'd be sick abed or paraletic
than carry on as she does. Slack? My soul! I wisht you could see her
sink closet! I wisht you could take one look over the dirty dishes she
leaves round, not washed from one week's end to another!"
"But she's always neat. She looks like an--an angel!"
Isabel could not at once suppress the gratified note which crept of
itself into her voice.
"That's the outside o' the cup an' platter," she said knowingly. "I
thank my stars she ain't likely to marry. She'd turn any man's house
upside down inside of a week."
The parson made a deprecating noise in his throat. He seemed about to
say something, and thought better of it.
"It may be," he hesitated, after a moment,--"it may be her studies take
up too much of her time. I have always thought these elocution
lessons"--
"Oh, my land!" cried Isabel, in passionate haste. She leaned forward as
if she would implore him. "That's her only salvation. That's the makin'
of her. If you stop her off there, I dunno but she'd jine a circus or
take to drink! Don't you dast to do it! I'm in the family, an' I know."
The parson tried vainly to struggle out of his bewilderment.
"But," said he, "may I ask how you heard these reports? Living in
Illinois, as you do--did you say Illinois or Iowa?"
"Neither," answered Isabel desperately. "'Way out on the plains. It's
the last house afore you come to the Rockies. Law! you can't tell how a
story gits started, nor how fast it will travel. 'T ain't like a gale o'
wind; the weather bureau ain't been invented that can cal'late it. I
heard of a man once that told a lie in California, an' 'fore the week
was out it broke up his engagement in New Hampshire. There's the
'tater-bug--think how that travels! So with this. The news broke out in
Missouri, an' here I be."
"I hope you will be able to remain."
"Only to-night," she said in haste. More and more nervous, she was
losing hold on the sequence of her facts. "I'm like mortal life, here
to-day an' there to-morrer. In the mornin' I sha'n't be found." ("But
Isabel will," she thought, from a remorse which had come too late, "and
she'll have to lie, or run away. Or cut a hole in the ice and drown
herself!")
"I'm sorry to have her lose so much of your visit," began the parson
courteously, but still perplexing himself over the whimsies of an old
lady who flew on from the West, and made nothing of flying back. "If I
could do anything towards finding her"--
"I know where she is," said Isabel unhappily. "She's as well on 't as
she can be, under the circumstances. There's on'y one thing you could
do. If you should be willin' to keep it dark't you've seen me, I should
be real beholden to ye. You know there ain't no time to call in the
neighborhood, an' such things make talk, an' all. An' if you don't speak
out to Isabel, so much the better. Poor creatur', she's got enough to
bear without that!" Her voice dropped meltingly in the keenness of her
sympathy for the unfortunate girl who, embarrassed enough before, had
deliberately set for herself another snare. "I feel for Isabel," she
continued, in the hope of impressing him with the necessity for silence
and inaction. "I do feel for her! Oh, gracious me! What's that?"
A decided rap had sounded at the front door. The parson rose also,
amazed at her agitation.
"Somebody knocked," he said. "Shall I go to the door?"
"Oh, not yet, not yet!" cried Isabel, clasping her hands under her
cashmere shawl. "Oh, what shall I do?"
Her natural voice had asserted itself, but, strangely enough, the parson
did not comprehend. The entire scene was too bewildering. There came a
second knock. He stepped toward the door, but Isabel darted in front of
him. She forgot her back breadth, and even through that dim twilight the
scarlet of her gown shone ruddily out. She placed herself before the
door.
"Don't you go!" she entreated hoarsely. "Let me think what I can say."
Then the parson had his first inkling that the strange visitor must be
mad. He wondered at himself for not thinking of it before, and the idea
speedily coupled itself with Isabel's strange disappearance. He stepped
forward and grasped her arm, trembling under the cashmere shawl.
"Woman," he demanded sternly, "what have you done with Isabel North?"
Isabel was thinking; but the question, twice repeated, brought her to
herself. She began to laugh, peal on peal of hysterical mirth; and the
parson, still holding her arm, grew compassionate.
"Poor soul!" said he soothingly. "Poor soul! sit down here by the stove
and be calm--be calm!"
Isabel was overcome anew.
"Oh, it isn't so!" she gasped, finding breath. "I'm not crazy. Just let
me be!"
She started under his detaining hand, for the knock had come again.
Wrenching herself free, she stepped into the entry. "Who's there?" she
called.
"It's your aunt Mary Ellen," came a voice from the darkness. "Open the
door."
"O my soul!" whispered Isabel to herself. "Wait a minute!" she
continued. "Only a minute!"
She thrust the parson back into the sitting-room, and shut the door. The
act relieved her. If she could push a minister, and he could obey in
such awkward fashion, he was no longer to be feared. He was even to be
refused. Isabel felt equal to doing it.
"Now, look here," said she rapidly; "you stand right there while I take
off these things. Don't you say a word. No, Mr. Bond, don't you speak!"
Bonnet, false front, and spectacles were tossed in a tumultuous pile.
"Isabel!" gasped the parson.
"Keep still!" she commanded. "Here! fold this shawl!"
The parson folded it neatly, and meanwhile Isabel stepped out of the
mutilated dress, and added that also to the heap. She opened the blue
chest, and packed the articles hastily within. "Here!" said she; "toss
me the shawl. Now if you say one word--Oh, parson, if you only will keep
still, I'll tell you all about it! That is, I guess I can!" And leaving
him standing in hopeless coma, she opened the door.
"Well," said aunt Mary Ellen, stepping in, "I'm afraid your hinges want
greasing. How do you do, Isabel? How do you do?" She put up her face and
kissed her niece. Aunt Mary Ellen was so pretty, so round, so small,
that she always seemed timid, and did the commonest acts of life with a
gentle grace. "I heard voices," she said, walking into the sitting-room.
"Sadie here?"
The parson had stepped forward, more bent than usual, for he was peering
down into her face.
"Mary Ellen!" he exclaimed.
The little woman looked up at him--very sadly, Isabel thought.
"Yes, William," she answered. But she was untying her bonnet, and she
did not offer to shake hands.
Isabel stood by with downcast eyes, waiting to take her things, and
aunt Mary Ellen looked searchingly up at her as she laid her mittens on
the pile. The girl, without a word, went into the bedroom, and her aunt
followed her.
"Isabel," said she rapidly, "I saw the chest. Have you burnt the
things?"
"No," answered Isabel in wonder. "No."
"Then don't you! don't you touch 'em for the world." She went back into
the sitting-room, and Isabel followed. The candle was guttering, and
aunt Mary Ellen pushed it toward her. "I don't know where the snuffers
are," she said. "Lamp smoke?"
Isabel did not answer, but she lighted the lamp. She had never seen her
aunt so full of decision, so charged with an unfamiliar power. She felt
as if strange things were about to happen. The parson was standing
awkwardly. He wondered whether he ought to go. Aunt Mary Ellen smoothed
her brown hair with both hands, sat down, and pointed to his chair.
"Sit a spell," she said. "I guess I shall have something to talk over
with you."
The parson sat down. He tried to put his fingers together, but they
trembled, and he clasped his hands instead.
"It's a long time since we've seen you in Tiverton," he began.
"It would have been longer," she answered, "but I felt as if my niece
needed me."
Here Isabel, to her own surprise, gave a little sob, and then another.
She began crying angrily into her handkerchief.
"Isabel," said her aunt, "is there a fire in the kitchen?"
"Yes," sobbed the girl.
"Well, you go out there and lie down on the lounge till you feel better.
Cover you over, and don't be cold. I'll call you when there's anything
for you to do."
Tall Isabel rose and walked out, wiping her eyes. Her little aunt sat
mistress of the field. For many minutes there was silence, and the clock
ticked. The parson felt something rising in his throat. He blew his nose
vigorously.
"Mary Ellen"--he began. "But I don't know as you want me to call you
so!"
"You can call me anything you're a mind to," she answered calmly. She
was near-sighted, and had always worn spectacles. She took them off and
laid them on her knee. The parson moved involuntarily in his chair. He
remembered how she had used to do that when they were talking
intimately, so that his eager look might not embarrass her. "Nothing
makes much difference when folks get to be as old as you and I are."
"I don't feel old," said the parson resentfully. "I do _not_! And you
don't look so."
"Well, I am. We're past our youth. We've got to the point where the
only way to renew it is to look out for the young ones."
The parson had always had with her a way of reading her thought and
bursting out boyishly into betrayal of his own.
"Mary Ellen," he cried, "I never should have explained it so, but Isabel
looks like you!"
She smiled sadly. "I guess men make themselves think 'most anything they
want to," she answered. "There may be a family look, but I can't see it.
She's tall, too, and I was always a pint o' cider--so father said."
"She's got the same look in her eyes," pursued the parson hotly. "I've
always thought so, ever since she was a little girl."
"If you begun to notice it then," she responded, with the same gentle
calm, "you'd better by half ha' been thinking of your own wife and her
eyes. I believe they were black."
"Mary Ellen, how hard you are on me! You did't use to be. You never were
hard on anybody. You wouldn't have hurt a fly."
Her face contracted slightly. "Perhaps I wouldn't! perhaps I wouldn't!
But I've had a good deal to bear this afternoon, and maybe I do feel a
little different towards you from what I ever have felt. I've been
hearing a loose-tongued woman tell how my own niece has been made
town-talk because a man old enough to know better was running after
her. I said, years ago, I never would come into this place while you
was in it; but when I heard that, I felt as if Providence had marked out
the way. I knew I was the one to step into the breach. So I had Tim
harness up and bring me over, and here I am. William, I don't want you
should make a mistake at your time of life!"
The minister seemed already a younger man. A strong color had risen in
his face. He felt in her presence a fine exhilaration denied him through
all the years without her. Who could say whether it was the woman
herself or the resurrected spirit of their youth? He did not feel like
answering her. It was enough to hear her voice. He leaned forward,
looking at her with something piteous in his air.
"Mary Ellen," he ventured, "you might as well say 'another mistake.' I
did make one. You know it, and I know it."
She looked at him with a frank affection, entirely maternal. "Yes,
William," she said, with the same gentle firmness in her voice, "we've
passed so far beyond those things that we can speak out and feel no
shame. You did make a mistake. I don't know as 't would be called so to
break with me, but it was to marry where you did. You never cared about
her. You were good to her. You always would be, William; but 't was a
shame to put her there."
The parson had locked his hands upon his knees. He looked at them, and
sad lines of recollection deepened in his face.
"I was desperate," he said at length, in a low tone. "I had lost you.
Some men take to drink, but that never tempted me. Besides, I was a
minister. I was just ordained. Mary Ellen, do you remember that day?"
"Yes," she answered softly, "I remember." She had leaned back in her
chair, and her eyes were fixed upon vacancy with the suffused look of
tears forbidden to fall.
"You wore a white dress," went on the parson, "and a bunch of Provence
roses. It was June. Your sister always thought you dressed too gay, but
you said to her, 'I guess I can wear what I want to, to-day of all
times.'"
"We won't talk about her. Yes, I remember."
"And, as God is my witness, I couldn't feel solemn, I was so glad! I was
a minister, and my girl--the girl that was going to marry me--sat down
there where I could see her, dressed in white. I always thought of you
afterwards with that white dress on. You've stayed with me all my life,
just that way."
Mary Ellen put up her hand with a quick gesture to hide her middle-aged
face. With a thought as quick, she folded it resolutely upon the other
in her lap. "Yes, William," she said. "I was a girl then. I wore white
a good deal."
But the parson hardly heeded her. He was far away. "Mary Ellen," he
broke out suddenly, a smile running warmly over his face, and creasing
his dry, hollow cheeks, "do you remember that other sermon, my trial
one? I read it to you, and then I read it to Parson Sibley. And do you
remember what he said?"
"Yes, I remember. I didn't suppose you did." Her cheeks were pink. The
corners of her mouth grew exquisitely tender.
"You knew I did! 'Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair;
thou hast doves' eyes.' I took that text because I couldn't think of
anything else all summer. I remember now it seemed to me as if I was in
a garden--always in a garden. The moon was pretty bright, that summer.
There were more flowers blooming than common. It must have been a good
year. And I wrote my sermon lying out in the pine woods, down where you
used to sit hemming on your things. And I thought it was the Church, but
do all I could, it was a girl--or an angel!"
"No, no!" cried Mary Ellen, in bitterness of entreaty.
"And then I read the sermon to you under the pines, and you stopped
sewing, and looked off into the trees; and you said 't was beautiful.
But I carried it to old Parson Sibley that night, and I can see just how
he looked sitting there in his study, with his great spectacles pushed
up on his forehead, and his hand drumming on a book. He had the
dictionary put in a certain place on his table because he found he'd got
used to drumming on the Bible, and he was a very particular man. And
when I got through reading the sermon, his face wrinkled all up, though
he didn't laugh out loud, and he came over to me and put his hand on my
shoulder. 'William,' says he, 'you go home and write a doctrinal sermon,
the stiffest you can. _This one's about a girl._ You might give it to
Mary Ellen North for a wedding-present.'"
The parson had grown almost gay under the vivifying influence of memory.
But Mary Ellen did not smile.
"Yes," she repeated softly, "I remember."
"And then I laughed a little, and got out of the study the best way I
could, and ran over to you to tell you what he said. And I left the
sermon in your work-basket. I've often wished, in the light of what came
afterwards--I've often wished I'd kept it. Somehow 't would have brought
me nearer to you."
It seemed as if she were about to rise from her chair, but she quieted
herself and dulled the responsive look upon her face.
"Mary Ellen," the parson burst forth, "I know how I took what came on us
the very next week, but I never knew how you took it. Should you just as
lieves tell me?"
She lifted her head until it held a noble pose. Her eyes shone
brilliantly, though indeed they were doves' eyes.
"I'll tell you," said she. "I couldn't have told you ten years ago,--no,
nor five! but now it's an old woman talking to an old man. I was given
to understand you were tired of me, and too honorable to say so. I don't
know what tale was carried to you"--
"She said you'd say 'yes' to that rich fellow in Sudleigh, if I'd give
you a chance!"
"I knew 't was something as shallow as that. Well, I'll tell you how I
took it. I put up my head and laughed. I said, 'When William Bond wants
to break with me, he'll say so.' And the next day you did say so."
The parson wrung his hands in an involuntary gesture of appeal.
"Minnie! Minnie!" he cried, "why didn't you save me? What made you let
me _be_ a fool?"
She met his gaze with a tenderness so great that the words lost all
their sting.
"You always were, William," she said quietly. "Always rushing at things
like Job's charger, and having to rush back again. Never once have I
read that without thinking of you. That's why you fixed up an angel out
of poor little Isabel."
The parson made a fine gesture of dissent. He had forgotten Isabel.
"Do you want to know what else I did?" Her voice grew hard and
unfamiliar. "I'll tell you. I went to my sister Eliza, and I said: 'Some
way or another, you've spoilt my life. I'll forgive you just as soon as
I can--maybe before you die, maybe not. You come with me!' and I went up
garret, where she kept the chest with things in it that belonged to them
that had died. There it sets now. I stood over it with her. 'I'm going
to put my dead things in here,' I said. 'If you touch a finger to 'em,
I'll get up in meeting and tell what you've done. I'm going to put in
everything left from what you've murdered; and every time you come here,
you'll remember you were a murderer.' I frightened her. I'm glad I did.
She's dead and gone, and I've forgiven her; but I'm glad now!"
The parson looked at her with amazement. She seemed on fire. All the
smouldering embers of a life denied had blazed at last. She put on her
glasses and walked over to the chest.
"Here!" she continued; "let's uncover the dead. I've tried to do it ever
since she died, so the other things could be burned; but my courage
failed me. Could you turn these screws, if I should get you a knife?
They're in tight. I put 'em in myself, and she stood by."
The little lid of the till had been screwed fast. The two middle-aged
people bent over it together, trying first the scissors and then the
broken blade of the parson's old knife. The screws came slowly. When
they were all out, he stood back a pace and gazed at her. Mary Ellen
looked no longer alert and vivified. Her face was haggard.
"I shut it," she said, in a whisper. "You lift it up."
The parson lifted the lid. There they lay, her poor little relics,--a
folded manuscript, an old-fashioned daguerreotype, and a tiny locket.
The parson could not see. His hand shook as he took them solemnly out
and gave them to her. She bent over the picture, and looked at it, as we
search the faces of the dead. He followed her to the light, and, wiping
his glasses, looked also.
"That was my picture," he said musingly. "I never've had one since. And
that was mother's locket. It had"--He paused and looked at her.
"Yes," said Mary Ellen softly; "it's got it now." She opened the little
trinket; a warm, thick lock of hair lay within, and she touched it
gently with her finger. "Should you like the locket, because 't was your
mother's?"
She hesitated; and though the parson's tone halted also, he answered at
once:--
"No, Mary Ellen, not if you'll keep it. I should rather think 'twas with
you."
She put her two treasures in her pocket, and gave him the other.
"I guess that's your share," she said, smiling faintly. "Don't read it
here. Just take it away with you."
The manuscript had been written in the cramped and awkward hand of his
youth, and the ink upon the paper was faded after many years. He turned
the pages, a smile coming now and then.
"'Thou hast doves' eyes,'" he read,--"'thou hast doves' eyes!'" He
murmured a sentence here and there. "Mary Ellen," he said at last,
shaking his head over the manuscript in a droll despair, "it isn't a
sermon. Parson Sibley had the rights of it. It's a love-letter!" And the
two old people looked in each other's wet eyes and smiled.
The woman was the first to turn away.
"There!" said she, closing the lid of the chest; "we've said enough.
We've wiped out old scores. We've talked more about ourselves than we
ever shall again; for if old age brings anything, it's thinking of other
people--them that have got life before 'em. These your rubbers?"
The parson put them on, with a dazed obedience. His hand shook in
buckling them. Mary Ellen passed him his coat, but he noticed that she
did not offer to hold it for him. There was suddenly a fine remoteness
in her presence, as if a frosty air had come between them. The parson
put the sermon in his inner pocket, and buttoned his coat tightly over
it. Then he pinned on his shawl. At the door he turned.
"Mary Ellen," said he pleadingly, "don't you ever want to see the sermon
again? Shouldn't you like to read it over?"
She hesitated. It seemed for a moment as if she might not answer at all.
Then she remembered that they were old folks, and need not veil the
truth.
"I guess I know it 'most all by heart," she said quietly. "Besides, I
took a copy before I put it in there. Good-night!"
"Good-night!" answered the parson joyously. He closed the door behind
him and went crunching down the icy path. When he had unfastened the
horse and sat tucking the buffalo-robe around him, the front door was
opened in haste, and a dark figure came flying down the walk.
"Mr. Bond!" thrilled a voice.
"Whoa!" called the parson excitedly. He was throwing back the robe to
leap from the sleigh when the figure reached him. "Oh!" said he;
"Isabel!"
She was breathing hard with excitement and the determination grown up in
her mind during that last half hour of her exile in the kitchen.
"Parson,"--forgetting a more formal address, and laying her hand on his
knee,--"I've got to say it! Won't you please forgive me? Won't you,
please? I can't explain it"--
"Bless your heart, child!" answered the parson cordially; "you needn't
try to. I guess I made you nervous."
"Yes," agreed Isabel, with a sigh of relief, "I guess you did." And the
parson drove away.