AN IDYL OF THE WABASH
[Illustration]
AN IDYL OF THE WABASH
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
ANNA NICHOLAS
_Made out o’ truck ’at’s jes’ a-goin’ to waste
’Cause smart folks thinks it’s altogether too
Outrageous common._--RILEY.
NEW YORK
HURST & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright 1898
The Bowen Merrill Company
Copyright 1912
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
An Idyl of the Wabash
TO MY MOTHER
CONTENTS
PAGE.
AN IDYL OF THE WABASH 1
AT A WAY-STATION 32
MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART 60
AN ABIDING LOVE 77
A FARMHOUSE DRAMA 101
THE SOLUTION OF A TEXT 131
AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE 141
AN ITINERANT PAIR 177
A MOVEMENT IN ART 201
THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL 221
Herewith together you have flower and thorn,
Both rose and brier, for thus together grow
Bitter and sweet, but wherefore none may know.
--ALDRICH.
AN IDYL OF THE WABASH
AN IDYL OF THE WABASH
When Miss Callista Rogers first came from her Vermont home to the
little Indiana town of Honeyport, on the Wabash, she had a sense of
almost perilous adventure--something like that felt by the pioneer
women who followed up the ever-advancing and now forever vanished
frontier.
“It is so very far away,” she said to her family before starting, “and
while, of course, there are no Indians and no danger of having one’s
scalp taken, or anything of that sort, still, things will be queer and
the people can’t be expected to be like those in Vermont, not having
had the same advantages.”
After she reached Honeyport she wrote to her sister that the people
were queer, but that they seemed friendly, and she thought she should
get along real well. At that time Miss Callista was not much past her
first youth, but she had lived long enough to have imbibed the very
firm conviction that New England opinions and New England ways were
the only opinions and only ways worth considering seriously. Holding
such belief, it might naturally have been expected that she would come
into conflict with her new associates, but a fair degree of discretion
prevented her from airing her views too aggressively, and her wholesome
humor and evident kindliness of spirit led her Hoosier friends to be
indulgent to such of her unflattering opinions as were inadvertently
betrayed and to regard her with considerable favor.
She had come to Indiana to teach school, and to Honeyport through the
intercession in her behalf of Deacon Knox, an old family friend at
home whose second cousin had married Rev. Calvin Evans, pastor of the
Presbyterian Church at Honeyport.
In those days--it was soon after the war--teaching, especially in the
rural districts and village communities, was not the complicated and
exacting science it has since become. Miss Callista was fairly well
grounded in the common English branches; in the way of accomplishments
she knew a little music, and as a crowning acquirement had an
acquaintance with the rudiments of the Latin language. This last she
was not called upon to teach, but the consciousness that she was on
familiar terms--hardly a speaking acquaintance, to be sure--with the
ancient tongue was a source of infinite satisfaction to her; it gave
her a sense of superiority and power.
There were some preliminaries to be undergone before she was officially
authorized to teach the young idea of Honeyport, an examination among
the rest, but this was not severe, and she stood it successfully. As
for the methods of teaching to be adopted, there were no fixed rules as
now under the elaborate and inflexible system in vogue. She was free
to follow her own judgment, which was for the most part good, being
based on New England common sense and a power of adaptation to the
pupils’ individual needs which every successful teacher must have. So
she taught in one of the two schools of Honeyport very acceptably to
the people, who were easy-going and not yet affected by the “higher
education” fad.
But Miss Callista did not so easily adapt herself to her new
environment in all respects. She did not like the appearance of the
town and the surrounding country, to begin with. The country was too
level. Her soul yearned for the hills as the souls of those born among
them must do till memory fails. She missed the blue distances, the
lights and shadows, the feeling of companionship the mountains gave.
The prairie was monotonous and the sky shut down too close. The village
itself was trying to her sense of thrift and order. She could not free
her mind concerning it in her letters home, for she was resolved to
give nothing but agreeable impressions to the mother and sister back in
the trim and prim but picturesque Vermont town.
To Mrs. Evans, the pastor’s wife, she unburdened her mind when her
sensibilities were too deeply outraged. In Mrs. Evans she had found
a congenial acquaintance. That lady had lived in Indiana for so many
years that she had acquired some of the habits and peculiarities of
what Miss Callista called the natives, but she had been born in New
England and cherished its traditions. Consequently, she sympathized in
a measure with the strictures made by the new teacher, but she was a
discreet woman, as became a minister’s wife, and the confidences poured
into her ears went no further. Understanding this, Miss Callista felt
free to express her true sentiments on all matters. She was especially
indignant over the slipshod ways of the village.
“It’s perfectly scandalous,” she said, “the way they let the grass grow
in the gutters and the way they let the pigs and cattle run loose in
the street. They ought to have more pride. Why, when I rode up Main
street in the Paw Paw hack that first day and saw the sidewalks almost
covered by high grass, and cows and pigs lying right on the walks, and
people stepping around them, I expected to find slovenly housekeeping,
too. Like town, like people, I thought. Didn’t turn out jest that way,
I’m free to confess. There are some very nice, neat housekeepers here.”
Another peculiarity of the natives excited Miss Callista’s scorn.
“I never see,” she told Mrs. Evans, “such a dowdy set as they be. Why,
they don’t care how they look. The women don’t dress up of afternoons,
and farmers’ wives don’t put on a fresh dud when they come to town;
jest wear their old limpsy calicoes and sunbunnets. The men ain’t a
mite better, though, to be sure, that’s the women’s fault. Husbands
are much what the wives make ’em, as you know. I don’t set no great
store by fashions and folderols myself,” she went on, “but it’s
certainly a dreadful shame they don’t slick up more when they go to
meeting--particularly the Campbellites. Go over to that church an’ you
won’t see a man with a starched shirt bosom. Not that I look at such
things, specially, but if you have eyes you must see. Clean enough,
all of ’em, mebbe, but no stiffenin’. I’d like to clear starch ’em all
once--men, women and children.
“And there is another thing. Folks around here surmise and wonder,
but can’t guess one of the main reasons why I set up my own little
housekeeping. Of course, in the first place, I wanted to economize,
but, Mrs. Evans, another great thing was that I jest wanted something
good to eat. I do’ know as I’m so very dainty about my eating, an’ I
do’ know _but_ I be. Anyhow, I don’t like the cooking I get at most
places. Of course, if you’d felt clear to take me it would a’ been all
right s’ far as the table’s concerned, but most places they don’t suit
me. They can’t make a good cup o’ tea; they don’t know how to make
yeast bread, and not one of ’em can make a decent pie. I will say for
’em, though, that they can fry chicken to beat all creation.”
Miss Callista conceived a peculiar animosity toward the religious
sect variously known as “Disciples,” “Christians” and “Campbellites.”
Just why was not clear. It may have been due to the fact that she
had never heard of the denomination back in Vermont, and being, as
she considered, a purely western product, it was, therefore, to be
distrusted as somehow unorthodox and subversive of pious principles.
The sect was numerously represented in that locality, and the
congregation which worshiped in one of the three churches of Honeyport
was larger than either the Methodists or Presbyterians could muster.
“I shan’t call ’em Disciples,” sniffed Miss Callista, “jest as if
they were as good as the Twelve, an’ I shan’t call ’em Christians.
The idear! Jest as if they had a patent on the name. They don’t like
to be called Campbellites, but I shall call ’em Campbellites the hull
time. How any reasonable human being can believe in the docterns of
that church does beat me. An’ there they’ll set an’ listen to jest the
scrappiest kind o’ sermons, when, by crossin’ the street, they could
hear your husband’s stirrin’ discourses.”
It will be seen from this that Miss Callista was not a woman of
broad mind, and that, though she made her opinions plain to the
comprehension, they were not expressed in that correct and elegant
language so desirable in the teachers of youth. It is but just,
however, to say that she was aware of some of these verbal lapses. As
she herself remarked:
“Nobody understands grammar, and what is proper language, better than I
do, and in school I always take great care to speak correctly. When I
come home, though, it’s too much trouble to be thinking of the parts of
speech, and I drop into an easier sort o’ talk, as I put on a kitchen
apron or an old pair o’ shoes.”
Her idioms and accents she was unconscious of, and therefore could not
drop. The born New Englander seldom does. She would say “Indianar,” and
“idear,” and “Mariar” to the end of her days. She was quick to detect
what she considered errors in others, however.
“‘Bucket!’ Don’t let me hear you say ‘bucket,’” she would tell her
pupils. “It’s a ridiculous word; say ‘pail.’ And don’t say you
‘reckon’ or ‘low’ you’ll do so and so; say ‘guess.’”
Miss Callista had come West to teach because, even if she could get a
school at her home, with all the eager candidates in competition for
every place, better salaries were paid in Indiana. For her own part
she would have preferred to stay in Vermont, even with the scant wages
of the district school, but she had a mother and sister who needed her
earnings, and it was for them she started out to seek a better fortune.
The mother was a widow with a tiny home to call her own and an income
hardly in proportion; the sister, a fragile girl with the New England
scourge, consumption, already making its signs visible. Miss Callista
must be the bread winner, and she went bravely about her task. She
loved her family and her home; she had none of the self-assertiveness
that is needed for those who would get on in the world; she dreaded
the separation from her dear ones, and yet it never occurred to her to
rebel against fate that made such a trial possible. She did not dream
that she was heroic, and yet it is in such actions that the heroism of
the latter days is found--a heroism not less than that which led the
knights of old on their crusades.
Many and many a day in her new abiding place homesickness pressed upon
her like a tangible weight; her heart ached for a sight of dear faces
and familiar scenes; the very sun shining in the heavens took on a
forbidding look, and the birds sang a melancholy tune. But if the poor,
lonely little woman wept it was when no one knew. She kept a brave
face and wrote cheery letters to the invalid at home. Every penny of
her salary but that which supplied her own barest needs went to make
the life of that invalid easier. She not only made no complaint over
her own deprivations and sacrifices; she made the sacrifices gladly
and did not know them to be such. Women are often like that. If the
beneficiaries accepted the gifts as a matter of course and without
appreciation of the life that was being given also, why, that was not
unusual either. The human creature is often so.
The years went on until five had passed since Miss Callista had seen
the faces of her kin and the blue Vermont hills. At the beginning
she had not dreamed that so long a time would elapse before she
could return, but one thing and another had delayed her visit. The
invalid sister had needed so many things. The malady made inroads and
delicacies were wanted to keep up her strength; medicines, too, and
the doctor must be paid. Once a famous specialist came up from Boston
to see her, and that cost money. This fifth winter just ended had been
spent by the ailing one in Florida, but she was now at home again, and
a turn of fortune in the shape of a railroad rate war made it suddenly
possible for Miss Callista to go to see her and the dear mother. The
cost of travel, the rival passenger agents declared, was less than that
of staying at home. So, the spring term having just ended, she joyfully
went her way.
She was in time for the end. Though it was early June and the sun shone
with torrid strength on the Honeyport prairie, and the roses were in
bloom, it was not so surely summer but that a wintry blast swept down
from the north through the Vermont valleys and undid all the healing
wrought by the Florida airs. The ailing sister was cut down as a lily
by the frost. She died in Miss Callista’s arms--faithful arms that had
scarce time to rest before they held the mother’s weary form while
her soul breathed itself away. The mother had lived for the stricken
daughter, and that beloved life ended, she, too, was done with earth.
The summer vacation was not over when Miss Callista came back to
Honeyport. The charm of her childhood’s home was gone. Later in life
the glamour of the mountains would come back to her and her heart
would yearn for a sight of them, but now they chilled her and she was
glad to return to the once despised village on the Wabash, with the
unbroken, shadowless landscape and the level horizon. Out of the old
home life were left only memories and a few household goods. When some
of these treasures were unloaded at the door of her Indiana home--a
heavy oaken secretary, a spindle-legged table, a straight-backed,
comfortless-looking chair--the men who lifted them into place wondered
that she went to the expense of shipping such old-fashioned furnishings
when she might have bought finer ones at home for less money. But the
women who saw them did not wonder--women who had found for themselves
how the heart clings to inanimate things when they alone are left to
speak of the dead.
So Miss Callista, permanently transplanted, settled down in a bit of
a cottage next to the Presbyterian parsonage, still occupied by her
friends, the Evanses, and resumed her occupation of teaching. There was
no one now to save for and deny herself for, but, being an unselfish
creature, this only brought her pain. Nevertheless, as time went on
life grew more comfortable for her. She indulged in an occasional bit
of finery; now and then she went on an excursion somewhere. Once she
went to Indianapolis to attend the state fair, and once she went to
Chicago and came back dizzy and bewildered, glad to be in the quiet
home away from the busy whirl.
The years went on until more than fifteen had passed since she set foot
on Hoosier soil. All this time she had not escaped the speculations
all normally constituted people are bound to indulge in concerning the
matrimonial prospects of their spinster friends. It was assumed that
she was not only ready, but anxious to marry when the opportunity and
the man offered, and kindly neighbors kept a lookout for both. Miss
Callista alone seemed indifferent. Apparently she took no thought of
such possibilities. She was polite in a sedate way to the occasional
marriageable men who showed a disposition to hover around her, but she
gave encouragement to none. Her Honeyport friends suspected that she
had wasted her heart on some unappreciative Vermont Yankee, but this
was not the case.
The truth was that the marriageable male beings who had come within her
range of possibilities had not been quite to her liking. The farmers
who constituted the most of these eligibles were too rough and careless
in dress, too much given to tobacco chewing and too loudly hilarious
in their conversation to please her somewhat fastidious taste. She
may not have cherished a definite ideal of the man who would meet her
requirements, but she had a clear conception of what would not do. So
the years had gone swiftly by, bringing few changes in the routine of
her life, or even in her appearance. She was a plump and comely body,
and in some respects more attractive than in her younger days, for
lines of care and anxiety and homesickness had given way to placid
contentment in her work and in every-day affairs. She looked forward
to no change in her mode of life or her experiences, but, as so often
happens when change comes into an uneventful existence, it comes
unexpectedly and creates a complete transformation in the little world.
Mrs. Evans, still her nearest neighbor and closest friend, fell ill and
came swiftly down to death’s door. Before she passed through she said
to Miss Callista, who was her faithful attendant:
“When I am gone Calvin will marry again after a proper time. He will;
oh, yes. It is a man’s way, and it will be Calvin’s way. He will need
somebody to look after him. I want you to be the one, and I have told
him so. You will know how and will do for him as I would.”
This was said gaspingly between paroxysms of pain, but with all the
firmness and decision for which Mrs. Evans was noted when at her best
estate. It was the supreme proof of a woman’s faith in another that
she could put her husband into her keeping, and, having given it, she
closed her eyes and opened them no more.
This last communication made a powerful impression on Miss Callista.
It was a startling surprise, but she accepted it unquestioningly as a
guide to her future.
What Mrs. Evans wanted Mr. Evans to do had always been done, and
she had not the faintest doubt that he would follow his wife’s
instructions in this, as he had been accustomed to do in all other
matters.
She grieved for her friend’s death, but almost insensibly she began
to adjust herself to coming conditions. The bereaved man assumed the
conventional appearance of gentle melancholy by which the newly-made
widower is so easily recognized, and his earliest sermons had a
tenderly pathetic tone that she, in common with the other women of
the congregation, considered very touching and appropriate. But even
in this sacred stage of his widowerhood she felt herself looking upon
him with a new interest and a secret sense of possession. She had
been brought up to revere ministers as a class, and had always had a
respectful regard for Mr. Evans because of his profession and because
he had been kind to her. He was not her ideal of manly beauty, being
gaunt of frame and bald of head; moreover, he was twenty years older
than she, being nearly sixty. However, she recognized the fact that
it was not for her to make age a barrier, since no widower of sixty
was likely to consider himself other than desirable even to a maid of
twenty.
She also confessed to herself that she had always considered the wife
of a minister blessed among women, and that, while she had never hoped
to marry one, the sudden and unexpected prospect of doing so was very
agreeable indeed. She felt herself fitted to the labor of smoothing
life’s pathway for a servant of the Lord. Not that she could assist in
sermon-writing, as she had suspected the first Mrs. Evans of doing,
but she could minister to his comfort in a more material way. She
could take household cares from his shoulders; she could make him
presentable to the public; she could keep him posted on many ins and
outs of the parish; above all, she could feed him well, and she held
that of all men ministers needed to be well fed. She considered it a
reasonable proposition that a man could administer a far higher degree
of spiritual consolation to his flock when his stomach was comfortably
filled than when it was empty or dyspeptic from poor food.
The very church building began to take on a new aspect. She saw that it
needed a new carpet and a coat of paint, and her mind leaped forward
to the time when, as minister’s wife, she could have an influence in
bringing such improvements about. But she kept all such thoughts
concealed in her own heart. Her manner toward her pastor was more
sedate and dignified than ever. The knowledge imparted by her deceased
friend had given her a self-consciousness which put an end to the
little neighborly attentions she had been accustomed to offer when
the wife was alive, such as sending over a favorite dish, or now and
then an embroidered handkerchief, or even taking his hose from the
mending basket and darning them in the highest style of the art. Now,
she thought, such things would “make talk”--dreadful bugbear of lone
women--and she left Mr. Evans entirely to the mercies of Nancy, his
inefficient and elderly serving woman, and to other female parishioners
who, with husbands to approve their actions, might safely venture where
she could not tread.
It was the more easy to give up her accustomed service in her
reverend neighbor’s house from the fact that her spare hours were now
largely devoted to the entertainment of the Littledale twins--the
three-year-old children of the Rev. Amos Littledale, the Campbellite
minister, who lived across the street.
Miss Callista’s animosity to the Campbellites had in no wise abated,
and was generally understood in the community, but the feeling was
directed to them as a sect and not as individuals. Certainly, it did
not include the babies, especially such sweet and attractive ones as
these. Long before their mother died, several months back, her heart
had gone out to those twins, and when they manifested a fondness for
her, based though she knew it was on her supply of buns and cookies,
she became their devoted friend. She had once confided to Mrs. Evans,
with a maidenly blush, that if she had been married and the Lord had
seen fit to bless her with children, she would have liked twins.
Mr. Littledale’s young sister was his housekeeper and guardian of
the babies, and Miss Callista, seeing that the burden of care was
heavy for the girl, cheerfully relieved and aided her in many ways.
It would do no harm to make the young things happy while it could
be done, she thought. “It wasn’t at all likely they would have much
chance to be happy if their father married that flirty young Mattie
Stone, over on the West pike, as seemed likely. Strange that a man
couldn’t show better judgment when he married, especially when he
took a second partner. There was Mr. Littledale, all of thirty-one, or
maybe thirty-two years old, and Mat Stone wasn’t over twenty, and a
giddy piece, too. There was Jane Embree, steady and settled, and of a
suitable age, and willing, and he never so much as looked her way. But
law sakes, what could you expect of a man and a preacher at that, in a
church that had the hull New Testament for its creed and no confession
of faith and no definite thing you could get at to tell what the
members did believe, or why they couldn’t be just plain Baptists, or
even Methodists or Presbyterians, who will immerse you if you insist on
it?”
But, with all her absorption in the infants Miss Callista did not
fail to keep a watchful eye on Widower Evans. She was a woman and not
unobservant, and had therefore not failed to note the peculiarities of
widowers. She knew at about what period deepest grief began to lift
its clouds and life present some attractions once more; it was a very
early period in a majority of cases. She could invariably detect the
first indications that the bereaved one was “able to take notice,” as
cynical old ladies have it; she knew well the signs that he was not
only contemplating further matrimonial possibilities in a general way,
but also when he had ceased to generalize and had fixed his eye upon a
concrete individual as a desirable consoler. She saw Mr. Evans emerge
into the first of these stages, her proximity as next-door neighbor
being a point of vantage. He shaved oftener than he had been accustomed
to doing; he buttoned his frock coat when he went out, instead of
allowing it to hang open in a saggy, slovenly way; he carried himself
more erectly, and with almost a jaunty air. Before his best coat was in
the least shiny he began to wear it every day, and bought a new one for
Sundays.
Miss Callista observed this piece of extravagance with a thrill; it
was significant of immediate activity in the matrimonial field. It
was barely six months since Mrs. Evans had died, but her expectant
successor considered it probable that he would wish to marry as soon as
the conventional year of mourning had expired, and it was a matter of
course that the necessary preliminaries should be arranged before that
date.
Almost unconsciously she began to preen herself like a little bird in
the spring. Her brown hair waved with an extra crinkle; she put a
fresh bow on her summer bonnet and wore a pink ribbon at her throat
where brown had been. People said how young Miss Callista looked and
how well she “held her age.” They also began to say what a suitable
wife she would make for Mr. Evans; some of them, in the free-spoken
rural way, said it to her, and made her blush and try to look angry.
But they began to say, too, that Mr. Evans seemed to be looking with a
favorable eye upon the Widow Jackson, out on West Main street. He had
been seen to walk home with her from prayer-meeting, and he dropped in
with what some considered needless frequency to administer spiritual
consolation to the widow’s son, who was in the last stages of what was
known as “decline.”
This information gave Miss Callista a shock. Could it be possible,
she asked herself, that he was about to disregard his wife’s dying
injunction? He showed no indications of any leaning in her direction,
save that he had come over once or twice in a neighborly way, and
when other neighbors were present, to sit on her little porch and
chat in the twilight. But he had never walked home with her from
prayer-meeting, though she attended regularly and it was right in
his way. She cogitated over the matter a good deal, and as a result
of her reflections decided upon what she considered a bold move and a
counter attraction to the widow’s blandishments. She resolved to invite
him to supper, no matter if folks did say she was setting her cap for
him. She wasn’t doing anything of the kind, and she wasn’t anyways
anxious, she said to herself, to marry him, but something was due to
her friend Mrs. Evans; and certainly that lady would not approve of
Mrs. Jackson. And what a poor figure she would cut at the head of the
missionary society and the sewing circle, sure enough! Perhaps, it was
her (Miss Callista’s) duty gently to remind him of his late partner’s
wishes. So she spent the most of one Saturday afternoon in concocting
the preacher’s favorite dishes, and when they were ready to serve,
stepped to the back fence, and, in a casual way, as if it were a sudden
thought, asked him to come over and have a bit of supper. She said, she
knew Nancy had gone to see her folks, and she thought he might enjoy a
cup of tea and something warm instead of a cold bite by himself.
He came with alacrity, and was presently installed at the table with
Miss Callista opposite and a Littledale twin at each side of her. It
had seemed to her that the presence of the twins would at once preserve
the proprieties and offer no barrier to confidential conversation. The
babies behaved like little angels, but there was no conversation that
all the world might not have heard. She plied her guest with fried
chicken, with the lightest of rolls, with strawberry shortcake and with
his favorite temperance tipple of diluted blackberry cordial, put up by
her own hands the year before. He ate heartily and joyously, and made a
variety of facetious remarks to the twins, but he went home without so
much as a look indicating a thought of his wife’s sacred injunction.
Miss Callista did not like it. She took the twins to their gate and
kissed them good-night with an abruptness and irritation of manner
hitherto unknown to them. She was beginning to have a little resentment
on her own account as well as on that of the departed Mrs. Evans, whose
request was being ignored. Her vanity was touched. Queer taste a man
had, she thought, who could see anything in that Widow Jackson better
than he saw in her; and everybody knew the widow couldn’t cook a decent
meal to save her life.
Miss Callista was modest, but no woman is so unduly self-depreciating
that she does not secretly recognize her own superiority to certain
other women.
But the supper did have its effect, after all, for during the weeks
following Mr. Evans fell into the way of walking home with Miss
Callista after Sunday evening service and of coming oftener to sit on
her porch in the dusk. But he did not discontinue his visits to the
widow. The situation was quite interesting to the parishioners and the
village gossips, and people began to take sides. The women discussed
the matter over the back fences, and the men who sat around the grocery
stores wagered small sums on the outcome.
One day in August Miss Callista was surprised by the receipt of a
letter. It was from Mr. Evans, who had been spending a week or so with
a sister in Lafayette. It read thus:
“Miss Callista--Esteemed Friend: I take this means of addressing
you in regard to an important matter. When my lamented Jane was in
her last illness, she foresaw that I should find the burden of
loneliness too great to bear, and she advised me to marry again after
a proper time had passed, and strongly recommended you as a suitable
partner. Indeed, she was so urgent that she exacted a promise that
I would follow her advice. At that time I was much agitated and
distressed, and scarcely knew what I was saying, but since I have
recently come to reflect upon the matter it has seemed to me that
her views were very judicious. The time is near when I can, without
reproach, enter again into the marriage state, and for many reasons
it seems expedient for me to do so. Inasmuch as you were on terms of
close friendship with my dear Jane, and will doubtless desire, as I
do, to carry out her wishes as far as possible in all respects, I ask
your consideration of the matter in hand. As my wife you can greatly
increase your field of usefulness, and I feel assured that the Lord
will fit your strength to the new duties and responsibilities. I
write this in order to prepare your mind. I shall return to-morrow
and will call on you, when we can discuss the subject in all its
bearings.
“Yours in the Lord,
“CALVIN H. EVANS.”
Miss Callista read this epistle several times. At first she experienced
a sense of triumph and elation. There was no longer any doubt about
the matter. She, and not the Widow Jackson, had won the prize. On the
second reading she added the comment, “if he is a prize.” The third
time red spots began to grow on her cheeks, and she talked to herself
as people who live alone are apt to do.
“He talks as if he were asking me to marry him all on his first wife’s
account, and had no special interest in the matter himself. Mrs. Evans
was a good woman, but another woman wants some better reason for
marrying the widower than that. And then he doesn’t out and out ask me
to marry him; jest takes it for granted that I will jump at the chance
once my mind is prepared. Conceited old thing, if he is a preacher. He
seems to have some doubt, too, of my being equal to the new duties,
and--and he never even says he likes me or will try to make me happy,
or anything. A woman, even if she is going to be a second wife and
isn’t as young as she was, wants a little love-making on her own
account.”
Miss Callista did not reflect, or perhaps did not know, that men to
whom it is not given to be sentimental and affectionate on paper are
sometimes most eloquent of speech in the tender cause. She continued to
cherish resentment, but, nevertheless, went about preparing green corn
fritters in case the parson should happen in about supper time.
The twins happened in, as they were wont to do whenever they found the
gates unfastened, and after them presently came their father ostensibly
in search of the truants. He had come so often on the same errand that
he was quite at home, and detected at once Miss Callista’s appearance
of irritation, for there was a dangerous sparkle in her usually mild
eyes.
“Have the children worried you? I will take them home at once,” he said.
“Worry me--those dear babies? No, indeed; they couldn’t do that. Older
people than they are the ones who worry.”
Rev. Mr. Littledale might have made a reputation in the legal
profession, he had such a knack of getting the information he wanted by
skillful but apparently purposeless questioning. Miss Callista had no
intention of telling about Mr. Evans’s proposal, or, more accurately,
his proposition, but she was full of the subject, and presently sat
down on the sofa in the cool little parlor, the twins promptly climbing
up and sitting one on each side with their arms about her.
“What would you think, Mr. Littledale, of a man who would ask a woman
to be his second wife just because he thought it would please his
first wife? I know--I know a lady--I have heard of a case of the kind.”
Mr. Littledale was shrewd. He had had his eye on Mr. Evans, and needed
to know no more.
“Miss Callista,” said he promptly and with shameless disregard of the
other man’s possible claims, “Miss Callista, such a man isn’t worth
thinking about. He’s a selfish wretch, and no woman could be happy with
him. A second wife deserves as much consideration as the first, and on
her own account, too. And while we are talking about marrying, Miss
Callista, shall I tell you what I have been wanting to say for some
time? I want you for my wife. I love you, Miss Callista; the twins love
you; won’t you come to us?”
The twins, cherubic creatures, promptly echoed, “Love oo, Miss
C’lista,” and proceeded to embrace her, but were dispossessed by their
parent.
Miss Callista was taken completely by surprise, but this variety of
surprise never wholly disconcerts the most timid of women. She thought
rapidly for a moment.
“There! Mr. Littledale’s been dropping in all summer, staying to supper
and making himself at home generally, and I never thought anything of
it, because he’s younger than I be; and, besides, I s’posed he was
engaged to that Stone girl. Folks will say I tried to catch him.”
Like a flash, too, came the thought: “If I say yes, Mr. Evans will have
to look somewhere else, and I don’t care if he does. I never made any
promise to Jane. The Widow Jackson can have him.”
What Miss Callista said was: “Why, Mr. Littledale, I’m seven years
older than you be, and--and I’m a Presbyterian.”
“What do a few years matter? We won’t count them,” was the reply. “And
I’m sure I have nothing against Presbyterians. If you mean that I’m a
Campbellite, why, please try to forgive me.”
Evidently he received forgiveness, for when Mr. Evans arrived that
evening he found Mr. Littledale sitting with Miss Callista on the
vine-covered porch, and the corn fritters had all been eaten. The new
condition of affairs was gently disclosed to him by his successful
rival, and he was perceptibly discomfited. He had, perhaps, not valued
Miss Callista at her true worth while he considered her his for the
asking, but now that another man had taken her from him she suddenly
seemed highly desirable. Possibly the discovery of Rev. Evans’s designs
may have inspired Mr. Littledale to unpremeditated action, but this is
only a surmise. It is the way of man to be so influenced. Mr. Evans
made but a short call, and when he entered his own home the door was
heard to slam with what seemed unnecessary violence.
But the Presbyterian pastor was not inconsolable. The very next evening
he walked home with the Widow Jackson from prayer-meeting and stayed
till 10 o’clock. The morning after, the widow, under strict injunction
of secrecy, told Deacon Todd’s wife of her engagement, and by night the
whole town knew of it.
Miss Callista also confided in Mrs. Todd.
“I never would have supposed that I’d marry a Campbellite, that is, a
Disciple--never, or that I’d be one myself. Of course, a minister’s
wife ought, in all decency, to belong to his church, and, of course,
I will. I ought to be able to accept the doctern if it’s the hull New
Testament, as they say. And there! I’ll have to be immersed, too, I
s’pose. I hadn’t thought of that; but I guess I can stand it to go
through water, or fire either, for them blessed twins.”
AT A WAY-STATION
Thirty years ago a certain railroad in Indiana was new enough to be
still a source of deep interest and curiosity to the people of the
sparsely-settled region through which it passed. They had not yet
ceased to gather at the stations, morning and evening, to see the “down
train” and the “up train.” The projectors of this thoroughfare, having
in view, perhaps, legislative appropriations and private subscriptions
of stock, had artfully led the public to think that a farming country
of marvelous richness was suffering for an outlet; that passengers
and produce impatiently waited to crowd its cars. So impressed were
guileless citizens with this idea that only a brave man or a fool
would have dared to say: “Go to! We need no railroad.” Thus far in the
existence of the road the great rush of travel and traffic had not
begun; in the meantime, one train daily each way was found enough for
all needs.
Few among the rural population along the route ever went from home;
fewer still expected visitors. Yet they went regularly to see the
engine and the gayly painted cars; they indulged in wild speculations
as to the probable business and destination of the travelers of whom
they caught glimpses. The occasional stranger who stopped at any
village was confronted on the platform by groups of men in blue or
butternut jeans, all chewing tobacco and expectorating profusely. He
passed women in lank calico dresses and limp calico sunbonnets--some
old and wrinkled, some young enough to be pretty, but, with rare
exceptions, hopelessly plain. Even the dull-eyed babies, in their
mothers’ arms, lacked the charm of health and wholesomeness. If the
traveler chanced to wonder how one woman, with an expanse of toothless
gums, could endure to smile, he might marvel that the next one appeared
in public before having her unsightly teeth removed. And while he
considered the sad effect of quinine, soda and tobacco on human beauty,
he would have been amazed had he known the curiosity his own person
excited. “Who is he?” “Where does he live at?” “What brings him down
this away?” “How long will he stay?” were questions eagerly discussed.
The railroad had given them something to think about. Do you know what
that means, you who have never lived in the country, remote from a
business center? It means that the residents, having little outside
interest, few books, perhaps no newspapers (there are such places
yet), have narrowed their lives down until fresh subjects for thought
and conversation are rare. They have talked about each other, about
the crops, the calves, the pigs and the weather, until each man knows
what another is going to say while he is yet afar off. Any unusual
event, a death, an elopement, a fire, is seized upon, talked about
from every point of view, turned to every light, over and over, until
each thread and shred of the story is worn with age. Finally, it seems
to die away, but suddenly revives, and passes on its round until set
aside by something equally startling. Think, then, of the vast store of
entertainment afforded by a railroad!
On this October evening, thirty years ago, the echoing scream of the
locomotive, strange to say, did not draw out the usual number of
idlers to gape, open-mouthed, as the train halted, then passed on. More
strange still, many passengers alighted at each stopping place--the
natives, themselves, returning home with the air of adventurers,
breathing sighs of relief, too, as of having safely accomplished a
perilous journey. Capacious lunch-baskets, as well as certain additions
to their every-day attire--wide hoop-skirts on the women, shirt-collars
on the men, for example--suggested that some sort of festivities had
been indulged in.
As the excursionists lingered, reluctant to go while anything remained
to be seen, their last glances turned from the long line of crowded
passenger coaches to a baggage-car with the doors tightly closed, and a
curious hush fell on them as it rolled by. What did it mean? A “through
passenger,” in search of knowledge, found the path an easy one. The
long, lean man at his side, with sunburned, straggling beard and a
mouth like a cavern, was full of information. “Political meetin’! Lord,
no! ’Lections stirs a feller up some, but there ain’t ary stump-speaker
in Indiana ’at kin fetch sech an all-fired big crowd as was out to
Newburg to-day. Hangin’ yo’ know--Bill Murdock’s. Hain’t heard about
him? Reckon yo’ cain’t live ’round hyer, anywheres, or yo’d a knowed
the peticklers. Been a powerful sight o’ talk about it, fust an’ last.
Yo’ see ’t happened ’bout this hyer way: Bill, he tuck a notion one
night, nigh two months ago now, ’at he’d go down to the Corners to
Gimble’s an’ get some ten-penny nails.
“He was a-workin’ old Carter’s farm on the sheers an’ lived up there,
full two mile from the Corners. His wife was a finicky little critter,
with a mite of a baby, an’ ’peared like she had a warnin’ o’ some kind,
for she done her best to coax him to stay to home. But go he would,
though what he wanted with them nails jest at that time, more ’an a
pin with two heads, no one could ever make out. After he’d bought ’em
an’ talked with the fellers in the store a bit--mebbe had a drink or
two in the back room--in come Jake Jillson. Jake was a airy sort o’
chap--could afford to be, ’cause his father ’d left him one o’ the best
farms in the township, an’ he was beholden to nobody. Well, there’d
been some old grutch atween him an’ Bill--no one knows zackly what.
Some says Jake had courted Bill’s wife in times past, an’ that she
throwed him over; but I don’t reckon that was it. Jake was married two
years afore Bill was, an’ taint no ways likely ’at a female woman ’u’d
give a well-to-do feller like Jake the go-by an’ take up with a pore
man like Bill. They’re too long-headed, women be. ’T any rate, however
’twas, the two soon come to a quarrel. Nobody ’at heard ’em seems to
agree jest how it was. Jake he was aggravatin’ an’ kep’ a naggin’. Bill
allays was high-tempered, an’ fore anyone seen ’at they was really in
airnest, Bill he was chasin’ of Jake over the boxes an’ bar’ls. It was
on’y a minute afore he ketched him an’ hit him. The breath was knocked
out o’ Jake for good an’ all with that air very pound o’ ten-penny
nails.
“Jerusalem! What a racket it raised! After the folks come to their
senses like, they got the sheriff an’ a posse o’ constables an’ scoured
around the country right smart of a spell huntin’ Bill, afore they
thought o’ going to his house. At last they went there an’ found him
a-walkin’ the floor with his baby. He was teetotally wropped up in that
woman an’ young un o’ his, but sick baby or not he was drug off to
jail, an’ not a minute too soon. A lot o’ men in masks came a-gallopin’
down, an’ would a’ made short work o’ him if he’d been there. No, I
don’t know who they were, an’ ef I did, ’twould be safe fer to keep my
mouth shet. These hyer things hev to be looked after now an’ then--the
law bein’ so slow an’ oncertain. Wasn’t much time lost, though, on this
case. The jury wouldn’t a’ dared to a’ brought in ary other verdict
than guilty, considerin’ how many rich relations Jake had scattered
about this county. They’d made it mighty lively for ary juryman ’at
would vote to clear his murderer. An’ so Bill, bein’, as I said, a pore
man, with no friends to help him, had no show, an’ had to swing. ’Twas
all right, I reckon; somebody has to be made a example of.
“Me an’ Mandy--that’s her in the red caliker a settin’ over
yonder--’lowed we’d go up to Newburg to-day, where the hangin’ was at.
Hadn’t ary one of us ever saw a man hung, an’ she hadn’t never been
on the steam kyars. I hadn’t no notion o’ takin’ the boys, but Mandy,
she says, ‘Lawsy, let ’em go, it’ll be a warnin’ to ’em to behave
theirselves when they’ve growed up.’ So we all went. An’ jeminey! what
a crowd! Best part o’ two counties there, I reckon.”
After a pause, during which the long, lean man ejected tobacco juice
vigorously across the traveler into the aisle, he added reflectively:
“A circus, I’m free to say, would a’ been more to my taste, but it
wouldn’t a’ been so improvin’ to the community. Elder Borum says
circuses are corrupt an’ a snare o’ the devil.”
Another pause and more tobacco.
“The--the--deceased is on a kyar back o’ this hyer.”
Just then the train quivered, slackened, stopped where a lonely country
road crossed the track; not a human being, not a house in sight--only
a platform and a pile of walnut lumber to hide the long, straight,
western horizon beyond miles and miles of “rolling” country. In the
summer, perhaps, it might have a certain beauty; in the dusk of this
autumn day it was desolation. Toward the north a grove of girdled
trees waved white, ghostly arms; rain had fallen and the gray earth,
the heavy sky alike seemed sodden. The long gray and black curves of
the wagon-track wound in and out like a huge serpent crawling over the
earth.
Out upon the platform was helped from the baggage-car a young, slender
woman with a baby in her arms--a woman in whose eyes was no longer
hope, were no more tears.
After her was lifted a pine coffin roughly stained. The men who had
touched her gently were less tender of this other burden. They dropped
it with a jar that brought a little cry of pain from the woman’s lips.
She sank down and placed her hand upon the box as if to shield from
harm that which was within. The child upon her lap stared solemnly at
the sky. The engine shrieked fiercely as if in haste to go, then rushed
on, leaving her with her dead and her despair.
Curious passengers, looking back from a bend in the road, saw her
crouching motionless, while a last red gleam from the setting sun broke
through the clouds and touched her with a weird light.
Around a curve of serpentine highway they saw, too, a country wagon,
the driver an old man with bent head, the horses slow and spiritless.
Then the train swept on out of sight.
Not a pleasant story, do you say?
No, yet “’tis true, ’tis pity.” It is one of those dark threads so
common in the weft of life that, to our short-sighted eyes, mar the
pattern that else might be so fair. We even doubt the wisdom of the
Weaver who permits such defects, such shadows to hide the clearer
outlines of the web. As if we knew His designs!
Do you wish to hear the sequel--to follow to an end the twisted thread
that seems to have crossed and tangled uselessly in the loom of fate?
The mother, who was left with her child at the lonely station, would
have been glad to die, no doubt; but, for the sake of the babe, she
must live on. She was one of those timid, clinging creatures such as
all women are exhorted to become. Masculine wisdom says the manifest
destiny of such a one is to be a wife and mother; the same sagacity
neglects to go further and provide for her helplessness when destiny
fails her. But these two lived, and the child grew and thrived. How
they lived only a woman, poor and alone, who toils for her children,
day and night, can tell. This mother, like the rest, worked early and
late at anything her hands could find to do. She sewed, she washed, she
nursed the sick, she drudged for the farmers’ wives in busy seasons.
Hours when she should have slept were spent in making the scanty
garments of baby Nancy. Little sympathy was manifested for her, though
doubtless more was felt than found expression; the American farmer is
not demonstrative. She did not ask for pity, and no one saw her weep.
The neighbors said “Mrs. Murdock bore up right well under her man’s
takin’ off; lucky ’at she was one o’ them kind ’at didn’t have no deep
feelin’s.”
Not so with the other widow. Mrs. Jillson’s display of grief was loud
and violent. Never was woman so cruelly bereaved, she said. She knew
she could not live. If there were no Murdocks on the face of the earth
she should die easier; she could grind them to powder herself. “What
right had that sly, deceitful hussy to be alive? Not a bit of doubt she
worked Bill up to the murder. Jealous, you see, because Jake looked at
her once before he knew me.”