"You naughty miller, you must die!"
"I suppose I must," he assented; "but it won't be for stealing, Miss
Ruth."
I love the old mill, with its great beams and its continual sound of
dashing water and the chirruping of the millstones grinding away at the
corn like an insatiate monster that can never have enough. The smell of
the meal, too, is so pleasant, and even the abundant dust is so clean
and fresh it seems to belong there. The mellow light through the dim
windows and the shadows hiding in every corner have always from
childhood appealed to my imagination. I find there always a soothing and
serene mood.
"I want your advice, Deacon Richards," I said.
"So as not to follow it?" he demanded. "That's what women generally want
of advice."
I assured him I was ready to follow his advice if it were good, and so
we talked about the reading-room. I told him it seemed to me that if it
was to go on properly it should have a head; somebody to manage it and
be responsible for the way in which it was carried on.
"But you will do that yourself," he said.
I answered that it must be a man, for it was nonsense to think of a
woman's running a reading-room for men. He looked at me for a moment
with his droll grin, and then he was pleased to say that for a woman I
had a remarkable amount of common sense. I thanked him for the
compliment to my sex, and then asked if he would undertake the business,
and promise not to freeze the readers out the way he did the
prayer-meetings.
"I'm not the sort of person you want," he answered, chuckling at my
allusion to the fire question. "I've sense enough to know that without
being a woman. Why don't you ask Tom Webbe?"
I confessed that I had thought of Tom, but--And there I stuck, for I
could hardly tell the deacon how I thought gossip had already said
enough about Tom and myself without my giving folk any more to talk
about.
"I don't know what that 'but' means," he remarked, grinning more than
ever, as if he did know perfectly. "Anyway, there's nobody in town who
could do it so well. All the men and boys like him, and he has a level
head. He's the only one of the young fellows that's been to college, and
he ought to know more about books than any of the rest of them. Besides,
he needs something to take up his mind."
I felt the deacon was right, and I began to ask myself whether my
personal feelings should be allowed to count in such a matter. Still I
could hardly make up my mind to take the responsibility of putting Tom
at the head of a reading-room I had started. If nothing else were to be
considered I did not want my connection with the plan to be too
prominent, and gossip about Tom would be just the thing to keep my name
always to the front.
"I hope you are sensible enough to do one thing," Deacon Daniel went on,
"and that is to have everybody who uses the room pay for it. It needn't
be much, but they'll respect it and themselves more if they pay
something, and it'll give them the right to grumble."
"I don't want them to grumble," I returned.
"Oh, nobody cares much for anything he can't grumble about," was his
reply, with a laugh; "but really they are twice as likely to grumble if
you pay for everything than if they help. That's the way we are made."
I told him that he was an old cynic, but I saw in a moment he was right
about the value that would be put on a thing which was paid for. If the
men feel they are helping to support the reading-room they will take a
good deal more interest in it.
"Tom Webbe will manage them all right," the deacon declared. "He'll let
them grumble just enough, and make them so contented they'll think
they're having their own way while he's going ahead just the way he
thinks best. He's the only man for the place."
Perhaps he is; and indeed the more I think about it, the more I see the
deacon is right. It would certainly be good for Tom, and that is a good
deal. I wonder what I ought to do?
What Deacon Daniel said about the way in which Tom would manage the men
has been running through my mind. I wonder that I, who have known Tom so
well, never thought before of how great his power is to control people.
It showed itself when he was a boy; and if he had carried out his plan
to study law it would have been--I do wonder if Tom is working by
himself, and if that is the reason he borrowed those law-books?
September 27. Old lady Andrews has solved the question for me. I am so
glad I thought to go to her for advice. She suggests that we have a
committee, and make Deacon Richards chairman. Then Tom can be put on,
and really do the work.
"It wouldn't do at all for you to put Tom Webbe at the head alone, my
dear," she said. "It would make talk, and Aunt Naomi would have you
married to him a dozen times before the week was over; but this way it
will be all right."
I asked her if committees did not usually have three on them, and she
answered that Deacon Richards would know.
"I belong to an old-fashioned generation, my dear, and I never can feel
that it's quite respectable for a woman to know about committees and
that sort of thing. I'm sure in my day it wouldn't have been thought
well-bred. But Deacon Daniel will know. He's always on committees at
church conferences and councils."
Once more I visited the mill, and told Deacon Daniel of old lady
Andrews' suggestion. He agreed at once, and declared the plan was better
than that of having one man at the head.
"It'll be much the same thing as far as managing the reading-room goes,"
he observed, stroking his chin thoughtfully, "but somehow folks like
committees, and they generally think they have a better show if three or
four men are running things than if there's only one. Of course one man
always does manage, but a committee's more popular."
Deacon Daniel was very sure that the committee should have three on it,
and when I asked who should be the other man he said:--
"If it were anybody else but you, Miss Ruth, I shouldn't think it was
any use to say it, but you'll see what I mean. I think Cy Turner is the
man for the third place."
"The blacksmith?" I asked, a good deal surprised. "I'm afraid I don't
see what you mean. I don't even know him."
The deacon grinned down on me from his height, and made me a
characteristic retort.
"He doesn't look as if he'd kept awake nights on that account."
The blacksmith's jolly round face and twinkling eyes as I had seen him
on the street now and then came up before my mind, and I felt the full
force of the deacon's irony. I told him that he was impertinent, and
asked why he named Mr. Turner.
"Because," he answered, seriously, "what you want is for the folks that
haven't any books at home and don't have a chance to read to get
interested in the reading-room. If Cy Turner takes hold of it, he'll do
more than anybody else in town could do to make it go among just those
folks. He's shrewd and good-natured, and everybody that knows him likes
him. He'll have all the boys in the reading-room if he has to take them
there by the collar, and if he does they'll think it's fine."
I could see at once the wisdom of the deacon's idea. I asked how Tom and
the blacksmith would work together, and was assured that Mr. Turner has
a most unlimited admiration for Tom, so that the two would agree
perfectly. I made up my mind on the spot, and decided to go at once to
interview the blacksmith, from whose shop I could hear above the
whirring of the mill the blows on the anvil. I had no time on the little
way from the mill to the blacksmith shop to consider what I should say
to Mr. Turner, and I passed the time in hoping there would be no men
about. It made no difference; he was so straightforward and simple, so
kindly and human, that I felt at ease with him from the first. He was
luckily alone, so I walked in boldly as if I were in the habit of
visiting the forge every day of my life. He looked surprised to see me,
but not in the least disconcerted. The self-respecting coolness of a New
England workingman is something most admirable. Mr. Turner was smutty
and dressed in dirty clothes, leather apron and all, but his manners
were as good as those of the best gentleman in the land. There is
something noble in a country where a common workingman will meet you
with no servility and without any self-consciousness. I liked Mr. Turner
from the moment I saw his face and heard his voice, rich and cheery, and
I was won by his merry eyes, which had all the time a twinkling
suggestion of a smile ready to break out on the slightest occasion. I
went straight to my errand, and nothing could have been better than the
way in which he received my proposition. He had no false modesty, and no
over-assurance. He evidently knew that he could do what was required, he
was undisguisedly pleased to be asked, and he was troubled by no doubts
about social proprieties or improprieties.
"I suppose Mr. Webbe will do most of what work there is to do," I said,
"but he will be an easy person to work with on a committee, I should
think."
"Yes, marm, he will," the blacksmith responded heartily. "There ain't a
squarer fellow alive than Tom Webbe. Tom's been a bit wild, perhaps; but
he's an awful good fellow just the same, if you know him. I'm pleased to
be on the committee with him, Miss Privet; and I'll do my best. I think
the boys'll do about as I want 'em to."
I had only to see Mr. Turner to understand why Deacon Daniel had chosen
him. I think the committee--but "oh, good gracious mercy me," as the old
woman in the story says, it just occurs to me that I have not said a
word to Tom about the whole business!
September 28. It is strange that my only difficulty in arranging about
the reading-room should come from Tom, on whom I had counted as a matter
of course; but it is fortunate that I had assumed he would serve, for
this is what made him consent. When I saw him to-day, and told him what
I had done, he at first said he could not possibly have anything to do
with the whole matter.
"I thank you, Ruth," he said, "but don't you see I had better not give
folks any occasion to think of me at all just now? The gossips need only
to be reminded of my being alive, and they will begin all over again."
"Tom," I asked him desperately, "are you never going to get over this
bitter feeling? I can't bear to have you go on thinking that everybody
is talking about you."
"I don't blame them for talking," was his answer.
I assured him he would have been pleased if he could have heard the way
in which Mr. Turner spoke of him yesterday.
"Oh, Cy! he is too good-hearted to fling at anybody."
"But Deacon Richards was just as friendly," I insisted.
"Yes, he would be. It isn't the men, Ruth; they are ready to give a
fellow a chance; but the women"--
He did not seem to know how to finish his sentence, and I reminded him
that I too was a woman.
"Oh, you," responded Tom, "you're an angel. You might almost be a man."
I laughed at him for putting men above angels, and so by making him
smile, by coaxing him, and appealing to his friendliness to back me up
now I had committed myself, I prevailed upon him to serve. I am sure it
will be good for the reading-room, and I am equally sure it will be good
for Tom. Why in the world this victory should have left me a little
inclined to be blue, I do not understand.
X