she proposed that I should come East, and accept a superintendentship from
a cousin of hers, the owner of a gun-factory in one of those shady New
England towns women are so fond of. She intimated that he was in politics,
this cousin, and of course would expect his employees to become part of
his constituency. It's a very pretty little bribe, you see; when you add
the--the girl, it's enough to shake a man--who wants that girl. I'm not
worth much to myself, or to anybody else, apparently, but by Heaven I'll
not sell out as cheap as that!
“It all amounts to nothing except one more illusion gone. If there is a
woman on this earth that can love a man without knowing for what, and take
the chances of life with him without counting the cost, I have never known
her. I asked you once if a woman could do that. You hadn't the courage
to tell me the truth. I wouldn't have been satisfied if you had; but I'm
satisfied now.”
“I believed she would be happy; I believe she would be, now, if only you
would go to her and persuade her to try.”
“I persuade her! I would never try to persuade a woman to be my wife were I
dying for love of her! I don't think myself invented by nature to promote
the happiness of woman, in the aggregate or singly. I know there are men
who do: let them urge their claims. I thought that she loved me; that was
another illusion. She will probably marry the cousin, and become the most
loyal of his constituents. He is welcome to her; but there's a ghostly
blank somewhere. How I have tired you! You'll be in bed another week for
this selfishness of mine.” He stopped, while a sudden thought brought a
change to his face. “But when are you going home?”
“I cannot go,” she said. Her weakness came over her like a cloud, darkening
the room and pressing upon her heavily. “Will you give me your arm?”
At the stairs she stopped, and leaning against the wall looked at him with
wide, hopeless eyes.
“We are cut off from everything. My friend does not need me now; she has
gone home,--alone. She is dead!”
Arnold took a long walk upon the hills that night, and smoked a great
many cigars in gloomy meditation. He was thinking of two girls, as young
men who smoke a great many cigars without counting them often are; he was
also thinking of Arizona. He had fully made up his mind to resign, and
depart for that problematic region as soon as his place was filled; but an
alternative had presented itself to him with a pensive attractiveness,--an
alternative unmistakably associated with the fact that the schoolmistress
was to remain in her present isolated circumstances. It even had occurred
to him that there might be some question of duty involved in his “standing
by her,” as he phrased it to himself, “till she got her color back.” There
was an unconscious appeal in the last words he had heard her speak which
constrained him to do so. He was not in the habit of pitying himself, but
had there been another soul to follow this mental readjustment of himself
to his mutilated life, it would surely have pitied the eagerness with which
he clung to this one shadow of a duty to a fellow-creature. It was the
measure of his loneliness.
It was late in November. The rains had begun again with sound and fury;
with ranks of clouds forming along the mountain sides, and driven before
the sea-winds upward through the gulches; with days of breeze and sunshine,
when the fog veil was lightly lifted and blown apart, showing the valley
always greener; with days of lowering stillness, when the veil descended
and left the mountains alone, like islands of shadow rising from a sea of
misty whiteness.
On such a lowering day, Miss Frances stood at the junction of three trails,
in front of the door of the blacksmith's shop. She was wrapped in a dark
blue cloak, with the hood drawn over her head; the cool dampness had given
to her cheeks a clear, pure glow, and her brown eyes looked out with a
cheerful light. She was watching the parting of the mist in the valley
below; for a wind had sprung up, and now the rift widened, as the windows
of heaven might have opened, giving a glimpse of the world to the “Blessed
Damozel.” All was dark above and around her; only a single shaft of
sunlight pierced the fog, and startled into life a hundred tints of
brightness in the valley. She caught the sparkle on the roofs and windows
of the town ten miles away; the fields of sunburnt stubble glowed a deep
Indian red; the young crops were tenderest emerald; and the line of the
distant bay, a steel-blue thread against the horizon.
Arnold was plodding up the lower trail on his gray mare, fetlock deep in
mud. He dismounted at the door of the shop, and called to him a small
Mexican lad with a cheek of the tint of ripe corn.
“Here, Pedro Segundo! Take this mare up to the camp! Can you catch?” He
tossed him a coin. “Bueno!”
“Mucho bueno!” said Pedro the First, looking on approvingly from the door
of his shop.
Arnold turned to the schoolmistress, who was smiling from her perch on a
pile of wet logs.
“I'm perfectly happy!” she said. “This east wind takes me home. I hear the
bluebirds, and smell the salt-marshes and the wood-mosses. I'm not sure but
that when the fog lifts we shall see white caps in the valley.”
“I dare say there are some very good people down there,” said Arnold, with
deliberation, “but all the same I should welcome an inundation. Think
what a climate this would be, if we could have the sea below us, knocking
against the rocks on still nights, and thundering at us in a storm!”
“Don't speak of it! It makes me long for a miracle, or a judgment, or
something that's not likely to happen.”
“Meantime, I want you to come down the trail, and pass judgment on my
bachelor quarters. I can't stand the boarding-house any longer! By Jove,
I'm like the British footman in 'Punch,'--'what with them legs o' mutton
and legs o' pork, I'm a'most wore out! I want a new hanimal inwented!' I've
found an old girl down in the valley who consents to look after me and vary
the monotony of my dinners at the highest market price. She isn't here yet,
but the cabin is about ready. I want you to come down and look it over. I'm
a perfect barbarian about color! You can't put it on too thick and strong
to suit me. I dare say I need toning down.”
They were slipping and sliding down the muddy trail, brushing the raindrops
from the live-oak scrub as they passed. A subtle underlying content had
lulled them both, of late, into an easier companionship than they had ever
found possible before, and they were gay with that enjoyment of wet weather
which is like an intoxication after seven months of drought.
“Now I suppose you like soft, harmonious tints and neutral effects. You're
a bit of a conservative in everything, I fear.”
“I think I should like plenty of color here, or else positive white; the
monotony of the landscape and its own deep, low tones demand it. A neutral
house would fade into an ash heap under this sun.”
“Good! Then you'll like my dark little den, with its barbaric reds and
blues.”
They were at the gate of the little cottage, overlooking the valley. The
gleam of sunlight had faded and the fog curtain rolled back. The house
did indeed seem very dark as they entered. It was only a little after four
o'clock, but the cloudy twilight of a short November day was suddenly
descending upon them. The schoolmistress looked shyly around, while Arnold
tramped about the rooms and sprung the shades up as high as they would go.
They were in a small, irregular parlor, wainscoted and floored in redwood,
and lightly furnished with bamboo. This room communicated by a low arch
with the dining-room beyond.
“I have some flags and spurs and old trophies to hang up there,” he said,
pointing to the arch; “and perhaps I can get you to sew the rings on the
curtain that's to hang underneath. I don't want too much of the society of
my angel from the valley, you know; besides, I want to shield her from the
vulgar gaze, as they do the picture of the Madonna.”
“It will serve you right if she never comes at all!”
“Oh, she's pining to come. She's dying to sacrifice herself for twenty-five
dollars a month. Did I tell you, by the way, that I've had a rise in my
salary? There is a rise in the work, too, which rather overbalances the
increase of pay, but that's understood; for a good many years it will be
more work than wage, but at the other end I hope it will be more wage than
work. You don't seem to be very much interested in my affairs; if you knew
how seldom I speak of them to any one but yourself, you might perhaps deign
to listen.”
“I am listening; but I'm thinking, too, that it's getting very late.”
“See, here is my curtain!” he said, dragging out a breadth of heavy stuff.
He took it to the window, and threw it over a Chinese lounge that stood
beneath. “It's an old serape I picked up at Guadalajara five years ago:
the beauty of having a house is that all the old rubbish you have bored
yourself with for years immediately becomes respectable and useful. I
expect to become so myself. You don't say that you like my curtain!”
“I think it is very pagan looking, and rather--dirty.”
“Well, I shan't make a point of the dirt. I dare say the thing would look
just as well if it was clean. Won't you try my lounge?” he said, as she
looked restlessly towards the door. “It was invented by a race that can
loaf more naturally than we do: it takes an American back some time to
relax enough to appreciate it.”
Miss Frances half reluctantly drew her cloak about her, and yielded her
Northern slenderness to the long Oriental undulations of the couch. Her
head was thrown back, showing her fair throat and the sweet upward curves
of her lips and brows.
Arnold gazed at her with too evident delight.
“Why won't you sit still? You cannot deny that you have never been so
comfortable in your life before.”
“It's a very good place to 'loaf and invite one's soul,'” she said, rising
to a sitting position; “but that isn't my occupation at present. I must go
home. It is almost dark.”
“There is no hurry. I'm going with you. I want you to see how the little
room lights up. I've never seen it by firelight, and I'll have my
house-warming to-night!”
“Oh no, indeed! I must go back. There's the five o'clock whistle, now!”
“Well, we've an hour yet. You must get warm before you go.”
He went out, and quickly returned with an armful of wood and shavings,
which he crammed into the cold fireplace.
“What a litter you have made! Do you think your mature angel from the
valley will stand that sort of thing?”
As she spoke, the rain descended in violence, sweeping across the piazza,
and obliterating the fast-fading landscape. They could scarcely see each
other in the darkness, and the trampling on the roof overhead made speech
a useless effort. Almost as suddenly as it had opened upon them the tumult
ceased, and in the silence that followed they listened to the heavy
raindrops spattering from the eaves.
Arnold crossed to the window, where Miss Frances stood shivering and
silent, with her hands clasped before her.
“I want you to light my fire,” he said, with a certain concentration in his
voice.
“Why do you not light it yourself?” She drew away from his outstretched
hand. “It seems to me you are a bit of a tyrant in your own house.”
He drew a match across his knee and held it towards her: by its gleam she
saw his pale, unsmiling face, and again that darkening of the eyes which
she remembered.
“Do you refuse me such a little thing,--my first guest? I ask it as a most
especial grace!”
She took the match, and knelt with it in her hands; but it only flickered a
moment, and went out. “It will not go for me. You must light it yourself.”
He knelt beside her and struck another match. “We will try together,” he
said, placing it in her fingers and closing his hand about them. He held
the trembling fingers and the little spark they guarded steadily against
the shaving. It kindled; the flame breathed and brightened and curled
upward among the crooked manzanita stumps, illuminating the two entranced
young faces bending before it. Miss Frances rose to her feet, and Arnold,
rising too, looked at her with a growing dread and longing in his eyes.
“You said to-day that you were happy, because in fancy you were at home. Is
that the only happiness possible to you here?”
“I am quite contented here,” she said. “I am getting acclimated.”
“Oh, don't be content: I am not; I am horribly otherwise. I want
something--so much that I dare not ask for it. You know what it
is,--Frances!”
“You said once that I reminded you--of her: is that the reason you--Am I
consoling you?”
“Good God! I don't want consolation! _That_ thing never existed; but here
is the reality; I cannot part with it. I wish you had as little as I have,
outside of this room where we two stand together!”
“I don't know that I have anything,” she said under her breath.
“Then,” said he, taking her in his arms, “I don't see but that we are ready
to enter the kingdom of heaven. It seems very near to me.”
They are still in exile: they have joined the band of lotus-eaters who
inhabit that region of the West which is pervaded by a subtle breath from
the Orient, blowing across the seas between. Mrs. Arnold has not yet made
that first visit East which is said by her Californian friends to be so
disillusioning, and the old home still hovers, like a beautiful mirage, on
the receding horizon.
FRIEND BARTON'S “CONCERN.”
It had been “borne in” upon him, more or less, during the long winter;
it had not relaxed when the frosts unlocked their hold and the streams
were set free from their long winter's silence, among the hills. He grew
restless and abstracted under “the turnings of the Lord's hand upon him,”
and his speech unconsciously shaped itself into the Biblical cadences which
came to him in his moments of spiritual exercise.
The bedrabbled snows of March shrank away before the keen, quickening
sunbeams; the hills emerged, brown and sodden, like the chrysalis of the
new year; the streams woke in a tumult, and all day and night their voices
called from the hills back of the mill: the waste-weir was a foaming
torrent, and spread itself in muddy shallows across the meadow, beyond
the old garden where the robins and bluebirds were house-hunting. Friend
Barton's trouble stirred with the life-blood of the year, and pressed
upon him sorely; but as yet he gave it no words. He plodded about, among
his lean kine, tempering the winds of March to his untimely lambs, and
reconciling unnatural ewes to their maternal duties.
Friend Barton had never heard of the doctrine of the survival of the
fittest, though it was the spring of 1812, and England and America were
investigating the subject on the seas, while the nations of Europe were
practically illustrating it. The “hospital tent,” as the boys called an old
corn-basket, covered with carpet, which stood beside the kitchen chimney,
was seldom without an occupant,--a brood of chilled chickens, a weakly
lamb, or a wee pig (with too much blue in its pinkness), that had been
left behind by its stouter brethren in the race for existence. The old
mill hummed away through the day, and often late into the evening if time
pressed, upon the grists which added a thin, intermittent stream of tribute
to the family income. Whenever work was “slack,” Friend Barton was sawing
or chopping in the woodshed adjoining the kitchen; every moment he could
seize or make he was there, stooping over the rapidly growing pile.
“Seems to me, father, thee's in a great hurry with the wood this spring. I
don't know when we've had such a pile ahead.”
“'T won't burn up any faster for being chopped,” Friend Barton said; and
then his wife Rachel knew that if he had a reason for being “forehanded”
with the wood, he was not ready to give it.
One rainy April afternoon, when the smoky gray distances began to take a
tinge of green, and through the drip and rustle of the rain the call of
the robins sounded, Friend Barton sat in the door of the barn, oiling the
road-harness. The old chaise had been wheeled out and greased, and its
cushions beaten and dusted.
An ox-team with a load of grain creaked up the hill and stopped at the
mill door. The driver, seeing Friend Barton's broad-brimmed drab felt hat
against the dark interior of the barn, came down the short lane leading
from the mill, past the house and farm-buildings.
“Fixin' up for travelin', Uncle Tommy?”
Vain compliments, such as worldly titles of Mr. and Mrs., were unacceptable
to Thomas Barton, and he was generally known and addressed as “Uncle Tommy”
by the world's people of a younger generation.
“It is not in man that walketh to direct his own steps, neighbor Jordan.
I am getting myself in readiness to obey the Lord, whichever way He shall
call me.”
Farmer Jordan cast a shrewd eye over the premises. They wore that patient,
sad, exhumed look which old farm-buildings are apt to have in early spring.
The roofs were black with rain, and brightened with patches of green moss.
Farmer Jordan instinctively calculated how many “bunches o' shingle” would
be required to rescue them from the decline into which they had fallen,
indicated by these hectic green spots.
“Wal, the Lord calls most of us to stay at home and look after things, such
weather as this. Good plantin' weather; good weather for breakin' ground;
fust-rate weather for millin'! This is a reg'lar miller's rain, Uncle
Tommy. You'd ought to be takin' advantage of it. I've got a grist back
here; wish ye could manage to let me have it when I come back from store.”
The grist was ground and delivered before Friend Barton went in to his
supper that night. Dorothy Barton had been mixing bread, and was wiping her
white arms and hands on the roller towel by the kitchen door, as her father
stamped and scraped his feet on the stones outside.
“There! I do believe I forgot to toll neighbor Jordan's rye,” he said, as
he gave a final rub on the broom Dorothy handed out to him. “It's wonderful
how careless I get!”
“Well, father, I don't suppose thee'd ever forget, and toll a grist twice!”
“I believe I've been mostly preserved from mistakes of that kind,” said
Friend Barton gently. “Well, well! To be sure,” he continued musingly. “It
may be the Lord who stays my hand from gathering profit unto myself while
his lambs go unfed.”
Dorothy put her hands on her father's shoulders: she was almost as tall as
he, and could look into his patient, troubled eyes.
“Father, I know what thee is thinking of, but do think long. It will be a
hard year; the boys ought to go to school; and mother is so feeble!”
Friend Barton's “concern” kept him awake that night. His wife watched by
his side, giving no sign, lest her wakeful presence should disturb his
silent wrestlings. The tall, cherry-wood clock in the entry measured the
hours, as they passed, with its slow, dispassionate tick.
At two o'clock Rachel Barton was awakened from her first sleep of weariness
by her husband's voice, whispering heavily in the darkness.
“My way is hedged up! I see no way to go forward. Lord, strengthen my
patience, that I murmur not, after all I have seen of thy goodness. I find
daily bread is very desirable; want and necessity are painful to nature;
but shall I follow Thee for the sake of the loaves, or will it do to
forsake Thee in times of emptiness and abasement?”
There was silence again, and restless tossings and sighings continued the
struggle.
“Thomas,” the wife's voice spoke tremulously in the darkness, “my dear
husband, I know whither thy thoughts are tending. If the Spirit is with
thee, do not deny it for our sakes, I pray thee. The Lord did not give
thee thy wife and children to hang as a millstone round thy neck. I am thy
helpmeet, to strengthen thee in his service. I am thankful that I have my
health this spring better than usual, and Dorothy is a wonderful help. Her
spirit was sent to sustain me in thy long absences. Go, dear, and serve our
Master, who has called thee in these bitter strivings! Dorothy and I will
keep things together as well as we can. The way will open--never fear!” She
put out her hand and touched his face in the darkness; there were tears on
the furrowed cheeks. “Try to sleep, dear, and let thy spirit have rest.
There is but one answer to this call.”
With the first drowsy twitterings of the birds, when the crescent-shaped
openings in the board shutters began to define themselves clearly in the
shadowy room, they arose and went about their morning tasks in silence.
Friend Barton's step was a little heavier than usual, and the hollows
round his wife's pale brown eyes were a little deeper. As he sat on the
splint-bottomed chair by the kitchen fireplace, drawing on his boots, she
placed her hands on his shoulders, and touched with her cheek the worn spot
on the top of his head.
“Thee will lay this concern before meeting to-morrow, father?”
“I had it on my mind to do so,--if my light be not quenched before then.”
Friend Barton's light was not quenched. Words came to him, without
seeking,--a sure sign that the Spirit was with him,--in which to “open the
concern” that had ripened in his mind, of a religious visit to the meeting
constituting the yearly meetings of Philadelphia and Baltimore. A “minute”
was given him, encouraging him in the name, and with the full concurrence,
of the monthly meetings of Nine Partners and Stony Valley, to go wherever
the Truth might lead him.
While Friend Barton was thus freshly anointed, and “abundantly encouraged,”
his wife, Rachel, was talking with Dorothy, in the low upper chamber known
as the “wheel-room.”
Dorothy was spinning wool on the big wheel, dressed in her light calico
short gown and brown quilted petticoat; her arms were bare, and her hair
was gathered away from her flushed cheeks and knotted behind her ears. The
roof sloped down on one side, and the light came from a long, low window
under the eaves. There was another window (shaped like a half-moon, high
up in the peak), but it sent down only one long beam of sunlight, which
glimmered across the dust and fell upon Dorothy's white neck.
The wheel was humming a quick measure and Dorothy trod lightly back and
forth, the wheel-pin in one hand, the other holding the tense, lengthening
thread, which the spindle devoured again.
“Dorothy, thee looks warm: can't thee sit down a moment, while I talk to
thee?”
“Is it anything important, mother? I want to get my twenty knots before
dinner.” She paused as she joined a long tress of wool at the spindle. “Is
it anything about father?”
“Yes, it's about father, and all of us.”
“I know,” said Dorothy, with a sigh. “He's going away again!”
“Yes, dear. He feels that he is called. It is a time of trouble and
contention everywhere: 'the harvest,' truly, 'is plenteous, but the
laborers are few.'”
“There are not so many 'laborers' here, mother, though to be sure, the
harvest”--
“Dorothy, my daughter, don't let a spirit of levity creep into thy speech.
Thy father has striven and wrestled with his urgings. I've seen it working
on him all winter. He feels, now, it is the Lord's will.”
“I don't see how he can be so sure,” said Dorothy, swaying gloomily to and
fro against the wheel. “I don't care for myself, I'm not afraid of work,
but thee's not able to do what thee does now, mother. If I have outside
things to look after, how can I help thee as I should? And the boys are
about as much dependence as a flock of barn swallows!”
“Don't thee fret about me, dear; the way will open. Thy father has thought
and planned for us. Have patience while I tell thee. Thee knows that Walter
Evesham's pond is small and his mill is doing a thriving business?”
“Yes, indeed, I know it!” Dorothy exclaimed. “He has his own share, and
ours too, most of it!”
“Wait, dear, wait! Thy father has rented him the ponds, to use when his own
gives out. He is to have the control of the water, and it will give us a
little income, even though the old mill does stand idle.”
“He may as well take the mill, too. If father is away all summer it will
be useless ever to start it again. Thee'll see, mother, how it will end,
if Walter Evesham has the custom and the water all summer. I think it's
miserable for a young man to be so keen about money.”