The New England town of Willowfield was a place of great importance. Its
importance--religious, intellectual, and social--was its strong point. It
took the liberty of asserting this with unflinching dignity. Other towns
might endeavour to struggle to the front, and, indeed, did so endeavour,
but Willowfield calmly held its place and remained unmoved. Its place
always had been at the front from the first, and there it took its stand.
It had, perhaps, been hinted that its sole title to this position lay in
its own stately assumption: but this, it may be argued, was sheer envy
and entirely unworthy of notice.
"Willowfield is not very large or very rich," its leading old lady said,
"but it is important and has always been considered so."
There was society in Willowfield, society which had taken up its
abiding-place in three or four streets and confined itself to developing
its importance in half a dozen families--old families. They were always
spoken of as the "old families," and, to be a member of one of them, even
a second or third cousin of weak mind and feeble understanding, was to be
enclosed within the magic circle outside of which was darkness, wailing,
and gnashing of teeth. There were the Stornaways, who had owned the
button factory for nearly a generation and a half--which was a long time;
the Downings, who had kept the feed-store for quite thirty years, and the
Burtons, who had been doctors for almost as long, not to mention the
Larkins, who had actually founded the Willowfield _Times_, and kept it
going, which had scarcely been expected of them at the outset.
Their moral, mental, and social gifts notwithstanding, there was nothing
connected with the Stornaways, the Downings, the Burtons, and the Larkins
of such importance as their antiquity. The uninformed outsider, on
hearing it descanted upon, might naturally have been betrayed into the
momentary weakness of expecting to see Mr. Downing moulder away, and
little old Doctor Burton crumble into dust.
"They belong," it was said, with the temperateness of true dignity, "to
our old families, and that is something, you know, even in America."
"It has struck me," an observing male visitor once remarked, "that there
are a good many women in Willowfield, and that altogether it has a
feminine tone."
It was certainly true that among the Stornaways, the Downings, the
Burtons, and the Larkins, the prevailing tone was feminine; and as the
Stornaways, the Downings, the Burtons, and the Larkins comprised
Willowfield society, and without its society Willowfield lost its
significance, the observing male visitor may not have been far wrong. If
mistakes were made in Willowfield society, they were always made by the
masculine members of it. It was Mr. Stornaway who had at one time been
betrayed into the blunder of inviting to a dinner-party at his house a
rather clever young book-keeper in his employ, and it was Doctor Burton
who had wandered still more glaringly from the path of rectitude by
taking a weak, if amiable, interest in a little music teacher with a
sweet, tender voice, even going so far as to request his family to call
upon her and ask her to take tea with them. It was Mr. Downing, who, when
this last incident occurred and created some sensation, had had the
temerity to intimate that he thought the Doctor was entirely in the
right; though, to be sure, he had afterwards been led to falter in this
opinion and subside into craven silence, being a little gentleman of
timorous and yielding nature, and rather overborne by a large and
powerful feminine majority in his own household. Mr. Larkin was, it is to
be regretted, the worst of the recreant party, being younger and more
unmanageable, having not only introduced to public notice certain
insignificant though somewhat talented persons in the shape of young men
and women who talked well, or sang well, or wielded lively pens, but had
gone to the length of standing by them unflinchingly, demanding civility
for them at the hands of his own family of women in such a manner as
struck a deadly blow at the very foundations of the social structure. But
Mr. Larkin--he was known as Jack Larkin to an astonishing number of
people--was a bold man by nature and given to deeds of daring, from the
fatal consequences of which nothing but the fact that he was a member of
one of the "old families" could have saved him. As he was a part--and
quite a large part--of one of these venerable households, and, moreover,
knew not the fear of man--or woman--his failings could be referred to as
"eccentricities."
"Mr. Larkin," Mrs. Stornaway frequently observed, with long-suffering
patience, "is talented but eccentric. You are never quite sure what he
will do next."
Mrs. Stornaway was the head and front of all Willowfield's social
efforts, and represented the button factory with a lofty grace and
unbending dignity of demeanour which were the admiration and envy of all
aspirants to social fame. It was said that Mrs. Stornaway had been a
beauty in her youth, and there were those who placed confidence in the
rumour. Mrs. Stornaway did so herself, and it had been intimated that it
was this excellent lady who had vouched for the truth of the statement in
the first instance; but this report having been traced to a pert young
relative who detested and derided her, might have had its origin in
youthful disrespect and malice.
At present Mrs. Stornaway was a large blonde woman whose blondness was
not fairness, and whose size was not roundness. She was the leader of all
religious and charitable movements, presiding with great vigour over
church matters, fairs, concerts, and sewing societies. The minister of
her church submitted himself to her advice and guidance. All the modest
members of the choir quailed and quavered before her, while even the bold
ones, meeting her eye when engaged in worldly conversation between their
musical efforts, momentarily lost their interest and involuntarily
straightened themselves.
Towards her family Mrs. Stornaway performed her duty with unflinching
virtue. She had married her six daughters in a manner at once creditable
to herself, themselves, and Willowfield. Five of them had been rather
ordinary, depressed-looking girls, who, perhaps, were not sorry to obtain
their freedom. The sixth had narrowly escaped being dowered with all the
charms said to have adorned Mrs. Stornaway's own youth.
"Agnes is very like what I was at her age," said her mother, with
dignity; and perhaps she was, though no one had been able to trace any
resemblance which had defied the ravages of time.
Agnes had made a marriage which in some points was better than those of
her sisters. She had married a brilliant man, while the other five had
been obliged to make the best of things as far as brilliancy was
concerned. People always said of John Baird that he was a brilliant man
and that a great career lay before him. He was rather remarkable for a
curious subtle distinction of physical good looks. He was not of the
common, straight-featured, personable type. It had been said by the
artistic analyst of form and line that his aspect did not belong to his
period, that indeed his emotional, spirited face, with its look of
sensitiveness and race, was of the type once connected with fine old
steel engravings of young poets not quite beyond the days of powdered
hair and frilled shirt-bosoms.
"It is absurd that he should have been born in America and in these
days," a brilliant person had declared. "He always brings to my mind the
portraits in delightful old annuals, 'So-and-so--at twenty-five.'"
His supple ease of movement and graceful length of limb gave him an air of
youth. He was one of the creatures to whom the passage of years would mean
but little, but added charm and adaptability. His eyes were singularly
living things--the eyes that almost unconsciously entreat and whose
entreaty touches one; the fine, irregular outline of his profile was the
absolute expression of the emotional at war with itself, the passionate,
the tender, the sensitive, and complex. The effect of these things was
almost the effect of peculiar physical beauty, and with this he combined
the allurements of a compelling voice and an enviable sense of the fitness
of things. He never lost a thought through the inability to utter it. When
he had left college, he had left burdened with honours and had borne with
him the enthusiastic admiration of his fellow-students. He had earned and
worn his laurels with an ease and grace which would be remembered through
years to come.
"It's something," it was once said, "to have known a fellow to whom
things came so easily."
When he had entered the ministry, there had been some wonder expressed
among the men who had known him best, but when he preached his first
sermon at Willowfield, where there was a very desirable church indeed,
with whose minister Mrs. Stornaway had become dissatisfied, and who in
consequence was to be civilly removed, the golden apple fell at once into
his hand.
Before he had arrived he had been spoken of rather slightingly as "the
young man," but when he rose in the pulpit on the eventful Sunday
morning, such a thrill ran through the congregation as had not stirred it
at its devotions for many a summer day. Mrs. Stornaway mentally decided
for him upon the spot.
"He is of one of our oldest families," she said. "This is what
Willowfield wants."
He dined with the Stornaways that day, and when he entered the parlour
the first figure his eyes fell upon was that of Agnes Stornaway, dressed
in white muslin, with white roses in her belt. She was a tall girl, with
a willowy figure and a colourless fairness of skin, but when her mother
called her to her side and Baird touched her hand, she blushed in such a
manner that Mrs. Stornaway was a little astonished. Scarcely a year
afterward she became Mrs. Baird, and people said she was a very fortunate
girl, which was possibly true.
Her husband did not share the fate of most ministers who had presided
over Mrs. Stornaway's church. His power over his congregation increased
every year. His name began to be known in the world of literature; he was
called upon to deliver in important places the lectures he had delivered
to his Willowfield audiences, and the result was one startling triumph
after another. There was every indication of the fact that a career was
already marked out for him.
Willowfield looked forward with trepidation to the time when the great
world which stood ready to give him fame would absorb him altogether, but
in the meantime it exerted all its power of fascination, and was so far
successful that the Reverend John Baird felt that his lines had indeed
fallen in pleasant places.
But after the birth of her little daughter his wife was not strong, and
was so long in regaining vitality that in the child's second year she was
ordered abroad by the physician. At this time Baird's engagements were
such that he could not accompany her, and accordingly he remained in
America. The career was just opening up its charmed vistas to him; his
literary efforts were winning laurels; he was called upon to lecture in
Boston and New York, and he never rose before an audience without at once
awakening an enthusiasm.
Mrs. Baird went to the south of France with her child and nurse and a
party of friends, and remained there for a year. At the termination of
that time, just as she thought of returning home, she was taken seriously
ill. Her husband was sent for and went at once to join her. In a few
months she had died of rapid decline. She had been a delicate girl, and a
far-off taint of consumption in her family blood had reasserted itself.
But though Mrs. Stornaway bewailed her with diffuse and loud pathos and
for a year swathed her opulence of form in deepest folds and draperies of
crape, the quiet fairness and slightness which for some five and twenty
years had been known as Agnes Stornaway, had been a personality not
likely to be a marked and long-lingering memory.
The child was placed with a motherly friend in Paris. For a month after
his wife's death Baird had been feverishly, miserably eager to return to
America. Those about him felt that the blow which had fallen upon him
might affect his health seriously. He seemed possessed by a desperate,
morbid desire to leave the scene of the calamity behind him. He was
restless and feverish in his anxiety, and scarcely able to endure the
delay which the arrangement of his affairs made necessary. He had not
been well when he had left Willowfield, and during his watching by his
wife's bedside he had grown thin and restless-eyed.
"I want to get home. I must get home," he would exclaim, as if
involuntarily. His entire physical and mental condition were strained and
unnatural. His wife's doctor, who had become his own doctor as his health
deteriorated, was not surprised, on arriving one day, to find him
prostrated with nervous fever. He was ill for months, and he rose from
his sick-bed a depressed shadow of his former self and quite unable to
think of returning to his charge, even if his old desire had not utterly
left him with his fever. He was absent from Willowfield for two years,
and when at length he turned his face homeward, it was with no eagerness.
He had passed through one of those phases which change a man's life and
being. If he had been a rich man he would have remained away and would
have lived in London, seeing much of the chief continental cities. As it
was, he must at least temporarily return to Willowfield and take with him
his little girl.
On the day distinguished by his return to his people, much subdued
excitement prevailed in Willowfield. During the whole of the previous
week Mrs. Stornaway's carriage had paid daily visits to the down-town
stores. There was a flourishing New England thrift among the Stornaways,
the Larkins, the Downings, and the Burtons, which did not allow of their
delegating the ordering of their households to assistants. Most of them
were rigorous housewives, keen at a bargain and sharp of tongue when need
be, and there was rarely any danger of their getting less than their
money's worth.
To celebrate his arrival, Mrs. Stornaway was to give an evening party
which was to combine congratulatory welcome with a touch of condolence
for the past and assurance for the future.
"We must let him see," said Mrs. Stornaway, "that Willowfield has its
attractions."
Its attractions did not present themselves as vividly to John Baird as
might have been hoped, when he descended from the train at the depot. He
had spent two or three days in Boston with a view to taking his change
gradually, but he found himself not as fully prepared for Willowfield as
he could have wished. He was not entirely prepared for Mrs. Stornaway,
who hurried towards them with exultation on her large, stupid face, and,
after effusive embraces, bustled with them towards an elderly woman who
had evidently accompanied her.
"See, here's Miss Amory Starkweather!" she exclaimed. "She came with me
to meet you. Just see how Annie's grown, Miss Amory."
Miss Amory was a thin woman with a strong-featured countenance and
deep-set, observing eyes. They were eyes whose expression suggested that
they had made many painful discoveries in the course of their owner's
life.
John Baird rather lighted up for a moment when he caught sight of her.
"I am glad to see you, Miss Amory," he said.
"Thank you," she answered. "I hope you are as well as you look."
"We're so delighted," Mrs. Stornaway announced, as if to the bystanders.
"Everybody in Willowfield is so delighted to have you back again. The
church has not seemed the same place. The man who took your place--Mr.
Jeramy, you know--you haven't any idea how unpopular----"
"Excuse me," said Baird, "I must speak to Latimer. Where is Latimer,
Annie?"
"Who is Latimer?" asked Mrs. Stornaway.
"Excuse me," said Baird again, and turning back towards the platform, he
disappeared among the crowd with Annie, who had clung to his hand.
"Why, he's gone!" proclaimed Mrs. Stornaway. "But where's he gone? Why
didn't he stay? Who's Latimer?"
"Latimer!" Miss Amory echoed, "you ought to know him. His family lives in
Willowfield. He is the man who was coming home to take charge of the
little church at Janway's Mills. He has evidently crossed the Atlantic
with them."
"Well, now, I declare," proclaimed Mrs. Stornaway. "It must be the man
who took his sister to Europe. It was a kind of absurd thing. She died
away--the girl did, and people wondered why he did not come back and how
he lived. Why, yes, that must be the man." And she turned to look about
for him.
Miss Amory Starkweather made a slight movement.
"Don't look," she said. "He might not like to be stared at."
"They're quite common people," commented Mrs. Stornaway, still staring.
"They live in a little house in a side street. They had very silly ideas
about the girl. They thought she was a genius and sent her to the School
of Art in Boston, but it wasn't long before her health failed her. Ah! I
guess that must be the man talking to Mr. Baird and Annie. He looks as if
he would go off in a consumption."
He was a tall, hollow-chested man, with a dark, sallow face and an
ungainly figure. There were suggestions of both ill-health and
wretchedness in his appearance, and his manner was awkward and
embarrassed. Two human beings more utterly unlike each other than himself
and the man who held his hand could not possibly have been found. It was
Baird who held his hand, not he Baird's, and it was Baird who seemed to
speak while he listened, while with his free hand he touched the hair of
the child Annie.
"Well," remarked Mrs. Stornaway, "Mr. Baird seems to have taken a fancy
to him. I don't think he's attractive myself. Are they going to talk to
him all day?"
"No," said Miss Amory, "he is going now."
He was going. Baird had released his hand and he was looking in a gloomy,
awkward way at Annie, as if he did not know how to make his adieux. But
Annie, who was a simple child creature, solved the difficulty for him
with happy readiness. She flung both her small arms about his ungainly
body and held up her face.
"Kiss me three times," she said; "three times."
Latimer started and flushed. He looked down at her and then glanced
rather timidly at Baird.
"Kiss her," said Baird, "it will please her--and it will please me."
Latimer bent himself to the child's height and kissed her. The act was
without grace, and when he stood upright he was more awkward and
embarrassed than ever. But the caress was not a cold or rough one, and
when he turned and strode away the flush was still on his sallow cheek.