For six months Sidney had been minister of Dole, and already his people
adored him. Never had they heard such sweet and winning sermons; never
had they realized the beauty and tenderness of the gospel, never had they
gone to their church with such assurance of comfort as they did now.
As Sidney learned to know them better and better, he was enabled to
comprehend more and more fully the narrow lives they led, the petty
poverties which afflicted them, the sore struggle it was for most of them
to make ends meet. Swayed by his great sympathy he sought in Holy Writ
for all the words of comfort, peace, and promise. He read these passages
to them in a voice which yearned towards them from his very heart, and
then he would close the Bible and preach to them lessons of the sweetest
and purest morality, illuminated by illustrations drawn from the fields
they tilled, from the woods, and from the varied phenomena of natural
life as it was manifested about them; his discourses came to them with a
sweet and homelike sense of comfort. Dumbly and instinctively they loved
their barren hills and meagre meadows with a great love, and it seemed
to them that now they were being given reasons for the love which was in
them.
If Sidney did not preach Christ he at least preached His word—and in His
spirit, and the people to whom he preached never doubted of the chaos
which was in the soul of their teacher. Their teacher who night and day
kept their joys and sorrows in his heart.
Sidney was walking home through the powdery snow to the parsonage when
he met Temperance; her face was set, and she was evidently in some
distress of mind. One of Sidney’s first pastoral duties had been to marry
Temperance and Nathan. They were established in the old Lansing house,
for Nathan had rented the farm. Old Mr. Lansing lived with them.
“Well, Temperance!” said Sidney. “It’s an age since I’ve seen you; how’s
everyone with you?”
“Oh, well,” said Temperance, “but”—looking at him shrewdly—“it don’t seem
to me that you are over and above well yourself.”
Sidney laughed carelessly.
“Oh—I’m always well—except for the headaches, and Vashti cures them.”
“Yes, I’ll be bound she does,” said Temperance irascibly. “You ain’t got
a mite of sense neither one of you; them passes and performances ain’t
good for you. I don’t believe in ’em, and for a minister! Sakes! they
say you are an angel in the village; take care you don’t get to be one.”
“Then you have your doubts about my being angelic?” said Sidney laughing.
Temperance coloured, but did not give way.
“Men’s men,” she said; “only some of them are better nor others,” then
she paused and grew grave and troubled again.
“You’ve something worrying you,” said Sidney kindly; “what is it?”
“Well,” said Temperance, “I don’t know if I’m over anxious or not,
but—have you heard anything about Lanty lately?”
“Yes, I did,” admitted Sidney, “and I was terribly sorry to hear it. Do
you suppose it can be true?”
“I don’t want to believe it,” said Temperance, two bright spots burning
on her cheeks; “but—but—well—Nathan was over at Brixton to-day, and Lanty
was there, and he was—not himself.”
“Oh, poor Mabella!” said Sidney; “I’m so sorry. I never dreamt it could
be true. What can be done?”
“Nothing—that I know of,” said Temperance. “M’bella’s close as wax and
quite right too, but she’s got a worried look; I can see through M’bella,
and as for Lanty, well—it would be a pretty brave one that would speak to
Lanty—he has a look!”
Sidney was in truth more distressed than he could say. That Lanty,
bold, bright, honest-hearted Lanty should give way to intemperance
was grievous. Sidney had always entertained a great admiration for the
young countryman, who was indeed almost the antithesis of Sidney. The
simplicity of his nature was very charming to this supra-sensitive man
who scourged his own soul with introspective inquisition. Lanty’s calm
and careless acceptance of the facts of life, without question as to why
and wherefore, his happy life of work with his wife and child, seemed to
Sidney something to be admired as very wholesome, if not envied as being
very desirable. That he should imperil this happiness seemed most tragic
to Sidney.
After he parted from Temperance he walked slowly on.
It was true; Lanty had “a look.” His bold eyes which had once looked so
fearlessly into all the eyes they met had now changed a little. There
was a kind of piteous challenge in them as of one who should say to his
fellows “accuse me if you dare.” Alas, over-eager denial is often an
admission of guilt. The tongues had been hissing his name from house to
house for long in Dole, and gradually the conviction spread that Lanty
Lansing was drinking much and often—and it was true.
It was the direct result of his popularity. He had been going very often
to Brixton during the past year, and there he had fallen in with a set
of men who drank a great deal; the country lawyers, an old toper of
a doctor, a banker and two or three idle men who spent their time in
the back rooms of their friends’ offices. Mixed up with this set Lanty
did his drinking unseen; but, alas! the effects were very visible. But
strange to say up to this time not one of the Dole worthies had seen him
drunk.
It would seem that even chance was constrained to aid Mabella Lansing
in the really heroic efforts she made to hide her degradation from the
censorious little world about her. That she and her husband were in any
sense divisible she never dreamed. Her comprehension of the unity of
marriage forbade that. That Lanty could sin apart from her, or be judged
apart from her, or condemned apart from her never occurred to her simple
loyal mind. As for turning upon his delinquencies the search-light of
her righteousness; or posing as a martyr and bespeaking the pity of her
friends as so many modern wives do—well, she had none of that treachery
in her. She suffered all his repentances in her own proper person and
without the anæsthetic poison which sometimes numbed him to the pain of
his regrets.
At this time Mabella’s little child was a source of ineffable strength
and solace to its mother. Its yellow head, so like Lanty’s own,
brightened the days he was making so dark. Mabella, grown afraid to
look at the future, spent many hours in contemplating her baby. Its
eyes—like bits of the blue heaven; the tiny feet whose soles were yet all
uncalloused by the stones of life; the clinging hands which had as yet
let fall no joy, nor grasped any thorns—these were joys unspeakable to
this mother as they have been to so many. Truly “heaven lies about us in
our infancy,” and now and then from the celestial atmosphere about this
child a warm sense of peace, a saving thrill of hope, reached out to the
mother’s heart. O wonderful woman heart, which, like the wholesome maple,
gives forth the more sweetness the more it is pierced!
Her neighbours took up the habit of visiting her frequently. Going early
and staying late, with the laudable intention of forcing themselves into
a confidence denied them.
To see Lanty pass to Brixton was a signal to start to his house, there
to talk to Mabella until such time as Lanty returned; and poor Mabella,
all her old-fashioned wifely fidelity up in arms, talked to them bravely.
They had sharp ears these mothers in Israel, but not so sharp as to
outstrip Mabella’s love-quickened senses.
When Lanty came back she heard his horse afar—before he came to the
fork in the road even—and making some simple excuse to her visitor, she
would speed out at the back door, see him, know if all was well. If his
gait was unsteady and his blue eyes dazed, she would persuade him to go
quietly up the back way. Happily at such times he was like wax in her
hands. Then she would return to her visitor with some little lie about
straying turkeys or depredating cows.
Oh, Eternal Spirit of Truth! Are not these lies writ in letters of gold
for our instruction amid the most sacred precepts?
Once indeed Lanty did come into the room where Mrs. Simpson sat. His eyes
were blurred; he swayed a little and asked loudly for the baby.
“I will find her,” said Mabella quietly, though her heart sickened within
her, and rising she led him from the room.
“Lanty, dear, you’ll go upstairs and lie down?”
He looked at her white face; the truth gradually struggling in upon him;
without a word he turned and crept up the back stairs like a beaten dog
going to hide.
Mabella returned to the sitting-room taking her baby with her; she felt
that she needed some fount of strength whilst encountering Mrs. Simpson’s
talk. When she entered, Mrs. Simpson greeted her with an indescribable
pantomime of pursed-up lips, doleful eyes, uplifted hands and lugubrious
shakes of the head. Even Mrs. Simpson dared not seek in words to break
down Mabella’s reticence, so baffling and forbidding was its wifely
dignity.
Mabella regarded Mrs. Simpson’s pantomime quietly.
“Are you not feeling well, Mrs. Simpson?” she asked. “Are you in pain?”
Mrs. Simpson arrested her pantomime with a jerk, and sitting very
erect, quivering with righteous wrath and excitement over the exclusive
information she possessed, she said:
“I’m real well—I am. I only thought—but I guess I’m keeping you; p’raps
you’ve got other things to do. Isn’t Lanty needin’ you?”
“No,” said Mabella, “Lanty is not needing me. What made you think that?
And I hope you’ll stay to tea. I’ve just put the kettle forward.”
“No—I can’t stay,” said Mrs. Simpson. “I only came to visit for a while
and I’ve stayed and stayed.” Mrs. Simpson had at the moment but one
desire on earth, which was to spread the news of Lanty’s fall.
“I sort o’ promised to visit Mrs. Ranger this week. I’ve visited a long
spell with you now. I guess I’ll be going on. My! How like her father
that young one do grow!”
“Yes, doesn’t she?” said Mabella, and the gladness in her voice was
unfeigned.
Mrs. Simpson took the goose quill out of her apron band, in which her
knitting needle rested, and measured the stocking she was knitting with
her second finger.
“Well!” she said, “I declare I’ve done a full half finger sence I been
settin’ here! This is my visitin’ knittin’. I hain’t done a loop in this
stockin’ but what’s been done in the neighbours’. I cast it on up to
Vashti’s. My soul! I never can come to callin’ her nothing but Vashti,
if she be the minister’s wife! I cast it on up there, and the preacher
he was real took up with the three colours of yarn being used at once.
He sez, sez he: ‘Why, Mrs. Simpson, you’re all three fates in one: you
have the three threads in your own hands.’ Then he said to Vashti, ‘That
would be fittin’ work for you, Vashti.’ Well, I knowed Vashti could never
manoover them three threads at once, but I didn’t say nothin’, bein’ as
I thought he was took up with the stockin’ and wanted Vashti to make him
some. Then he told about some woman named Penellepper that was great
on knittin’. The only girl I ever knowed by that name was Penellepper
Shinar, and she certingly was a great knitter; she used to knit herself
open-work white-thread stockings. Well, she came to a fine end with her
vanities! I wonder if ’twas her Mr. Martin meant? Folks did say she
was living gay in Boston, though ’twas said too that she went fur west
somewheres and school-teached. Suz! It would be queer if ’twas her Mr.
Martin meant!”
“Mr. Martin gets all those stories out of old books, in learned tongues,”
said Mabella simply. “When he stayed at the farm he used to tell us all
sorts of stories.”
“Women in books is mostly bad ’uns,” said Mrs. Simpson, by this time
arrayed in the old _crêpe_ bonnet which had been bought as mourning for
Len, and which she now wore as second best. “That holds good even to the
Bible and the newspapers. And as for a preacher mixing himself up with
them, I don’t hold with it. But being that they’re mostly dead it don’t
matter so much, and judging from all accounts they was good riddance when
they died.”
What a requiem over the “dear dead women” to whom so many songs have been
sung!
“How that scented geranium grows! It beats all,” said Mrs. Simpson, as
Mabella escorted her to the garden gate. For anyone to have let a visitor
depart alone from the doorstep would have been a scandal in Dole.
“Won’t you have a slip?” said Mabella, setting down Dorothy and bending
over the plant. “It’s apple scented; Lanty bought it off a pedler’s
waggon over in Brixton in the spring; it has grown wonderfully.”
She broke off a branch, ran for a bit of paper, put a little ball of
earth round the stem, wrapped it up and gave it to Mrs. Simpson.
“Well, it’s real generous of you to break it, Mabella; but you know the
proverb, ‘A shared loaf lasts long.’”
“Yes, it’s true I’m sure,” said Mabella.
She accompanied Mrs. Simpson to the gate and held up the baby to wave
good-bye.
And Mrs. Simpson sped down the road with the fleetness of foot which
betokens the news bringer.
She turned at the fork in the road and looked back at the square house
against its background of trees. Mabella was still at the gate with the
yellow-headed baby.
“Well,” said Mrs. Simpson to herself, “them Lansings is certainly most
tormented proud! Sich pretences! And would I stay to tea! My! I wonder
Mabella Lansing can look a body in the face. Gracious! She must think
we’re a set of dumbheads, if she thinks every soul in Dole can’t see how
things is goin’ with Lanty. It’s the drinkin’ uncle coming out clear in
him that’s sure.”
Mrs. Simpson arrived at her friend’s house in ample time for tea, and
under the stimulus of excitement made an excellent repast.
Without criticism upon the Dole people it must be admitted that a scandal
in their midst, such as this, had much the same exhilaration about it for
them that a camp meeting had.
Mrs. Simpson and Mrs. Ranger talked over all the ins and outs of the
Lansing family history. It was all equally well known to each, but after
all, it is an absorbing and amusing thing to rake over well-hoed ground.
Public opinion had long since been pronounced upon the events which these
two worthy women cited, not only that, but the grist of diverse opinions
had been winnowed by the winds of time till only the grain of public
decision was left.
So that when Mrs. Simpson expressed her opinion emphatically in regard to
any point, she knew Mrs. Ranger would agree with her, and knowing every
link in the chain of events, knew exactly what would be suggested to the
other’s memory by her own remark.
But it is a great mistake to think these conversations devoid of mental
stimulus. It required great adroitness to prevent the other person from
seizing upon the most dramatic situations and making them hers.
Then, too, though this was an unholy thing, there was always the odd
chance that an opinion, differing from that pigeon-holed in the Dole
memory as correct, might be advanced. In this case it was one’s bounden
duty to strive by analogy, illustration, and rhetoric, to bring the
sinner back to the fold of the majority.
Nor must it be supposed that history handed down thus, crystallized.
The light and shadows were for ever shifting, and when any new incident
occurred the other cogent incidents in the chain were instantly magnified
and dilated upon, and for the time being stood forward boldly in the
foreground of the pedigree under consideration, remaining the salient
points until such time as some new event shed lustre upon another set of
incidents.
In view of the sensation of the moment, the “drunken uncle” loomed like
an ominous spectre across the long vistas of the Lansing genealogy. For
the moment he was regarded as the direct progenitor of all the Lansings,
although he had died unmarried fifty years before Lanty’s birth.
Mrs. Simpson added another half finger to her fateful stocking, with its
triune thread, ere she quitted Mrs. Ranger’s that night.
“Well, I declare,” she said, as she stood on the step in the greyness
of the falling night. “I declare! I most forgot the slip Mabella gave
me. It’s on the bed where my bunnit was,” she added to little Jimmy
Ranger, who went in search of it. “It’s real rare that geranium is, apple
scented—smell,” breaking off a leaf, pinching it, and holding it under
Mrs. Ranger’s nose. “Come up as soon as you can,” she added, descending
the two steps.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Ranger, “we’re going to Brixton for the blankets that
have been spun of last year’s wool, next week, and p’raps we’ll drop in
on the way home.”
“Do,” said Mrs. Simpson, “and you kin stay supper and visit a spell; our
cider’ll be made by then. Len’s been over to the cooper about the mill
this week. But if you should hear anything in the meantime, jest put on
your bunnit and come acrost the fields neighbourly.”
“Yes, I will,” said Mrs. Ranger; “I guess things is comin’ to a head; I
wouldn’t be surprised any day——”
There was a long pause.
“Nor Me,” said Mrs. Simpson emphatically. “Good night.”
“Good night. It gets dark real soon now.”
“Yes, there’s quite a tang to the air to-night. It’ll be frost in no
time.”
“Well,” soliloquized Mrs. Simpson, as she betook herself home, “Liz
Ranger thinks just the same’s I do; that’s evident. My sakes! How Mabella
Lansing can go through with it is more’n I can figure.”
“It’s terrible!” said Mrs. Ranger, going back leisurely to the house.
“It’s downright terrible. I guess Lanty went on awful to-day. Mrs.
Simpson is jest full of it, but sakes! I should think she’d kind of talk
low of drinkin’ and sich, remembering her own Len. He was a rip, Len
Simpson was, if ever there was one! But that don’t seem to be a bridle on
Gert Simpson’s tongue. It’s enough to bring a jidgment on her, the way
she talks. I wonder how Temp’rins Peck ’ll like Lanty’s goin’s on?”
These reflections of Mrs. Ranger’s upon Mrs. Simpson were no doubt
edifying, but certainly she had carried on the conversation with quite as
great a gusto as Mrs. Simpson. And if she had not enjoyed it as much it
was only because Mrs. Simpson, being a redoubtable conversationalist, had
filched the finest morsels of the retrospective talk for herself, it was
therefore probably more a sense of wounded _amour propre_ than genuine
condemnation of Mrs. Simpson which led her to criticize the latter’s
conversational methods.
Mrs. Ranger had an uneasy and unsatisfactory idea that she had merely
given Mrs. Simpson her cues.
Mabella made strong coffee that night for supper instead of tea. She
dressed Dorothy in the beribboned dress that Sidney had sent from Boston.
She talked cheerily and brightly to her husband. She rose from her place
and came round with his cup and put it beside him, letting one hand fall
with a passing but loving touch upon his shoulder as she did so. But she
did not look at his face once during all the time of supper. She dreaded
to see the crown of shame upon the brow of her king. For herein again
Mabella showed the steadfastness of her adherence to her husband. She
suffered because he suffered. It was not the fear of the scandal that
would arise, it was not the thought of her own probable future which
stung her to the heart, although these thoughts were both bitter as
wormwood.
It was the knowledge that Lanty, her Lanty, who was her guide, her
everything, was ashamed. It was the harm he was doing himself that she
deplored, not the reflection of his behaviour upon herself.
How many the women who proclaim their own patience and their husbands’
shortcomings upon the housetops think of this? Not long since a certain
woman, bediamonded and prosperous, was demanding sympathy from her dear
half-dozen friends, recounting to them the derelictions of her husband.
“There’s only one comfort,” she said; “after every break he makes, he
always gives me a handsome present. That’s always something.” Yet we
wonder that there are cynics!
There was no word spoken between Lanty and Mabella in reference to the
afternoon. But that night in the darkness Lanty suddenly drew her into
his arms.
She laid her cheek against his; both faces were wet with tears.
There was poignant apology made and free, full loving pardon given all in
that instant.
And Mabella wept out her pain on his breast.
But the shame and bitterness and self-contempt ate into Lanty’s heart
like a venomous canker....
All this had been in the late autumn, just after the death of old Mr.
Didymus, and now it was spring, and all through the winter Mabella had
suffered, and hoped, and prayed, and despaired, and now it had come to
this that Nathan had seen Lanty intoxicated in Brixton!
Sidney went back to the parsonage sorely troubled at heart. Vashti stood
in the doorway.
Her beauty struck him freshly and vividly. It was his whim that she
should dress in rich and beautiful stuffs, and Vashti was quite willing
to subscribe to it. Dole groaned in spirit at the spectacle of its
minister’s wife in such worldly garb as she wore, but Dole would have
borne much at Sidney’s hands.
To-day she was clothed in a softly draped house-gown of Persian
colouring, bound by a great cord girdle about her waist; it fell in
long classic lines to her feet. Vashti’s face had gained in majesty and
strength since her marriage. She was thinner, but that, instead of making
against her beauty, raised it to a higher plane. There was a certain
luxuriousness in her temperament which made her rejoice in the beautiful
things with which Sidney surrounded her. She felt instinctively that
she gained in forcefulness and in individuality from her setting. And,
indeed, she fitted in well amid the beautiful pictures and hangings with
which Sidney had adorned the enlarged parsonage. She had always seemed
too stately, too queenly, for her commonplace calicoes and cashmeres. Her
mien and stature had made her surroundings seem poor and inadequate. But
in this gem of a house she shone like a jewel fitly set. Sidney had had
his own way about the primary arrangements, and had installed a strong
working woman in the kitchen with Sally, the ex-native of Blueberry
Alley, as her under-study.
Vashti was perfectly content with this, and, whilst she knew all Dole was
whispering about her, held upon her way undisturbed. She had developed,
to Sidney’s intense joy, a very decided taste in the matter of books.
Her mind was precisely of the calibre to take on a quick and brilliant
polish. She read assiduously, and her perceptions were wonderfully acute.
Her beginnings in literary appreciation were not those of a weakling. Her
mental powers were of such order that from the first she assimilated and
digested the strong, rich food of the English classics.
She delighted in verse or prose which depicted the conflict of passion
and will, of circumstances and human determination. Alas, her education
only made her more determined to gain her purpose, more contemptuous of
the obstacles which opposed her.
And yet, if her purpose had not been of the most steadfast, she might
well have been discouraged.
Lanty and Mabella seemed so securely happy. Vashti was, however, gaining
an ascendency over her husband which almost puzzled herself. She had
no comprehension whatever of the nature of the power by which she was
enabled to cause a deep mesmeric sleep to fall upon him. Nor did she
understand in the least how gradually but surely she was disintegrating
his will. When his headaches came on now half a dozen gestures of her
waving hands were sufficient to induce the hypnoses which brought him
forgetfulness. Ignorant of the potency of suggestion she often stood
watching him whilst he slept, feeling within her the striving of her
dominant will, as of an imprisoned spirit striving to burst the confining
bars.
“Come into the study,” said Sidney, as he reached her side. “I have some
very bad news.”
“My father?” she said.
“No, Lanty.” She blanched to the tint of the powdery snow. Together they
went to the study, and he told her.
Her breath came quickly.
Was the longed-for opportunity to be given into her hands at last?
With all her mental activity she could not yet guess how Lanty’s
decadence might yield her the opportunity she craved.
But the position of affairs had seemed so barren of hope for her that any
change seemed to make revenge more near.
So the evil in her leaped and strove upward like a flame given fresh fuel
and freer air.