They who have sensitive palates for all small, sweet, but secondary
savors of life that come in their way, and no imaginative desires for
others, are contented in spirit. When also small worries and affairs,
even those of their neighbors in lieu of their own, serve them as
well as large ones to keep their minds to a healthy temper of
excitement and zest of life, there is no need to pity them for any
lack of full experience.
Imogen and Sarah Lawson, the two elderly single sisters whom Elmira
Edwards sought in Granby that day, were in a way happier than she,
all flushed with her hope of young love, for they held in certain
tenure that which they had. They were sitting stitching on fine linen
shirts in the little kitchen of the cottage house in which they had
been born. There was a broad slant of sunlight athwart the floor, a
great cat purred in a rocking-chair, the clock ticked, a pot of
greens boiled over the fire. They seemed to look out of a little
secure home radiance of peace at Elmira when she entered, all glowing
and tremulous with sweet excitement which she strove hard to conceal.
No romances had there been in the lives of the Lawson sisters, and no
repining over the lack of them. They had, in their youth, speculated
as to what husbands the Lord might provide for them, and looked about
for them with furtive alertness. When He provided none, they stopped
speculating, and went on as sharply askant as hens at any smaller
good pecks life might have for them.
The Lawson sisters had always been considered dressy. They owned
their house and garden, also several acres which yielded fair crops
of hay, and some good woodland. They earned considerable money making
fine shirts for a little Jew peddler who let out work in several
neighboring villages, and were enabled to devote the greater part of
that to their wardrobes. They were said to always buy everything of
the best--the finest muslins, the stiffest silks, the richest
ribbons. Each of the sisters possessed several silk gowns, a fine
cashmere shawl, and a satin pelisse; each had two beautiful bonnets,
one for winter and one for summer, and each possessed the value of
her fine apparel to the uttermost, and realized from it a petty,
perhaps, but no less comforting, illumination of spirit. Many of the
lights of happiness of this world are feeble and even ignoble, but
one must see to live, and even a penny dip is exalted if it save one
from the darkness of despair. It is not given to every one to light
his way with a sun, or a full moon, or even a star.
The two Lawson sisters, Imogen and Sarah, greeted Elmira with a
shrill feminine clamor of hospitality, as was their wont, examined
her mother's wedding silk with critical eyes and fingers, and
pronounced it well worth making over. "It's best to buy a good thing
while you're about it, if it does cost a little more," said Imogen.
"Yes, that's true," assented her sister. "Now I shouldn't be a mite
surprised if Ann paid as much as one an' sixpence for this silk when
'twas new; but look at it now--there ain't a break in it. It's as
good as your blue-and-yellow changeable silk, Imogen."
"Dun'no' but 'tis," said Imogen, reflectively.
Sarah went with Elmira to the mantua-maker's, who lived in the next
house, to get the dress cut, while Imogen prepared the dinner. In the
afternoon the two sisters gave Elmira an hour's work on her new gown,
one stitching up the body, the other sewing breadths; then they
borrowed the neighbor's horse and wagon and drove her home to Upham.
Elmira was glad to ride; she thought that she should die of shame
should she walk home and meet Lawrence Prescott again.
Imogen drove. She was the older, but the larger and stronger of the
two. Elmira sat in the rear gloom of the covered wagon with Sarah,
holding her silk gown spread carefully over her knees. She thought of
nothing all the way but the possibility of meeting Lawrence. She made
up her mind that if she did she would sit far back in the wagon and
not thrust her head forward at all. "If he acts as if he thought I
might be in here, and looks real hard, then it will be time for me to
do my part," she thought.
Whenever she saw a man or a team in the distance, her heart beat
violently, but it was never Lawrence. All her sweet panic of
expectation would have been quieted had she known that he was at that
very time seated in Miss Camilla Merritt's arbor, drinking tea and
eating fruit cake with her and pretty Lucina.
"Didn't you think Elmira seemed dreadful kind of flighty
to-day--still as a mouse one minute and carryin' on the next?" Sarah
asked Imogen, as they were driving home in the evening. They had
waited, staying to tea and letting the horse rest, until the full
moon arose.
"Yes, I did," said Imogen, "but Ann was just like her at her age.
That silk is well enough, but it ain't no such quality as my blue an'
yellow changeable one."
"Well, I dun'no' as it is. I dun'no' as it's as good as my figured
brown one."
It was a beautiful spring night; the moon was one for lovers to light
their fondest thoughts and fancies into reality. The two old sisters
driving home met and passed many young couples on the country road.
"If they don't look out I shall run over some of them fellars an'
girls," said Imogen. "I don't b'lieve Elmira has ever had anybody
waitin' on her, do you, Sarah?"
"Never heard of anybody," replied Sarah. "Well, anyhow, she's goin'
to have a real handsome dress out of that silk."
"Yes, she is," said Imogen, and just then from before the great
plunging feet of her horse a pair of young lovers sprang with a
laugh, having seen nothing of team nor the old sisters nor yet of the
little side lamps of happiness they bore, in the great dazzling
circle of their own.
Elmira finished her dress Saturday. She had sat up nearly two nights
stitching on it, but nobody would have dreamed it when she came down
out of her chamber Sunday morning all ready for meeting. Her mother
was sitting in the parlor beside a window, with her Bible on her
knees. The window was opened wide, and the room was full of the
reverberations of the meeting bell. Always on a pleasant Sunday
morning in summer-time Ann Edwards sat with her Bible at the open
window and listened to the meeting bell.
As Elmira entered, the bell tolled again, and the long wavering and
dying of its sweet multiple tones commenced afresh. Elmira stood
before her mother, and turned slowly about that she might view her on
all sides in her new attire.
Elmira whirled slowly, in a whispering, shimmering circle of pale
green silk; a little wrought-lace cape, which also had been part of
her mother's bridal array, covered her bare neck, for the dress was
cut low. She had bought a new ribbon of green and white, like the
striped grass of the gardens, for her bonnet, and tied it in a crisp
and dainty bow under her chin. This same bonnet, of a fine Florence
braid, had served her for best for nearly ten years. She had worn a
bright ribbon on it in the winter season and a delicate-hued one in
summer-time, but it was always the same bonnet.
Elmira had not had a new summer ribbon for three years, and now, in
addition, she had purchased some rosebuds, and arranged them in
little clusters in a frilling of lace inside the brim. Her pretty
face looked out of this little millinery halo with an indescribably
mild and innocent radiance. One caught one's self looking past her
fixed shining eyes for the brightness which they saw and reflected.
"Well," said her mother, "I guess you look as well as some other
folks, if you didn't lay out quite so much money. I guess folks will
have to give in you do."
Ann Edwards's little nervous face wore rather an expression of
antagonistic triumph than a smile of motherly approval; so hostile
had been all her conditions of life that she never laid down her
weapons, and went with spear in rest, as it were, even into her few
by-paths of delight.
She pulled Elmira's skirts here and there to be sure they hung
evenly; she bade her stand close, and picked out the ribbon bow under
her chin. "Now you'd better run along," said she, "or the bell will
stop tollin'."
She watched the girl, in her own old bridal array, step down the
front path, with more happiness than she had known since her
husband's disappearance. Elmira had told her mother that Lawrence
Prescott was coming to see her, and she had immediately leaped to
furthest conclusions. Ann Edwards had not a doubt that Lawrence and
Elmira would be married. She had, when it was once awakened, that
highest order of ambition which ignores even the existence of
obstacles.
As Elmira's green skirts fluttered out of sight behind some
lilac-bushes pluming to the wind with purple blossoms Jerome came in,
and his mother turned to him. "I guess Elmira will do about as well
as any of the girls," said she, with her tone of blissful yet
half-vindictive triumph.
Jerome looked at her wonderingly. "Why shouldn't she?" said he.
Immediately Mrs. Edwards put forth her feminine craft like an
involuntary tentacle of protection for her excess of imagination,
against the masculine practicality of her son. Neither she nor Elmira
had said anything about Lawrence Prescott to him; both knew how he
would regard the matter. It seemed to Mrs. Edwards that she had
fairly heard him say: "Marry Doctor Prescott's son! You know better,
mother." Now she, with her Bible on her knees, shunted rapidly the
whole truth behind a half-truth.
"I guess she'll cut full as good a figure in my old silk and her old
bonnet with a new ribbon on it as any of the girls," said she. Then
she added, with a skilful swerve from whole truths and half-truths
alike: "You'd better hurry, Jerome, or you'll be late to meetin'.
Elmira is out of sight, an' the bell's 'most stopped tollin'."
"I am not going this morning," said Jerome.
"Why not, I'd like to know?"
"John Upham sent his oldest boy over here this morning to tell me the
baby's sick. I am going over there and see if I can do anything."
"I should think John Upham had better send for Doctor Prescott
instead of taking you away from meeting."
"You know he won't, mother. I believe he'd let the baby die before he
would. I've got to go there and do the best I can."
"Well, all I've got to say is, he ought to be ashamed of himself if
he'd let his own baby die before he'd call in the doctor, I don't
care how bad he's treated him. I shouldn't wonder if John Upham was
some to blame about that; there's always two sides to a story."
Jerome made no reply. He would have been puzzled several times
lately, had he considered it of sufficient moment, by his mother's
change of attitude towards Doctor Prescott. He went to the
china-closet beside the chimney. On the upper shelves was his
mother's best china tea-set; on the lower a little array of cloudy
bottles; some small bunches of herbs, all nicely labelled, were
packed in the wide space at the bottom.
His mother's antagonistic eyes followed him. "I dun'no' as I can have
them herbs in my china-closet much longer," said she; "they're
scentin' up the dishes too much. If I want to have a little company
to tea, I ain't goin' to have the tea all flavored with spearmint an'
catnip."
"Well, I'll move them when I come home," said Jerome, with his usual
concession, which always aggravated his mother more than open
rebellion, although she admired him for it. "I only brought those
little bundles down from the barn loft to have them handy. I'll rig
up a cupboard for them in the woodshed."
Jerome tucked a bottle or two in his pocket, and rolled up a little
bouquet of herbs in paper.
"I should think it would be time for you to go and see that young one
after meeting," said his mother, varying her point of attack when she
met with no resistance.
"I'll go to meeting this afternoon," replied Jerome, in the tone with
which he might have pacified a fretful child. There was no
self-justification in it.
"I s'pose Doctor Prescott will be mad if he hears of your goin'
there, an' I dun'no' but I should be in his place," she said, as
Jerome went out. Then, as he did not answer, she added, calling out
shrilly:
"I don't see why John Upham can't call in Lawrence, if he wants a
doctor; he's begun to study with his father; he can't have nothin'
against him. I guess he knows as much as you do."
"Mother's queer," Jerome told himself as he went down the road, and
then dismissed the matter from his mind, for the consideration of the
Upham baby and the probable nature of its ailment, upon which,
however, he did not allow himself to dwell too long. Early in his
amateur practice Jake Noyes had inculcated one precept in his mind,
upon which he always acted.
"There's one thing I want to tell ye, J'rome, and I want ye to
remember it," Jake Noyes had said, "and that is, a doctor had ought
to be like jurymen--he'd ought to be sworn in to be unprejudiced when
he goes to see a patient, just as a juryman is when he goes to court.
If you don't know what ails 'em, don't ye go to speculatin', as to
what 'tis an' what ye'll do, on the way there. Ten chances to one, if
you're workin' up measles in your mind an' what you'll do for them,
you'll find it's mumps, an' then you've got to cure your own measles
afore you cure their mumps; an' if you're hard-bitted an' can't stop
yourself easy when you're once headed, you may give saffron tea to
bring out the measles whether or no. Think of the prospect, or the
gals, or your soul's salvation, or anythin' but the sick folks,
before you get to 'em the first time and don't know what ails 'em."
In girls Jerome had, so far, no interest; in his soul's salvation he
had little active concern. The revivals which were occasionally
upstirred in the community by prayer, and the besom of threatened
destruction, passed over him like a hot wind, for which he had no
power of sensation, sometimes to his own wonder. Probably the cause
lay in the fact that he was too thoroughly, without knowing it,
rooted and grounded in his own creed to be emotionally moved by
religious appeals. Jerome had, as most have, consciously or not, and
vitally or not, his own creed. He believed simply in the
unquestionable justice of the intent of God, the thwarting struggles
against it by free man, and that his duty to apply his small strength
towards furthering what he could, if no more than an atom, of the
eternal will lay plain before him.
Jerome, who had not yet been disturbed by love of woman, who fretted
not over the salvation of his own soul, had therefore, in order to
follow his mentor's advice, to turn his attention to the prospect.
His way led in an opposite direction from the church, and he was
late, so met none of the worshippers bound to meeting. He was rather
glad of that. After he left the village the road lay through the
woods, and now and then between blueberry-fields or open spaces of
meadow, with green water-lines and shadows purple with violets in the
hollows. Red cows in the meadows stared at him as he passed, with
their mysterious abstraction from all reflection, then grazed again,
moving in one direction from the sun. The blueberry-patches spread a
pale green glimmer of blossoms, like a sheen of satin in a high
light; young ferns curled beside the road like a baby's fingers
grasping at life; the trees, which were late in leafing, also reached
out towards the sun little rosy clasping fingers whereby to hold fast
to the motherhood of the spring. The air was full of that odor so
delicate that it is scarcely an odor at all, much less a fragrance,
which certain so-called scentless plants give out, and then only to
wide recognition when they bloom in multitudes--it was only the
simplest evidence of life itself. Through that came now and then
great whiffs of perfume from some unseen flowering bush, calling, as
it were, from its obscurity, with halloos of fragrance, to the
careless passer-by, to search it out.
Jerome passed along, seeing and comprehending all the sweet pageant
of the spring morning, yet as an observer merely. Nature had as yet
not established her fullest relationship to himself, and he knew not
that her secret glory of meaning was like his own.