"Ho, ye who seek saving,
Go no further. Come hither, for have we not found it?
Here is the House of Fulfilment of Craving;
Here is the Cup with the roses around it,
The world's wound well healed, and the balm that
hath bound it."
"I'm going to church next Sunday," said Judith to Andrew, as they
walked through the chestnut woods. It was evening. Far away beyond
the level fields an after-glow opulent in gold was streaming up over
the sky--a radiance, living, like the memory of love, long after its
source had vanished from the view. The day had been intensely warm,
and the wood was full of the pungent odours of leaves, mingled with the
sweeter scent of dying wild roses.
Coming to them faintly from far-off fields they could hear the lowing
of thirsty cows, eager to be let out of their pastures to the ponds.
And from the grass meadow which bordered the chestnut woods came the
crop, cropping of Andrew's horses grazing greedily, now that the heat
of the day had declined.
Judith wore a white frock, and had a bunch of somewhat limp-looking
ferns in her hand. It was impossible for her to leave the woods
without some spoil. Andrew walked by her side, tall and brown, his cap
pushed far back upon his head, a measureless content within his eyes.
Rufus followed sedately, keeping a wary lookout from the corner of his
eye for squirrels and rabbits.
Sleepy, white-winged moths were fluttering aimlessly hither and thither
amid the grasses, and now and then a bird's call rang through the trees.
"Going to church?" said Andrew. "Isn't that a new idea?"
"Yes," said Judith, a little wistfully. "Mrs. Morris wants me to,
and--I wish I was good."
Andrew's face was very tender as he turned towards her. "I don't think
you are such a great sinner."
She looked at him half happily, half doubtfully. "Well, I'm going
anyhow; Mrs. Morris seems so anxious about it."
"I'll go, too, then."
"Oh, will you?"
"Yes."
They walked on a few moments in silence; then Andrew said:
"Will you sing in church?"
"Oh," said Judith, "they'll have singing! I hadn't thought of it.
Yes, I'll sing with the rest."
Andrew chuckled.
"What is it?" demanded Miss Moore, drawing her level brows together in
interrogation.
"Oh, nothing," said Andrew.
"Yes, it is something."
"No, really."
"You were laughing at me."
"No, honestly, I wasn't."
"Certain?" Miss Moore looked at him suspiciously.
"Come and look at the horses," said Andrew.
So they crossed from the path, through the narrow belt of trees to the
pasture fence, and presently, in answer to Andrew's calls, the horses
came trotting up one by one, standing shyly and sniffing with
outstretched noses at Andrew's hand. He crossed the fence into the
field and fed them with bunches of grass. Judith looked on longingly.
"Could I come over?" she asked doubtfully.
"Yes, indeed," he said. "Do."
"Turn your back, then."
Andrew obeyed promptly, and Miss Moore mounted slowly to the top rail,
where she stood uncertainly a moment. It slipped, she gave a little
cry, and the next instant Andrew had lifted her lightly down. He held
her for a second in his arms; each felt the tremour of the other's
heart, and then she was released and was standing trembling by his
side. The horses pricked their ears and eyed her nervously, and Andrew
gazed down at her with his heart in his eyes.
She held out one of her ferns to the horses, shrinking a little closer
to Andrew as they drew near to sniff at it with their velvety muzzles.
One after another lipped at the fern, but would not take it.
"They won't eat that," said Andrew, and his voice was very gentle.
"Offer them this."
So Judith held out the grass he gave her, catching hold of his sleeve
like a child for protection when his big Clydesdale colt stretched out
his head towards her. And presently the horses left them one by one,
till all were gone except Andrew's clean-limbed bay, upon whose back
the wet mark of the saddle was yet visible, for Andrew had ridden into
town that afternoon. And Judith grew bolder and patted its soft nose
and beautiful neck, and Andrew watching her thought that nowhere,
surely nowhere, in all the wide world was there a sweeter woman than
this. And he longed to question the universe, if within all its realm
there was anything so lovely as the fragile hands which showed so white
against Rob Roy's arching neck.
The twilight deepened. A little wistful wind rippled through the long
meadow-grass.
"We must go," said Andrew, "or the dew will wet you."
"Oh, it wouldn't hurt me," said Judith.
"Better not risk it," said Andrew. So they walked along within the
meadow to the gate, Rob Roy following them, every now and then touching
Andrew's shoulder with his outstretched nose. He stood whilst the bars
were taken down, and whinnied softly as they left him. "What a dear
fellow he is," said Judith.
They soon reached the Morris house, where Mr. Morris was mending a
bridle on the doorstep, and Mrs. Morris in the fading light was busy
carrying out a plan to frustrate the assaults of the chickens upon her
flower beds: for every chicken in Mrs. Morris's possession seemed
inspired with an evil desire to scratch up her seedlings so soon as she
transplanted them from the boxes in the kitchen to the beds in front of
the house. So between the rows of balsams and marigolds and amongst
the ruby-stemmed seedlings of the prince's feather, Mrs. Morris had
stuck in bits of shingles.
"There," said Mrs. Morris, straightening herself after plunging her
last piece into the earth. "There! I guess them chickens has got
their work cut out for them before they root out them plants. They do
seem to be possessed by evil speerits, them chickens! That's the third
planting of marigolds, and what prince's feather there is left is only
what sowed itself last year and came up late. My sakes! wasn't it hot
in town to-day, Andrew?"
"Yes," said Andrew, from where he stood leaning against the porch.
Judith was standing by Mrs. Morris, looking at the flower beds where
each little seedling was surrounded by a palisade of narrow strips of
shingle.
Mrs. Morris brought out some chairs, and they sat talking in the dusk
while the summer moon grew out of the horizon, and slowly, slowly
sailed aloft, paling as it attained its height, till from a glowing
disk of yellow it changed to a shadowless silver shield.
"Won't you sing to us, Miss Moore?" asked Andrew.
"Yes, do," urged Mrs. Morris.
"What will I sing!" asked Judith, but without waiting for an answer
began. She sang an Italian love-song, a masterpiece of passion and
pain--sang it as perhaps no living woman could sing it, making music in
such fashion that the hearts of her hearers were melted within them,
voicing in it all the timorous new joy, the half-happy fears that
filled her heart, with somewhat of the poignant pathos of renunciation.
Some one says, "Music is the counterpart of life in spirit speech," and
it would seem that in one perfect song there may be condensed all the
emotion of life and love, all the pathos of pain and parting. As the
song died away Andrew gave a long sigh. The pleasure of such music
ofttimes prolongs itself to pain. Perhaps it was some recognition of
the great value of Judith's gift of song, perhaps it was because she
sang familiarly an unknown tongue that made Andrew suddenly feel the
chill of a great gulf fixed between them. The arms which had held her
for a moment in the pasture-field yearned with ineffable longing for a
joy denied them.
But Judith was singing again, "The Angels' Serenade," one of the
loveliest things ever written. When she finished there was a silence.
Mrs. Morris' hard-worked hands were clasped tremblingly together, tears
were streaming over her face, her heart was yearning towards the little
mounds in the unkempt churchyard.
"Hannah," said her grey-haired husband, laying his hand upon her
shoulder. Their eyes met. That was all; but dumbly they had shared
the cup of their sorrow. A bitter communion, one would say, yet good
to make strong the spirit, as the bitter barks strengthen the body.
And a few minutes later Mrs. Morris slipped away into the house,
perhaps to open that shrine where were hidden some tiny half-worn
garments, perhaps out of sympathy for the two young people who might
wish to be alone; and when Judith began to sing again, she and Andrew
were alone, for Mr. Morris, with lumbering attempts at caution, had
followed his wife.
Andrew's heart was aching with inexplicable pain. Judith was singing
an old theme, composed long since by some frocked and cowled musician,
whose rigid vows and barren life could not quite suppress the dream of
music within his soul. It was a simple and austere melody, yet endued
with a peculiar pathos, the yearning of a defrauded life for the joy
that should have crowned it, the regret of a barren present for a
fruitful past, the wail of the must be for the might have been.
And as she sang, the gulf which Andrew had perceived between them
widened into a great black sea, across which her voice came to him
where he stood alone forever upon the shore; and just as the pain grew
too poignant to be borne, a bat darted near them, Judith gave a
frightened cry and fled to his side, and the gulf was bridged in a
second by a strong strand knit of a woman's foolish fear and a man's
reassuring word.
And soon a light shone down from an upstairs window. Judith started
up. "You must go straight away home," she said, "Mrs. Morris has gone
to her room."
"Come as far as the gate with me," said Andrew, and she went. But
after they had talked a moment Judith remembered the bats, so, of
course, Andrew had to take her back to the porch in safety.
At length he was forced to go, so with a last "good-night," and a last
long look into her eyes, he strode away to his home on the hill.
The leaves of the chestnut trees were rustling in uncertain flaws of
wind; the crickets were creaking eerily from out the darkness; the
fields, all pearled with dew, shimmered in the moonlight.
It was a solitary hour. But Andrew's heart was light within his
breast; Judith's eyes had been very sweet when she said "Good-night."
And Judith climbed the blue-painted wooden stairs to her little
corner-room, and lay long awake, forgetting the promise of her great
future, forgetting the efforts of the past, forgetting the debt she
owed her manager, only knowing that she loved and was beloved again,
only recalling the eyes this brown young farmer had bent upon her, only
remembering the tender strength of his arms, as, for a moment, they had
encircled her. A simple dream this? Perhaps. But let such a vision
once weave itself into the fabric of a life, and all else will seem
poor and mean beside it.
It was a beautiful sunshiny Sunday as Judith stood in the porch waiting
for Mrs. Morris, who presently appeared, clad in a black calico with
white spots on it, black silk gloves and a bonnet with a purple flower.
Judith had dressed herself in a little frock of pale green linen, and
her face bloomed like a rose above it. Her hat and parasol were of the
same cool tint as her frock, and as the walk in the sunshine flushed
her cheeks with unaccustomed colour, she looked much like a sweet pink
flower set in green leaves; at least, so Andrew thought when he saw her
entering the church beside Mrs. Morris.
The Methodist church was slowly filling with women and children. Sam
Symmons' Suse had just gone in, and the Misses Green were but a few
yards behind. The men in Ovid had an evil habit of standing along the
sides of the churches talking whilst the first hymn was being sung; and
frequently, if there was any particularly interesting topic on hand,
till the first prayer was offered. In winter the sunny side was
chosen; in summer they availed themselves of the scanty shade afforded
by the slanting eaves, standing, their heads and shoulders in shadow,
their freshly polished shoes glistening in the sun, their jaws moving
rhythmically as they chewed their wads of "black strap." A remark made
at one end of the row percolated slowly to the other, each man
judicially revolving it in his mind and voicing his opinion in
deliberate nasal tones.
"Lord, a little band and lowly,
We have come to worship thee,
Thou art great and high and holy,
Oh! how solemn we should be."
So the women and children sang inside, accompanied by a wheezy
melodeon. They heightened the effect by emphasizing the adjectives
strongly and singing "soll_um_" with great unanimity in the last line.
Andrew listened for Judith's voice, but evidently she had concluded not
to sing. Andrew was disappointed. He had been looking forward in high
glee to watching the amazement of his neighbours when they heard that
marvellous voice. The truth was, Judith had not seen him where he
stood beside the church, and was too busy looking about surreptitiously
to see if he had fulfilled his promise about coming, to think of the
singing either one way or the other. And when she saw Miss Myers
sitting stiffly alone in the corner of a pew near the front, her heart
sank like lead, and all her happy eagerness over the service departed.
She was piqued, too, and began to feel a nasty heartache stirring
within her breast.
The singing was over. An interspace of quiet betokened to those
outside that the prayer was in progress, and a rustling of leaves and
settling of dresses proclaimed the fact that the preacher and his
congregation wore ready for the serious business of the day, the
proceedings up to this point being tacitly regarded as the preliminary
canter before the weekly contest with Original Sin, that dark horse
which, ridden by that knowing jockey, Opportunity, wins so many races
for the Evil One. At this juncture the men came in one by one, each
trying to look as uninterested in his neighbours as possible, to give
the impression that this influx of the male element was purely
accidental and not the result of concerted movement.
It is somewhat doubtful if this impression was conveyed to the
preacher, as the same circumstance had occurred every Sunday since he
had been there; and certainly it deluded none of the women, who, well
aware of the gossiping tendencies of their men, never held themselves
at the approved "attention" attitude till this stage in the
proceedings, but who then waxed marvellously stiff as to posture, and
marvellously meek as to expression.
When Judith looked up next time, it was to meet two eager, grey eyes
looking at her from Miss Myers' pew, and all at once the incipient
heartache vanished, a calm of sweet content fell upon her spirit. She
looked around, and apprehended all the poignant blending of pathos and
absurdity about her. Her eyes softened as they fell upon old Sam
Symmons' hard-wrought hands resting on the top of his stout stick, and
lighted as she saw Tommy Slick's rose and white face and impish eyes
showing above the door of a centre pew. Her tender eyes sought out and
read the story of the deep-lined faces about her, and a great pity for
their narrow lives filled her.
The sermon was just begun when the green baize door swung back a
little, and an investigating dog entered. He was one of those nosing,
prying, peering dogs which seem to typify so exactly the attitude of
some people towards their neighbours' affairs. He peregrinated through
the pews, around the melodeon, up and down the aisle, and then turned
his canine attention to the preacher's reading desk. The preacher
became manifestly uneasy; all his sensitiveness slowly centred in his
heels, round which the dog sniffed. Judith, whose sense of the
humorous was painfully acute, gave one glance at Andrew, and then
became absorbed in trying to control her laughter. The dog still
lingered where he was. The preacher's face was flushed; his words
faltered. Every one felt that some one else should do something.
At length, after many significant gestures and nudges from his wife,
Hiram Green rose and approached the dog with outstretched hand, rubbing
his fingers together in the manner which we imagine impresses a dumb
animal with a deep sense of pacific intentions. The dog backed away.
Hiram followed as the dog retreated. It paused, wagging its tail
doubtfully. Hiram sat down on his toes and patted his knee in a
wheedling manner with one hand, whilst with the other he made ready to
grasp his prey. The dog came a little nearer.
Hiram grasped--but grasped short; his fingers met on empty air, and he
nearly overbalanced. For the moment he had the wild feeling a person
experiences when a rocking-chair goes over with him--a sort of gasping
clutch at _terra firma_.
Judith was nearly in tears from agonies of suppressed laughter,
knowing, as she did, that Andrew was waiting to catch her eye. That,
she felt, would finish matters so far as she was concerned; a sense of
companionship makes one's appreciation of a joke painfully intense.
Hiram was conscious that the Sunday School in the gallery was red with
suppressed excitement; that his neighbours' interest in the sermon was
purely perfunctory; he even had a horrible thought that the preacher
himself was laughing at him. In this he was wrong; the preacher was
nearly distracted, having lost the thread of his sermon, and was
maundering wildly on, hoping to disentangle his argument before Hiram
caught the dog.
Hiram, grown desperate, added to his alluring gestures the blandishment
of half-voiced words, which sounded like "Poor dog," "Good dog," but
which meant, "You infernal brute." The dog succumbed at length, its
last suspicions allayed by this specious use of the gift it did not
possess, and presently the congregation was edified by seeing Hiram,
flushed, but with an expression of great loving-kindness, carry the dog
gently down the aisle. Slowly and softly Hiram carried him until near
the door, when circumstances made him accelerate his speed, for the dog
was Tommy Slick's Nip, a shiny, smooth-coated dog, and Hiram's hold was
gradually slipping. He had an unpleasant but confident premonition
that the dog would reach for him, as dogs are prone to do, when his
fingers got to the tender spot beneath the forepaws. However, he
reached and passed the baize door in safety, and in the second which
followed, the congregation, with the sigh with which one relinquishes
an acme of intense and pleasurable excitement, turned its attention to
the preacher. At that moment there came a shrill and ear-splitting
yelp. Hiram had taken the dog to the top of the steps, and applied his
foot in the manner most likely to speed the parting guest. Hiram
entered and took his place with a very red face. He felt dimly that
the yelp was a criticism upon the smile with which he carried the dog
out. To Hiram that sermon did not tend to edification.
That particular Sunday was a memorable one in Ovid. The congregation
had just gathered itself together after the incident of the dog, when
the preacher announced the hymn. It was one of the few really
beautiful hymns, "Lead, kindly Light."
Judith rose to sing with the rest, and with the second word her voice
joined with the others, dominating them as the matin song of the lark
might pierce through the chatter of sparrows along the eaves. When
Judith opened her lips to sing, music possessed her, and, a true
artiste to her finger-tips, she never sang carelessly. Absorbed in her
book--for she did not know the words--she sang on. The people looked
and wondered, and one by one the voices died away, the wheezy notes of
the melodeon faltered forth from beneath the second Miss Green's
uncertain fingers, and Judith sang on serenely, standing erect, her
head held high, her soft throat throbbing like a bird's. Outside the
air was golden with yellow sunshine, within it was cool and darkened.
A rift of light slanted through the closed shutters of the window near
which Judith stood; thousands of little motes danced in it, specks and
gleams of gold. Through the open windows there came the odour of dried
grass, and every now and then a flaw of wind brought a whiff from Oscar
Randall's field of white clover. Andrew had laughed in the meadow as
he thought of Judith's voice electrifying the people in the church, but
he had forgotten that he himself was not secure against its charm.
Laughter was far from his thoughts now.
"Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead thou me on.
The night is dark, and I am far from home;
Lead thou me on."
The words, upborne upon the wings of matchless song, seemed to soar far
beyond the confines of the little church, taking with them the
inarticulate trust and hope and confidence of all these humble folk.
The preacher sat looking at her, pale and entranced. This singing
seemed suddenly to open a long-closed door in his life, so that once
more he looked down that chimerical vista from out the misty distances
of which illusive hands beckoned him on to brighter things. He had
once dreamed of a loftier destiny than the life of a Methodist
preacher, but that was long past; still it was sweet to recall so
vividly the season when his spirit had wings. He sat before his
congregation, a tall, spare man, large of bone and awkward, with a
countenance upon which self-denial had graven deep cruel lines, a brow
that had weathered many bitter blasts. In type he was near allied to
the people before him, the last man, one would fancy, whom dreams would
visit. And yet, as he listened to this stranger girl, singing alone in
the midst of his congregation, there fell deeply upon him the trance of
dead delight; the simple panorama of his past spread itself before his
eyes, blotting out the faces before him as a shimmering mist obscures
an unlovely scene.
It was a very simple vision, a "homespun dream of simple folk." He saw
a rosy-cheeked village girl, for whose sake he as a village lad had
worked and toiled and slaved. He had fought for education and success
that he might lay them at her feet. He had kept her waiting long. She
was only a poor, pretty girl, and she had other lovers. One night,
when her lover in a garret in the city was poring over his books, his
head aching, his heart faltering, yet persevering as much for her sake
as for the sake of his faith, she, driving home from a dance through
dewy lanes and softly-shadowed country roads, promised to marry the
farmer's son who was taking her home.
The news reached him in his garret, and something flickered out of his
face which never shone there again. But with the tenacity of his race
he stuck to his work. His heart was in the green fields always, and he
had come from a long line of country men and women. He had no
inherited capacity for learning, but he got through his course somehow,
and became an accredited minister, and the day he was ordained the news
of her death reached him, and that was all. He had never censured her;
in his thoughts she had ever been an angel of sweetness and goodness,
and as Judith sang, all these things rushed back upon his heart. It
was with a very white face and a very soft voice that he rose to
address his people, and he spoke home to their hearts, for he knew
whereof he spake when he dealt with the pains and trials and troubles
of their lives. He was only the height of his platform removed from
them, and he had paid dearly for his paltry elevation, but from its
height he saw, far off perhaps, but clear, the shining of a great
light, and with ineloquent, slow speech he strove to translate its
glory and its promise to the people before him.
Church was over; the people pressed slowly along the aisle into the
palpitant warmth of the summer afternoon. Miss Myers came up to Judith
when she stood for a moment at the door, and invited her to go home
with them to the house on the hill, and Judith, nothing loath,
consented. So presently she and Andrew, with Miss Myers, were walking
through the slumberous little streets of the village.
As they drew near the house of Bill Aikins, they caught sight of him
sitting on the doorstep peeling potatoes, beads of perspiration upon
his brow, for he was suffering sorely from Kate's weekly infliction of
a white shirt.
Bill had "a little wee face, with a little yellow beard, a
Cain-coloured beard," and usually wore a deprecatory smile upon his
countenance. He was possessed of a perfect temper, and whatever his
lot might seem to others, to himself it was all that could be desired.
To be the husband of such a woman, could man desire a better fate?
And, indeed, Kate Aikins was a fine-looking woman, tall and straight.
Old Sam Symmons often said she was a "gallant figure of a woman."
As they passed the house they heard Kate's voice sounding shrilly from
within:
"He did _what_! Weighed the paper with the cheese? And you stood by
and never said a word? I'll be bound! Well, 'a fool and his money is
soon parted.' There's truth in them old sayings yet. The idea of you
being scared to speak to Hi. Green and him cheating you before your
very face! Land sakes! What's he I wonder? Next time you go to buy
cheese you take paper with you. He asks enough for the cheese without
paying for paper."
As they got beyond hearing, Judith's face burned out of sympathy for
Bill's embarrassment. However, Bill was in nowise troubled. He knew
his wife would be quite as ready to express herself towards any one
else in the village as to himself, and a philosophy born of that
reflection entirely prevented Bill from feeling in any degree abashed
by strangers enjoying his wife's eloquence.
It was only two days since she had announced to him with much
satisfaction that she had "just told Sarah Myers what she thought of
her," and she had expressed a longing desire of late to have a five
minutes' talk with Andrew Cutler, relative to some supposed slight he
had put upon her. The whole village was well aware of many instances
of Bill's discomfiture when Kate first married him and undertook his
reformation.
There was the day when Bill, well on towards being thoroughly drunk,
was returning home down the village street, walking carelessly through
the deep slush of early spring. Kate met him. She, if truth be told,
was on the lookout for him, having despatched him more than two hours
before to get some starch from the store.
Between waiting for the starch and waiting for Bill, Kate was wroth
when she opened the door to begin her search. By an unlucky chance,
her first step took her over the ankles in icy slush, which, strange to
say, instead of cooling her wrath, raised it to white heat. Therefore,
when she, carefully picking her way up one side of the street, beheld
Bill advancing down the other, regardless of mud and slush, she paused
in disgust, until he was nearly opposite to her, and then ejaculated in
a tone of deepest disbelief in her own vision--"Bill! is that you?"
"No," promptly replied Bill, "nor nobody like me either;" with which
the valiant Bill had resumed his way, feeling proud that he had not
only dismissed certainty but even suspicion of his identity from Kate's
mind.
Before long he was a sadder and for the nonce, a wiser man, for Kate
reached home as soon as he did, and thereupon gave him to understand in
a very unmistakable way that he was her property and she knew it.
All Ovid remembered this, and indeed could not well forget it, for
every wash-day, when starch naturally cropped up as one of the
circumstances attendant upon the event of washing, Kate might have been
heard by any passer-by giving Bill a full and dramatic account of the
occurrence, with preface upon drunkenness in general, and appendix upon
Bill's phases of the vice in particular, and copious addenda, of
contempt, contumely and vituperation. Bill listened, marvelling and
admiring, for her flow of language was a great source of pride to Bill,
albeit directed at himself.
Indeed, he sacrificed his comfort willingly to enjoy the mental treat
her angry eloquence afforded him. There had been times, however, when
Kate's lessons had taken a more practical and infinitely less
entertaining form. It was one of these which effected Bill's final
reformation. The memory of it brought smiles to the lips of Ovidians,
young or old, whenever they met Bill.
With all good managers in Ovid, it is the custom to salt down a small
barrel of herrings in autumn. These they buy from their fisherman
neighbours for a dollar per hundred. Now Kate, who was certainly, as
even her enemies admitted, a forehanded woman, sent Bill with a silver
dollar, to get her a hundred herrings, one day when the proper season
came around. With this Bill duly proceeded to the fishermen, paid his
dollar and got his herrings. As he turned to go, Sam Turner shouted an
invitation to him to come down at night and have a share of the beer
which was to be on tap at the Upper Fishing Station. Bill assented and
went his way.
After his six o'clock supper, he told Kate he was going to get his saw
sharpened at the blacksmith shop, and so set out. He left the saw at
the blacksmith's, then smartened his pace along the street, down the
steep incline to the river's edge, carefully along the river path until
he disappeared into the fisherman's little hut.
The door was closed, then Bill, Sam Turner, and some half-dozen others
gathered round the keg of smuggled beer, and all went merry as the
traditional wedding bell.
About half-past eleven, Bill and the others emerged. The cask was
empty--their condition the antithesis of the cask's. Lurching,
stumbling, falling, sliding along the river path; scrambling, crawling,
climbing up the banks to the level, then along the street to Bill's
home. All this took time, and it was the hour when ghosts do walk ere
they neared Bill's door. A dim light gleamed in the window. "Beacon
tha' lights me home, boys," said Bill, who, having passed the
transitory phases of moroseness and pugnaciousness, to the higher state
of tears and courage, had now reached the acme of sentiment and
drunkenness simultaneously, and was ready, as he expressed several
times on the way up the bank in a voice which came from different
attitudes, as the speaker stood upright, crept, or lay flat, "To kish
Kate and fight for the country b'gosh." Bill and his friends
approached the door. Bill gently tried it. It was locked, so Bill
said. They each tried it in turn, and each pronounced it locked in a
voice betokening a strange and new discovery. They each knocked in
turn--silence. They each kicked in turn--silence. Then Bill said in a
lordly way, "Kate, open the door!" adding in an aside to his fellows,
"I'll forgive her, kish her, make her happy." Then again, "Kate, open
the door!"
Kate did open the door, with such abrupt and unexpected suddenness that
Bill, standing before it, balanced back on his heels and raised his
outspread hands. His _confreres_ were preparing to make back-stays of
themselves to brace Bill up, when Kate's hand and arm reached forth,
and, with one single movement, as Sam Turner afterwards graphically
described her action, "yanked" Bill into the house and slammed the door.
There was silence for a moment, followed by a slow sliding sound. His
late companions surrounded the two uncurtained windows and prepared to
watch events.
Bill had slowly slid down, until he was now in a sitting posture on the
floor, with his back against the door. Kate had vanished; she soon
entered from the back of the house bringing two pails of water, with
which she proceeded deliberately to give Bill a cold bath. Bill said
several times in a weak voice, "Kish me, Kate," but Kate, preserving an
admirable silence, continued the deluge until Bill, with some show of
sobriety and nimbleness, arose. By this time the water was pouring out
beneath the door, and the watchers outside were shivering
sympathetically. As Bill rose, he certainly looked miserable enough to
excite pity, even in Kate's heart; but the worst was not yet.
Disregarding the water streaming on the floor, Kate proceeded to
arrange two chairs, with an accompaniment of cloths, knives, salt, and
a small keg. Lastly, she produced two baskets of herrings. It was now
evident to the horrified watchers that her dire purpose was to make
Bill clean, wash, and salt down the hundred herrings then and there.
And such was the case. The watchers stayed until eyes and limbs were
weary, and then crept away awe-struck at the terrors of matrimony, and
deeply impressed by Kate's moral supremacy.
And Bill worked and worked. His hand was unsteady, and his blood
flowed freely from numerous cuts to mingle with the herrings. He
scraped and scraped, and bedaubed himself with scales. He salted and
salted, and the salt bit his many cuts. But Kate was inexorable.
Every herring was cleaned, scaled, washed, salted and packed, and the
_débris_ thoroughly cleaned up before the miserable, white-faced,
repentant Bill was allowed to rest, and during it all Kate talked and
talked and talked. From that night Bill was a changed man, and his
admiration for Kate became more than ever pronounced.
Every time one of those herring appeared on the table, Kate gave Bill a
_résumé_ of the whole affair, with variations upon her theme, which her
vivid and fertile imagination suggested. After the herrings were
finished, she revived the subject whenever the names of any of those
with him that night, fish, the river, or the fishing station were
mentioned. These were the regular cogent subjects. But any reference
to salted meats, cold water, late hours, etc., was very apt to draw
forth a like narration, so that a day rarely passed without Bill's
memory being refreshed thus, which was indeed a work of supererogation,
for Bill never forgot it.
Andrew and Miss Myers recited many such tales for Judith's edification
as they walked up to the Cutler house, and whilst they sat at table.
But later on, when Miss Myers hastened off to count the eggs which had
been brought in, to see if her chickens were properly fed, and to
generally look after the ways of her household, the talk fell into
other channels.
Andrew and Judith talked seriously, looking into each other's eyes with
no veil upon their own, each drinking deeply of the peaceful rapture of
the hour. The scents from the old garden filled their nostrils, the
breath from the box diffused through the other odours a thread of fresh
bitterness, savouring them from satiety.
A great clematis hung at one side of the porch, the deep green of its
leaves set close with purple stars. Upon the other side a Tartarean
honeysuckle was covered with coral-coloured buds. Far off in one
corner they could see a blur of gold where the thorny Scotch roses were
a mass of bloom.
They sat long talking, and presently Miss Myers came round the corner
of the house with her dress tucked up about her and the servant girl
following with water pails; and soon the scent of fresh moist earth was
mingled with the fragrance of the flowers.
Rufus lay at their feet, looking up at them with wistful, hazel eyes.
It was a simple scene, yet in it was being enacted a drama of delight.
There is no sweeter time in a woman's life than the first hours of a
mutual love ere speech has profaned it. Judith was having her halcyon
hour now, and she rejoiced in it with sweet natural happiness. The
memory of her greatness had all but faded from her memory; now and then
from sleep's horizon it pointed a threatening finger at her; now and
then in morning dreams she recalled it vaguely, the wraith of a not
unhappy season. But she had no fear of it. Her only apprehension was
that she had misread the message in Andrew's ardent eyes, and that fear
only lived when they were apart, for, as she welcomed him upon the old
weather-beaten doorstep, where the spent petals of the loose-leaved
climbing roses lay, blots of crimson on the grey, or bade him farewell
at the gate where the white syringas surrounded them with the odour of
orange blossoms, she found in his eyes the strength and blessing of a
deep and perfect love.