eatin' separate they might have got along, 'cause it's only His saints
that the Lord has made pleasant-tempered enough to stand bein' pestered
with three meals a day, unless they're busy enough not to have time to
think about anythin' but swallerin'. Hayin'-time most men is kinder
pleasant 'bout their food--so long 's it's ready. Wal, however it was,
after they eat separate there was other things. There was the weather.
They always read the weather signs different. And each of 'em had that
way of speakin' 'bout the weather as if it was a little contrivance of
his own, and he was the only person who could give a hint how 'twas run,
or had any natural means of findin' out if 'twas hot, or cold, or
middlin', 'less he took hold and told 'em. It's a powerful tryin' sort
of way, and finally it come so that, if Reuben said we was in for a wet
spell, Stephen'd start right off and begin to mow his medder grass, and
if Stephen 'lowed there was a sharp thunder-shower comin' up, inside of
ten minutes, Reuben'd go and git his waterin'-pot and water every blamed
thing he had in his garden. I dunno when it was they stopped speakin',
but that was about all there was to it--little things like that. They
didn't either of 'em have any children; sometimes I've thought if they
had, the kids might sort of brought 'em together--they couldn't have
kep' 'em apart without they moved away, and of course they wouldn't
either of 'em give in to the other enough to move away from the old
farm. Then their wives died 'bout a year from each other. They kep' kind
o' friendly to the last, but they couldn't stir their husbands no more'n
if they was safes--it seems, sometimes, as if husbands and wives was
sort o' too near one another, when it comes to movin', to git any kind
of a purchase. When Reuben's wife died, folks said they'd have to git
reconciled now; and when Stephen's died, there didn't seem anythin' else
for 'em to do; but folks didn't know 'em. Stephen went up country where
his wife come from and brought home a little gal, that was her niece, to
keep house for him; and then what did Reuben do but go down to Zoar,
where _his_ wife come from, and git her half-sister--both of 'em young,
scart little things, and no kin to one another--and _they_ can't do
nothin' even if they wanted to. Bad-tempered? Wal, no. I wouldn't say
the Granger twins was bad-tempered;" and the biographer dexterously
removed a fly from his horse's patient back. "They're sot, of course,
but they ain't what they used to be--I guess it's been a sort of
discipline to 'em--livin' next door and never takin' no kind of notice.
They're pleasant folks to have dealin's with, and I've had both of 'em
ask me if I cal'lated it was goin' to rain, when I've been goin'
by--different times, o' course--but it 'most knocked the wind out of me
when they done it, 'stead of givin' me p'inters. Yes, you never can
speak to 'em both at once, 'cause the other one never hears if ye do;
but there! it ain't much trouble to say a thing over twice--most of us
say it more'n that 'fore we can git it 'tended to; and," he added, as he
leaned forward and dropped the whip into its socket preparatory to
turning into his own yard, "most of us hears it more'n once."
"Monroe," called a voice from the porch, "did you bring them calves?"
"Yare," said Monroe.
"I told you if you stopped to bring 'em, you wouldn't be home till after
dark."
"Wal?"
"I told you 't would be dark and you'd be late to supper."
"Wal?" and Monroe took down the end of the wagon, and persuaded out the
calves.
The person who was Monroe's companion and the recipient of his
confidences was a young woman who was an inmate of his house for the
present month of September.
Confident and somewhat audacious in her conduct of life, Cynthia Gardner
had felt that this September existence lacked a motive for energy before
it brought her into contact with the Granger twins.
"They are so interesting," she said to Monroe, a day or two later.
"Wal, I guess they be," answered Monroe, amiably. The quality of being
interesting did not assume to his vision the proportions it presented to
Cynthia Gardner's, but he saw no reason to deny its existence. Cynthia
cast a backward glance from the wagon as she spoke, and saw Reuben
slowly and stiffly gathering up dry stalks in his garden, while Stephen
propped up the declining side of a water-butt in his adjoining domain,
one man's back carefully turned to the other.
She walked back from the Centre, and stopped to talk with the twins in a
casual manner. But no careful inadvertence drew them, at this or any
later time when their social relations had become firmly established,
into a triangular conversation. They greeted her with cordiality,
responded to her advances, talked to her with the tolerant and humorous
shrewdness that lurked in their dim eyes, but it was always one at a
time. If, with disarming naïveté, she appealed to Stephen, Reuben turned
into a graven image; and if she chaffed with Reuben, Stephen became as
one who having eyes seeth not, and having ears heareth not. But she
persisted with a zeal which, if not according to knowledge, was the
result of a firm belief in the possibility of a final adjustment of
differences. She did not know, herself, what led her into such
earnestness,--a caprice, or the lingering pathos of two lonely, barren
lives.
Monroe watched her proceedings with tolerant kindliness. It was not his
business to discourage her. He knew what it was to be discouraged, and
he felt that there was quite enough discouragement going about in life
without his adding to it.
"I tell you they would like to be reconciled, Mr. Monroe," said Cynthia.
"They don't know they would like it, but they would."
"Wal, mebbe they would. They're gittin' to be old men. And when you git
along as far as that, you don't, perhaps, worry so much about _bein'_
reconciled, but neither does it seem as worth while _not_ to. There's a
good deal that's sort of instructive about gittin' old," he ruminated.
"It's very lonely for them both, I think;" and Cynthia's voice fell into
the ready accents of youthful pity.
"Their quarrel's been kinder comp'ny for 'em," suggested Monroe.
"It's overstayed its time," asserted Cynthia.
"Mebbe," answered Monroe.
The crisis--for Cynthia had been looking for a crisis--came, after all,
unexpectedly. She had been for the mail, and as she drove the amenable
horse over the homeward road she strained her eyes to read the last page
of an unusually absorbing letter, for it was again sundown, and the
Granger twins again sat in their doorways. There was a decided chill in
the air, this late afternoon. The old men, though they were sturdy
still, had put on their coats, and from behind them the comfortable glow
of two stove doors promised a later hour of warmth and comfort. Their
aspect was more melancholy than usual, whether it were that the
bleakness of winter seemed pressing close upon the bleakness of lonely
age, or that there was an added weariness in the droop of the thin
shoulders and the fixed eyes--it was certain that the picture had gained
a shadow of depression.
For once, Cynthia was not thinking of them as she drew near. The reins
were loose in her hand, and as she bent to catch the waning light, an
open newspaper, which she had laid carelessly on the seat beside her,
was lifted by a transient gust of wind and tossed almost over her
horse's head. No horse, of whatever serenity, can be thus treated
without resentment. He jerked the reins from her heedless hands, made a
sharp turn to avoid the white, wavering, inconsequent thing at his feet,
a wheel caught in a neighboring boulder, and Cynthia was spilled out
just in front of the Granger house and midway between the twins. In a
common impulse of fright the two old men started to their feet. For an
instant they paused to judge of the situation, but it was no time for
fine distinctions. The accident had, to all appearances, happened as
near one as the other, and meanwhile a young and pretty woman lay
unsuccored upon the ground. It became a point of honor to yield nothing
to an ignored companion. As speedily as their years allowed, Stephen and
Reuben marched to the rescue. The horse, meanwhile, had dragged the
overturned wagon but a few yards, and had stopped of his own reasonable
accord. As Cynthia raised herself rather confusedly and quite convinced
that she was killed, her first impression was that the angels were older
than she had fancied, and looked very much like the Granger twins. But
in a few seconds her balance of mind was restored, she realized that
while there was life there was hope, and that for the first time in her
experience the eyes of Reuben and Stephen were fixed solicitously upon a
common object, that each of them had stretched out to her a helping
hand, and that two voices with precisely the same anxious intonation
were saying,--
"Be ye hurt?"
It was a solemn moment, but Cynthia Gardner was of the stuff that
recognizes opportunity. She laid a hand upon each rugged arm, and
steadied herself between them; she perceived that they trembled under
her touch, and she felt that the instant in which they stood side by
side was dramatic.
"I declare, 'twas too bad," said Reuben.
"'Twas too bad," said Stephen.
"Is the horse all right?" asked Cynthia, feebly.
"Yes, Johnny Allen got him," said Stephen.
"Johnny Allen came along," said Reuben, as if Stephen had not spoken,
"and he's got him."
"I can walk," she said, with not unconscious pathos, "if you will walk
with me, but I must go in and rest a moment;" and the three moved slowly
straight forward.
A few steps brought them to the point at which they must turn aside to
reach either entrance. Before them rose the old boarded-up, dismal
doorway, weather-beaten, stained, repellent as bitterness. There was
another fateful pause. Cynthia felt the quiver that ran through the
frames of the old men as for the first time in long years they stood
side by side before the doorway about which as children they had played,
and through which as boys they had rushed together. In Cynthia's
drooping head plans were rapidly forming themselves, but she had time to
be thankful that she did not know which was Reuben and which was
Stephen--it saved her the anxiety of decision; instinctively she turned
to the right, a small brown hand clutching impartially either rough and
shabby sleeve.
The man on her right swerved in an impulse of desertion, but her grasp
did not relax.
"Is the judgment of Solomon to be pronounced!" she said to herself, half
hysterically, for her nerves were a little shaken.
"Oh, I hope I sha'n't faint!" she exclaimed aloud.
Beneath Reuben's rustic exterior beat the American heart that cannot
desert an elegant female in distress. He followed the inclination of the
other two to Stephen's door, and in another never-to-be-forgotten moment
he stepped inside his brother's house.
Stephen's deceased wife's niece was so overcome by the spectacle that
she retained barely enough presence of mind to drag forward a wooden
chair upon which Cynthia sank in a condition evidently bordering upon
syncope. It was a critical moment; she must not give the intruder an
opportunity to escape. She knew the intruder by that impulse of
desertion, and she clung the tighter to his arm when she murmured
pitifully, "If you could get me some water, Mr. Granger."
Stephen hastened towards the kitchen pump--the sight of Reuben in his
side of the house, after thirty years, set old chords vibrating with a
suddenness that threatened to snap some disused string, and his
perceptions were not as clear as usual. He seized the dipper, filled it,
and looked about him.
"Where's the tumbler, Jenny?" he called impatiently.
"It's right there," answered the girl, with the explicitness of
agitation.
"Whar?" he demanded with asperity.
"Settin' on the side--right back of the molasses jug."
"Molasses jug!" he exclaimed. "Nice place for the molasses jug!"
"We was goin' to have baked beans for supper," said the trembling Jenny,
feeling that it was best to be tentative about even a trifling matter
within the area of this convulsion, "and you always want it handy."
It was a simple statement, but it laid a finger upon the past and upon
the future. Cynthia, through her half-closed eyes, saw one old man with
disturbed features, standing with his hand upon her chair, while another
old man shuffled toward her with a glass of water, which spilled a
little in his shaking hand as he came across the humble kitchen. Most
inadequate dramatic elements, yet they held the tragedy of nearly a
lifetime, and the comedy, though more evident, was cast by it in the
shade, and she neither laughed nor cried.
Within a few moments more she was on her homeward way, a trifling break
in the harness tied up with twine, and Johnny Allen in the seat beside
her as guard of honor.
The next evening the people, driving home from the Centre, were saved
from some active demonstration only by the repression of the New England
temperament. Some of them even, after driving past, invented an errand
to drive back again, so as to make sure. For the Granger twins sat side
by side in front of the disused doorway, and their straw hats were
turned sociably towards one another, now and then, as they exchanged a
syllable or two, and there was a mild luminousness of pleasure in the
recesses of their pale-blue eyes. The evening darkened fast into night.
The plaintive half-chirp, half-whistle of a tree-toad fell in monotonous
repetition upon the ear.
"Hear them little fellers!" said Stephen, ruminantly. "I reckon they
think it's goin' to rain."
"Yare," said Reuben. "And," he went on, pushing back his straw hat and
looking up into the sky, "I wouldn't wonder if they was right."
"Mostly are," said Stephen.
_Miss Trumbull's New Story_
* * * * *
Mistress Content Cradock
AN HISTORICAL TALE OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE IN THE TIME OF GOVERNOR WINTHROP
AND ROGER WILLIAMS
By ANNIE ELIOT TRUMBULL
_Author of "A Cape Cod Week," "Rod's Salvation," "A Christmas Accident,"
etc._
_1 vol. 12mo., cloth. Illustrated. Price, $1.00._
* * * * *
A charming colonial romance.--_The
Congregationalist._
It is in a word a fascinating, strong, well-told
story.--_The Church Review._
It is a delightful way to study history--one of
the best of ways--to read a book written by one
whose historical information is accurate.--_Boston
Advertiser._
The thread of romance and love is rendered most
attractive by the author's well-known bright and
attractive style, her delicately fashioned
descriptions, and her entertaining dialogue.--_N.
Y. Times._
Winsome and captivating, Content pleases us of
to-day as she did the lover who patiently waited
to obtain the gift of her not too easily engaged
heart, and the quiet story of her fortunes is well
worth following.--_Literature._
* * * * *
_For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid, on receipt of price, by
the Publishers,_
A. S. BARNES & CO.
156 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
Rod's Salvation.
BY
ANNIE ELIOT TRUMBULL.
Illustrated by Charles Copeland. 12mo, cloth, 285 pages. $1.00.
* * * * *
The volume entitled "Rod's Salvation," contains
four short stories, some of which are long enough
to be fairly called novelets.... "Rod's Salvation"
is a good picture of 'longshore life, telling of
the devotion of a sister to a scapegrace brother
and well worthy a reading.--_Springfield
Republican._
Miss Trumbull is blessed by a most delightful and
unpretentious gift of story-telling. Her work
suggests a twilight musician; she has a certain
dainty humor in her touch.--_The Citizen._
"Rod's Salvation" appears to us the most
interesting sketch of the four in the present
volume. It proves a thorough comprehension of the
noblest characteristics of the inhabitants of the
typical New England fishing village. The author
shows us diamonds in the rough, and with a most
happy talent, suddenly reveals to us the gleaming
beauties beneath their rude exterior. "Rod's
Salvation" is an inspiring story, the pathos of
which is accentuated by the delicate satire,
exquisite humor, and touches of kindly human
nature which lead one up to the unexpected
climax.--_The Church Review._
A
Cape Cod Week.
BY
ANNIE ELIOT TRUMBULL.
12mo, cloth, 170 pages. $1.00.
* * * * *
The keenness, quickness, and acuteness of the New
England mind were, perhaps, never better
illustrated than in her stories. Her conversations
are at times almost supernaturally bright; such
talk as one hears from witty, brilliant, and
cultivated American women--talk notable for
insight, subtle discriminations, unexpected and
surprised terms and persuasive humor.
"A Cape Cod Week" contains an account of the
adventures and achievements of three young women
who sought the seclusion, silence, and scenery of
Cape Cod, and who enlivened that remote and
restful country by flashes of talk often
brilliant, almost always entertaining. Miss
Trumbull's work is delightful reading: the
sameness of the commonplace and the obvious is so
entirely absent from it.--_The Outlook._
Annie Eliot Trumbull delights in fine descriptions
of nature as it exists. The book is capital
reading and its merits can be appreciated the
whole year round.--_New York Times._
A delightful, gossipy little sketch of a week's
holiday on Cape Cod. It is full of bright things,
imaginative to a degree, and yet based on facts as
we have all seen them on the sands of the Cape.
The book is beautifully printed and
bound.--_Boston Globe._
The "Annie Eliot" Stories
FIVE NEW BOOKS
BY ANNIE ELIOT TRUMBULL
MISTRESS CONTENT CRADOCK. Illustrated by Chas.
Copeland. 12mo, cloth, 306 pages. $1.00.
A CHRISTMAS ACCIDENT AND OTHER STORIES. 12mo,
cloth, 234 pages. $1.00.
A CAPE COD WEEK, 12mo, cloth, 170 pages. $1.00.
ROD'S SALVATION. Illustrated by Charles Copeland.
12mo, cloth, 285 pages. $1.00.
AN HOUR'S PROMISE. _New Edition_. 12mo, cloth.
$1.00.
* * * * *
The reader will enjoy the wit, the delicate
satire, the happy bits of nature description.--_S.
S. Times._
They are New England stories and exhibit a
delicate comprehension of many types of New
England character. They are delightfully readable,
and the books ought to be favorites.--_The
Congregationalist._
Miss Trumbull's claim to the attention of her
readers is undisputed. Her short stories possess a
freshness, a poignancy and underlying quick-witted
penetration into human feelings, motives and
experiences that give them a peculiar charm. Her
choice of themes is such as appeals to a wide
circle and her handling of the persons of her
imagination is exquisite.--_Hartford Post._
* * * * *
_For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid, on receipt of price, by
the Publishers,_
A. S. BARNES & CO.
156 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page 108. "did'nt" changed to "didn't" (We didn't really think then)
Page 108, "appened" changed to "happened" (what happened thirty-five)
Page 135, "hey" changed to "they" (that they stayed)
Page 149, "aquired" changed to "acquired" (They had acquired a)
Page 156, "colyum" changed to "column" (so nice in the column)
Page 238, "CRADDOCK" changed to "CRADOCK" (CRADOCK. Illustrated)
Page 235, "Literature" was obscurred (worth following.--_Literature._)