II

The abode of the late Reverend Marvin Hiler remained in the

disorganized condition he had left it when removed from his sphere of

earthly uselessness and continuous accident. The straggling fence that

only half inclosed the house and barn had stopped at that point where

the two deacons who had each volunteered to do a day's work on it had

completed their allotted time. The building of the barn had been

arrested when the half load of timber contributed by Sugar Mill

brethren was exhausted, and three windows given by "Christian Seekers"

at Martinez painfully accented the boarded spaces for the other three

that "Unknown Friends" in Tasajara had promised but not yet supplied.

In the clearing some trees that had been felled but not taken away

added to the general incompleteness.

Something of this unfinished character clung to the Widow Hiler and

asserted itself in her three children, one of whom was consistently

posthumous. Prematurely old and prematurely disappointed, she had all

the inexperience of girlhood with the cares of maternity, and kept in

her family circle the freshness of an old maid's misogynistic

antipathies with a certain guilty and remorseful consciousness of

widowhood. She supported the meagre household to which her husband had

contributed only the extra mouths to feed with reproachful astonishment

and weary incapacity. She had long since grown tired of trying to make

both ends meet, of which she declared "the Lord had taken one." During

her two years' widowhood she had waited on Providence, who by a

pleasing local fiction had been made responsible for the disused and

cast-off furniture and clothing which, accompanied with scriptural

texts, found their way mysteriously into her few habitable rooms. The

providential manna was not always fresh; the ravens who fed her and her

little ones with flour from the Sugar Mills did not always select the

best quality. Small wonder that, sitting by her lonely hearthstone,--a

borrowed stove that supplemented the unfinished fireplace,--surrounded

by her mismatched furniture and clad in misfitting garments, she had

contracted a habit of sniffling during her dreary watches. In her

weaker moments she attributed it to grief; in her stronger intervals

she knew that it sprang from damp and draught.

In her apathy the sound of horses' hoofs at her unprotected door even

at that hour neither surprised nor alarmed her. She lifted her head as

the door opened and the pale face of Gideon Deane looked into the room.

She moved aside the cradle she was rocking, and, taking a saucepan and

tea-cup from a chair beside her, absently dusted it with her apron, and

pointing to the vacant seat said, "Take a chair," as quietly as if he

had stepped from the next room instead of the outer darkness.

"I'll put up my horse first," said Gideon gently.

"So do," responded the widow briefly.

Gideon led his horse across the inclosure, stumbling over the heaps of

rubbish, dried chips, and weather-beaten shavings with which it was

strewn, until he reached the unfinished barn, where he temporarily

bestowed his beast. Then taking a rusty axe, by the faint light of the

stars, he attacked one of the fallen trees with such energy that at the

end of ten minutes he reappeared at the door with an armful of cut

boughs and chips, which he quietly deposited behind the stove.

Observing that he was still standing as if looking for something, the

widow lifted her eyes and said, "Ef it's the bucket, I reckon ye'll

find it at the spring, where one of them foolish Filgee boys left it.

I've been that tuckered out sens sundown, I ain't had the ambition to

go and tote it back." Without a word Gideon repaired to the spring,

filled the missing bucket, replaced the hoop on the loosened staves of

another he found lying useless beside it, and again returned to the

house. The widow once more pointed to the chair, and Gideon sat down.

"It's quite a spell sens you wos here," said the Widow Hiler, returning

her foot to the cradle-rocker; "not sens yer was ordained. Be'n

practicin', I reckon, at the meetin'."

A slight color came into his cheek. "My place is not there, Sister

Hiler," he said gently; "it's for those with the gift o' tongues. I go

forth only a common laborer in the vineyard." He stopped and

hesitated; he might have said more, but the widow, who was familiar

with that kind of humility as the ordinary perfunctory expression of

her class, suggested no sympathetic interest in his mission.

"Thar's a deal o' talk over there," she said dryly, "and thar's folks

ez thinks thar's a deal o' money spent in picnicking the Gospel that

might be given to them ez wish to spread it, or to their widows and

children. But that don't consarn you, Brother Gideon. Sister Parsons

hez money enough to settle her darter Meely comfortably on her own

land; and I've heard tell that you and Meely was only waitin' till you

was ordained to be jined together. You'll hev an easier time of it,

Brother Gideon, than poor Marvin Hiler had," she continued, suppressing

her tears with a certain astringency that took the place of her lost

pride; "but the Lord wills that some should be tried and some not."

"But I am not going to marry Meely Parsons," said Gideon quietly.

The widow took her foot from the rocker. "Not marry Meely!" she

repeated vaguely. But relapsing into her despondent mood she

continued: "Then I reckon it's true what other folks sez of Brother

Silas Braggley makin' up to her and his powerful exhortin' influence

over her ma. Folks sez ez Sister Parsons hez just resigned her soul

inter his keepin'."

"Brother Silas hez a heavenly gift," said the young man, with gentle

enthusiasm; "and perhaps it may be so. If it is, it is the Lord's

will. But I do not marry Meely because my life and my ways henceforth

must lie far beyond her sphere of strength. I oughtn't to drag a young

inexperienced soul with me to battle and struggle in the thorny paths

that I must tread."

"I reckon you know your own mind," said Sister Hiler grimly. "But

thar's folks ez might allow that Meely Parsons ain't any better than

others, that she shouldn't have her share o' trials and keers and

crosses. Riches and bringin' up don't exempt folks from the shadder.

I married Marvin Hiler outer a house ez good ez Sister Parsons', and at

a time when old Cyrus Parsons hadn't a roof to his head but the cover

of the emigrant wagon he kem across the plains in. I might say ez

Marvin knowed pretty well wot it was to have a helpmeet in his

ministration, if it wasn't vanity of sperit to say it now. But the

flesh is weak, Brother Gideon." Her influenza here resolved itself

into unmistakable tears, which she wiped away with the first article

that was accessible in the work-bag before her. As it chanced to be a

black silk neckerchief of the deceased Hiler, the result was funereal,

suggestive, but practically ineffective.

"You were a good wife to Brother Hiler," said the young man gently.

"Everybody knows that."

"It's suthin' to think of since he's gone," continued the widow,

bringing her work nearer to her eyes to adjust it to their tear-dimmed

focus. "It's suthin' to lay to heart in the lonely days and nights

when thar's no man round to fetch water and wood and lend a hand to

doin' chores; it's suthin' to remember, with his three children to

feed, and little Selby, the eldest, that vain and useless that he can't

even tote the baby round while I do the work of a hired man."

"It's a hard trial, Sister Hiler," said Gideon, "but the Lord has His

appointed time."

Familiar as consolation by vague quotation was to Sister Hiler, there

was an occult sympathy in the tone in which this was offered that

lifted her for an instant out of her narrower self. She raised her

eyes to his. The personal abstraction of the devotee had no place in

the deep dark eyes that were lifted from the cradle to hers with a sad,

discriminating, and almost womanly sympathy. Surprised out of her

selfish preoccupation, she was reminded of her apparent callousness to

what might be his present disappointment. Perhaps it seemed strange to

her, too, that those tender eyes should go a-begging.

"Yer takin' a Christian view of yer own disappointment, Brother

Gideon," she said, with less astringency of manner; "but every heart

knoweth its own sorrer. I'll be gettin' supper now that the baby's

sleepin' sound, and ye'll sit by and eat."

"If you let me help you, Sister Hiler," said the young man with a

cheerfulness that belied any overwhelming heart affection, and awakened

in the widow a feminine curiosity as to his real feelings to Meely.

But her further questioning was met with a frank, amiable, and simple

brevity that was as puzzling as the most artful periphrase of tact.

Accustomed as she was to the loquacity of grief and the confiding

prolixity of disappointed lovers, she could not understand her guest's

quiescent attitude. Her curiosity, however, soon gave way to the

habitual contemplation of her own sorrows, and she could not forego the

opportune presence of a sympathizing auditor to whom she could relieve

her feelings. The preparations for the evening meal were therefore

accompanied by a dreary monotone of lamentation. She bewailed her lost

youth, her brief courtship, the struggles of her early married life,

her premature widowhood, her penurious and helpless existence, the

disruption of all her present ties, the hopelessness of the future. She

rehearsed the unending plaint of those long evenings, set to the music

of the restless wind around her bleak dwelling, with something of its

stridulous reiteration. The young man listened, and replied with

softly assenting eyes, but without pausing in the material aid that he

was quietly giving her. He had removed the cradle of the sleeping

child to the bedroom, quieted the sudden wakefulness of "Pinkey,"

rearranged the straggling furniture of the sitting-room with much order

and tidiness, repaired the hinges of a rebellious shutter and the lock

of an unyielding door, and yet had apparently retained an unabated

interest in her spoken woes. Surprised once more into recognizing this

devotion, Sister Hiler abruptly arrested her monologue.

"Well, if you ain't the handiest man I ever seed about a house!"

"Am I?" said Gideon, with suddenly sparkling eyes. "Do you really

think so?"

"I do."

"Then you don't know how glad I am." His frank face so unmistakably

showed his simple gratification that the widow, after gazing at him for

a moment, was suddenly seized with a bewildering fancy. The first

effect of it was the abrupt withdrawal of her eyes, then a sudden

effusion of blood to her forehead that finally extended to her

cheekbones, and then an interval of forgetfulness where she remained

with a plate held vaguely in her hand. When she succeeded at last in

putting it on the table instead of the young man's lap, she said in a

voice quite unlike her own,--

"Sho!"

"I mean it," said Gideon, cheerfully. After a pause, in which he

unostentatiously rearranged the table which the widow was abstractedly

disorganizing, he said gently, "After tea, when you're not so much

flustered with work and worry, and more composed in spirit, we'll have

a little talk, Sister Hiler. I'm in no hurry to-night, and if you

don't mind I'll make myself comfortable in the barn with my blanket

until sun-up to-morrow. I can get up early enough to do some odd

chores round the lot before I go."

"You know best, Brother Gideon," said the widow, faintly, "and if you

think it's the Lord's will, and no speshal trouble to you, so do. But

sakes alive! it's time I tidied myself a little," she continued,

lifting one hand to her hair, while with the other she endeavored to

fasten a buttonless collar; "leavin' alone the vanities o' dress, it's

ez much as one can do to keep a clean rag on with the children climbin'

over ye. Sit by, and I'll be back in a minit." She retired to the

back room, and in a few moments returned with smoothed hair and a

palm-leaf broche shawl thrown over her shoulders, which not only

concealed the ravages made by time and maternity on the gown beneath,

but to some extent gave her the suggestion of being a casual visitor in

her own household. It must be confessed that for the rest of the

evening Sister Hiler rather lent herself to this idea, possibly from

the fact that it temporarily obliterated the children, and quite

removed her from any responsibility in the unpicturesque household.

This effect was only marred by the absence of any impression upon

Gideon, who scarcely appeared to notice the change, and whose soft eyes

seemed rather to identify the miserable woman under her forced

disguise. He prefaced the meal with a fervent grace, to which the widow

listened with something of the conscious attitude she had adopted at

church during her late husband's ministration, and during the meal she

ate with a like consciousness of "company manners."

Later that evening Selby Hiler woke up in his little truckle bed,

listening to the rising midnight wind, which in his childish fancy he

confounded with the sound of voices that came through the open door of

the living-room. He recognized the deep voice of the young minister,

Gideon, and the occasional tearful responses of his mother, and he was

fancying himself again at church when he heard a step, and the young

preacher seemed to enter the room, and going to the bed leaned over it

and kissed him on the forehead, and then bent over his little brother

and sister and kissed them too. Then he slowly re-entered the

living-room. Lifting himself softly on his elbow, Selby saw him go up

towards his mother, who was crying, with her head on the table, and

kiss her also on the forehead. Then he said "Good-night," and the front

door closed, and Selby heard his footsteps crossing the lot towards the

barn. His mother was still sitting with her face buried in her hands

when he fell asleep.

She sat by the dying embers of the fire until the house was still

again; then she rose and wiped her eyes. "Et's a good thing," she

said, going to the bedroom door, and looking in upon her sleeping

children; "et's a mercy and a blessing for them and--for--me.

But--but--he might--hev--said--he--loved me!"