herself what her life might have been if she had braved her parents'
disapproval and married Lloyd before her mother's death; but there was
never a moment bitter enough to tempt her into any neglect of present
duty. The milking, the butter-making, the washing, the spinning, all the
relentless hard work of the women of her day, went on systematically
from the beginning of the year to its end, and the younger children came
to accept her patient ministrations as unquestioningly as they had
accepted their mother's.
She wondered sometimes at her own anxiety to know that Lloyd was true to
her, reproaching herself meanwhile with puritanic severity for such
unholy selfishness; but she discussed the various plaids for the
children's flannel dresses with Mrs. Skinner, who did the weaving, and
cut and sewed and dyed the rags for a new best room carpet with the same
conscientious regard for art in the distribution of the stripes which
was displayed by all the women of her acquaintance; indeed, there was no
one among them all whose taste in striping a carpet, or in "piecing and
laying out a quilt," was more sought after than Marg'et Ann's.
"She always was the old-fashionedest little thing," said grandmother
Elliott, who had been a member of Mr. Morrison's congregation back in
Ohio. "I never did see her beat." The good old lady's remark, which was
considered highly commendatory, and had nothing whatever to do with the
frivolities of changing custom, was made at a quilting at Squire
Wilson's, from which Marg'et Ann chanced to be absent.
"It's a pity she don't seem to get married," said Mrs. Barnes, who was
marking circles in the white patches of the quilt by means of an
inverted teacup of flowing blue; "she's the kind of a girl _I'd_ 'a'
thought young men would 'a' took up with."
"Marg'et Ann never was much for the boys," said grandmother Elliott,
disposed to defend her favorite, "and dear knows she has her hands full;
it's quite a chore to look after all them children."
The women maintained a charitable silence. The ethics of their day did
not recognize any womanly duty inconsistent with matrimony. "A
disappointment" was considered the only dignified reason for remaining
single. Grandmother Elliott felt the weakness of her position.
"I'm sure I don't see how her father would get on," she protested
feebly; "he ain't much of a hand to manage."
"If Marg'et Ann was to marry, her father would have to stir round and
get himself a wife," said Mrs. Barnes, with cheerful lack of sentiment,
confident that her audience was with her.
"I've always had a notion Marg'et Ann thought a good deal more of Lloyd
Archer than she let on,--at least more than her folks knew anything
about," asserted Mrs. Skinner, stretching her plump arm under the quilt
and feeling about carefully. "I shouldn't wonder if she'd had quite a
disappointment."
"I would have hated to see her marry Lloyd Archer," protested
grandmother Elliott; "she's a sight too good for him; he's always had
queer notions."
"Well, I should 'a' thought myself she could 'a' done better," admitted
Mrs. Barnes, "but somehow she hasn't. I tell 'Lisha it's more of a
disgrace to the young man than it is to her."
Evidently this discussion of poor Marg'et Ann's dismal outlook
matrimonially was not without precedent.
One person was totally oblivious to the facts and all surmises
concerning them. Theoretically, no doubt, the good minister esteemed it
a reproach that any woman should remain unmarried; but there are
theories which refinement finds it easy to separate from daily life, and
no thought of Marg'et Ann's future intruded upon her father's deep and
daily increasing distress over the wrongs of human slavery. Marg'et Ann
was conscious sometimes of a change in him; he went often and
restlessly to see Squire Kirkendall, who kept an underground railroad
station, and not infrequently a runaway negro was harbored at the
Morrisons'. Strange to say, these frightened and stealthy visitors,
dirty and repulsive though they were, excited no fear in the minds of
the children, to whom the slave had become almost an object of
reverence.
Marg'et Ann read her first novel that year,--a story called "Uncle Tom's
Cabin," which appeared in the "National Era,"--read it and wept over it,
adding all the intensity of her antislavery training to the enjoyment of
a hitherto forbidden pleasure. She did not fail to note her father's
eagerness for the arrival of the paper; and recalled the fact that he
had once objected to her reading "Pilgrim's Progress" on the Sabbath.
"It's useful, perhaps," he had said, "useful in its way and in its
place, but it is fiction nevertheless."
There were many vexing questions of church discipline that winter, and
the Rev. Samuel McClanahan rode over from Cedar Township often and held
long theological discussions with her father in the privacy of the best
room. Once Squire Wilson came with him, and as the two visitors left the
house Marg'et Ann heard the Rev. Samuel urging upon the elder the
necessity of "holding up Brother Morrison's hands."
It was generally known among the congregation that Abner Kirkendall had
been before the session for attending the Methodist Church and singing
an uninspired hymn in the public worship of God, and it was whispered
that the minister was not properly impressed with the heinousness of
Abner's sin. Then, too, Jonathan Loomis, the precentor, who had at first
insisted upon lining out two lines of the psalm instead of one, and had
carried his point, now pushed his dangerous liberality to the extreme of
not lining out at all. The first time he was guilty of this startling
innovation, "Rushin' through the sawm," as Uncle John Turnbull
afterwards said, "without deegnity, as if it were a mere human
cawmposeetion," two or three of the older members arose and left the
church; and the presbytery was shaken to its foundations of Scotch
granite when Mr. Morrison humbly acknowledged that he had not noticed
the precentor's bold sally until Brother Turnbull's departure attracted
his attention.
It is true that the minister had preached most acceptably that day from
the ninth and twelfth verses of the thirty-fifth chapter of Job: "By
reason of the multitude of oppressions they make the oppressed to cry:
they cry out by reason of the arm of the mighty.... There they cry, but
none giveth answer, because of the pride of evil men." And it is
possible that the zeal for freedom that burned in his soul was rather
gratified than otherwise by Jonathan's bold singing of the prophetic
psalm:--
"He out of darkness did them bring
And from Death's shade them take,
Those bands wherewith they had been bound
Asunder quite he brake.
"O that men to the Lord would give
Praise for His goodness then,
And for His works of wonder done
Unto the sons of men."
But such absorbing enthusiasm, even in a good cause, argued a doctrinal
laxity which could not pass unnoticed.
"A deegnifyin' of the creature above the Creator, the sign above the
thing seegnified," Uncle Johnnie Turnbull urged upon the session,
smarting from the deep theological wound he had suffered at Jonathan's
hands.
A perceptible chill crept into the ecclesiastical atmosphere which
Marg'et Ann felt without thoroughly comprehending.
Nancy Helen was sixteen now, and Marg'et Ann had taught the summer
school at Yankee Neck, riding home every evening to superintend the
younger sister's housekeeping.
Laban had emerged from the period of unshaven awkwardness, and was going
to see Emeline Barnes with ominous regularity.
There was nothing in the affairs of the household to trouble Marg'et Ann
but her father's ever increasing restlessness and preoccupation. She
wondered if it would have been different if her mother had lived. There
was no great intimacy between the father and daughter, but the girl
knew that the wrongs of the black man had risen like a dense cloud
between her father and what had once been his highest duty and pleasure.
She was not, therefore, greatly surprised when he said to her one day,
more humbly than he was wont to speak to his children:--
"I think I must try to do something for those poor people, child; it may
not be much, but it will be something. The harvest truly is great, but
the laborers are few."
"What will you do, father?"
Marg'et Ann asked the question hesitatingly, dreading the reply. The
minister looked at her with anxious eagerness. He was glad of the humble
acquiescence that obliged him to put his half-formed resolution into
words.
"If the presbytery will release me from my charge here, I may go South
for a while. Nancy Helen is quite a girl now, and with Laban and your
teaching you could get on. They are bruised for our iniquities, Marg'et
Ann,--they are our iniquities, indirectly, child."
He got up and walked across the rag-carpeted floor. Marg'et Ann sat
still in her mother's chair, looking down at the stripes of the
carpet,--dark blue and red and "hit or miss;" her mother had made them
so patiently; it seemed as if patience were always under foot for
heroism to tread upon. She fought with the ache in her throat a little.
The stripes on the floor were beginning to blur when she spoke.
"Isn't it dangerous to go down there, father, for people like us,--for
Abolitionists, I mean; I have heard that it was."
"Dangerous!" The preacher's face lighted with the faint, prophetic joy
of martyrdom; poor Marg'et Ann had touched the wrong chord. "It cannot
be worse for me than it is for them,--I must go," he broke out
impatiently; "do not say anything against it, child!"
And so Marg'et Ann said nothing.
Really there was not much time for words. There were many stitches to be
taken in the threadbare wardrobe, concerning which her father was as
ignorant and indifferent as a child, before she packed it all in the
old carpet sack and nerved herself to see him start.
He went away willingly, almost cheerfully. Just at the last, when he
came to bid the younger children good-by, the father seemed for an
instant to rise above the reformer. No doubt their childish unconcern
moved him.
"We must think of the families that have been rudely torn apart. Surely
it ought to sustain us,--it ought to sustain us," he said to Laban as
they drove away.
Two days later they carried him home, crippled for life by the
overturning of the stage near Cedar Creek.
He made no complaint of the drunken driver whose carelessness had caused
the accident and frustrated his plans; but once, when his eldest
daughter was alone with him, he looked into her face and said, absently,
rather than to her,--
"Patience, patience; I doubt not the Lord's hand is in it."
And Marg'et Ann felt that his purpose was not quenched.
In the spring Lloyd Archer came home. Marg'et Ann had heard of his
coming, and tried to think of him with all the intervening years of care
and trial added; but when she saw him walking up the path between the
flowering almonds and snowball bushes, all the intervening years faded
away, and left only the past that he had shared, and the present.
She met him there at her father's bedside and shook hands with him and
said, "How do you do, Lloyd? Have you kept your health?" as quietly as
she would have greeted any neighbor. After he had spoken to her father
and the children she sat before him with her knitting, a very gentle,
self-contained Desdemona, and listened while he told the minister
stories of California, mentioning the trees and fruits of the Bible with
a freedom and familiarity that savored just enough of heresy to make him
seem entirely unchanged.
When Nancy Helen came into the room he glanced from her to Marg'et Ann;
the two sisters had the same tints in hair and cheek, but the straight,
placid lines of the elder broke into waves and dimples in the younger.
Nancy Helen shook hands in a limp, half-grown way, blushingly conscious
that her sleeves were rolled up, and that her elders were maturely
indifferent to her sufferings; and Lloyd jokingly refused to tell her
his name, insisting that she had kissed him good-by and promised to be
his little sweetheart when he came back.
Marg'et Ann was knitting a great blue and white sock for Laban, and
after she had turned the mammoth heel she smoothed it out on her lap,
painstakingly, conscious all the time of a tumultuous, unreasonable joy
in Lloyd's presence, in the sound of his voice, in his glance, which
assured her so unmistakably that she had a right to rejoice in his
coming.
She did not see her lover alone for several days. When she did, he
caught her hands and said, "Well, Marg'et Ann?" taking up the unsettled
question of their lives where they had left it. And Marg'et Ann stood
still, with her hands in his, looking down at the snow of the fallen
locust-bloom at her feet, and said,--
"When father is well enough to begin preaching again, then I
think--perhaps--Lloyd"--
But Lloyd did not wait to hear what she thought, nor trouble himself
greatly about the "perhaps."
* * * * *
The minister's injuries were slow to mend. They were all coming to
understand that his lameness would be permanent, and there was on the
part of the older children a tense, pained curiosity concerning their
father's feeling on the subject, which no word of his had thus far
served to relieve. There was a grave shyness among them concerning their
deepest feelings, which was, perhaps, a sense of the inadequacy of
expression rather than the austerity it seemed. Marg'et Ann would have
liked to show her sympathy for her father, and no doubt it would have
lightened the burdens of both; but any betrayal of filial tenderness
beyond the dutiful care she gave him would have startled the minister,
and embarrassed them both. Life was a serious thing to them only by
reason of its relation to eternity; a constant underrating of this world
had made them doubtful of its dignity. Marg'et Ann felt it rather
light-minded that she should have a lump in her throat whenever she
thought of her father on crutches for the rest of his life. She wondered
how Laban felt about it, but it was not likely that she would ever know.
Laban had made the crutches himself, a rude, temporary pair at first,
but he was at work on others now that were more carefully made and more
durable; and she knew from this and the remarks of her father when he
tried them that they both understood. It was not worth while to talk
about it of course, and yet the household had a dull ache in it that a
little talking might have relieved.
Marg'et Ann had begged Lloyd not to speak to her father until the latter
was "up and about." It seemed to her unkind to talk of leaving him when
he was helpless, and Lloyd was very patient now, and very tractable,
working busily to get the old place in readiness for his bride.
Mr. Morrison sat at his table, reading, or writing hurriedly, or gazing
absently out into the June sunshine. He was sitting thus one afternoon,
tapping the arms of his chair nervously with his thin fingers, when
Marg'et Ann brought her work and sat in her mother's chair near him. It
was not very dainty work, winding a mass of dyed carpet rags into a
huge, madder-colored ball, but there were delicate points in its
execution which a restless civilization has hurried into oblivion along
with the other lost arts, and Marg'et Ann surveyed her ball critically
now and then, to be sure that it was not developing any slovenly
one-sidedness under her deft hands. The minister's crutches leaned
against the arm of his painted wooden chair with an air of mute but
patient helpfulness. Marg'et Ann had cushioned them with patchwork, but
he had walked about so much that she already noted the worn places
beginning to show under the arms of his faded dressing-gown. He leaned
forward a little and glanced toward her, his hand on them now, and she
put down her work and went to his side. He raised himself by the arms of
his chair, sighing, and took the crutches from her patient hand.
"I am not of much account, child,--not of much account," he said
wearily.
Marg'et Ann colored with pain. She felt as a branch might feel when the
trunk of the tree snaps.
"I'm sure you're getting on very well, father; the doctor says you'll be
able to begin preaching again by fall."
The minister made his way slowly across the room and stood a moment in
the open door; then he retraced his halting steps with their thumping
wooden accompaniment and seated himself slowly and painfully again. One
of the crutches slid along the arm of the chair and fell to the floor.
Marg'et Ann went to pick it up. His head was still bowed and his face
had not relaxed from the pain of moving. Standing a moment at his side
and looking down at him, she noticed how thin and gray his hair had
become. She turned away her face, looking out of the window and
battling with the cruelty of it all. The minister felt the tenderness of
her silent presence there, and glanced up.
"I shall not preach any more, Marg'et Ann, at least not here, not in
this way. If I might do something for those down-trodden people,--but
that is perhaps not best. The Lord knows. But I shall leave the ministry
for a time,--until I see my way more clearly."
His daughter crossed the room, stooping to straighten the braided rug at
his feet as she went, and took up her work again. Certainly the crimson
ball was a trifle one-sided, or was it the unevenness of her tear-filled
vision? She unwound it a little to remedy the defect as her father went
on.
"Things do not present themselves to my mind as they once did. I have
not decided just what course to pursue, but it would certainly not be
honorable for me to occupy the pulpit in my present frame of mind.
You've been a very faithful daughter, Marg'et Ann," he broke off, "a
good daughter."
He turned and looked at her sitting there winding the great ball with
her trembling fingers; her failure to speak did not suggest any coldness
to either of them; response would have startled him.
"I have thought much about it," he went on. "I have had time to think
under this affliction. Nancy Helen is old enough to be trusted now, and
when Laban marries he will perhaps be willing to rent the land. No doubt
you could get both the summer and winter schools in the district; that
would be a great help. The congregation has not been able to pay much,
but it would be a loss"--
He faltered for the first time; there was a shame in mentioning money in
connection with his office.
"I have suffered a good deal of distress of mind, child, but doubtless
it is salutary--it is salutary."
He reached for his crutches again restlessly, and then drew back,
remembering the pain of rising.
Marg'et Ann had finished the ball of carpet rags and laid it carefully
in the box with the others. She had taken great pains with the
coloring, thinking of the best room in her new home, and Lloyd had a
man's liking for red.
And now the old question had come back; it was older than she knew.
Doubtless it was right that men should always have opinions and
aspirations and principles, and women only ties and duties and
heartaches. It seemed cruel, though, just now. She choked back the
throbbing pain in her throat that threatened to make itself seen and
heard.
"Of course I must do right, Marg'et Ann."
Her father's voice seemed almost pleading.
Of course he must do right. Marg'et Ann had not dreamed of anything
else. Only it was a little hard just now.
She glanced at him, leaning forward in his chair with the crutches
beside him. He looked feeble about the temples, and his patched
dressing-gown hung loose in wrinkles. She crossed the room and stood
beside him. Of course she would stay with him. She did not ask herself
why. She did not reason that it was because motherhood underlies
wifehood and makes it sweet and sufficing; makes every good woman a
mother to every dependent creature, be it strong or weak. I doubt if she
reasoned at all. She only said,--
"Of course you will do right, father, and I will see about the school; I
think I can get it. You must not worry; we shall get on very well."
Out in the June sunshine Lloyd was coming up the walk with Nancy Helen.
She had been gathering wild strawberries in the meadow across the lane,
and they had met at the gate. Her sunbonnet was pushed back from her
crinkly hair, and her cheeks were stained redder than her finger-tips by
Lloyd's teasing.
Marg'et Ann looked at them and sighed.
* * * * *
After her brother's return from presbytery Miss Nancy McClanahan
borrowed her sister-in-law's horse and rode over to visit the Morrisons.
It was not often that Miss Nancy made a trip of this kind alone, and
Marg'et Ann ran down the walk to meet her, rolling down her sleeves and
smoothing her hair.
Miss Nancy took the girl's soft cheeks in her hands and drew them into
the shadow of her cavernous sunbonnet for a withered kiss.
"I want to see your father, Margie," she whispered, and the gentle
constraint of spiritual things came into Marg'et Ann's voice as she
answered,--
"He's in the best room alone; I moved him in there this morning to be
out of the sweeping. You can go right in."
She lingered a little, hoping her old friend's concern of soul might not
have obscured her interest in the salt-rising bread, which had been
behaving untowardly of late; but Miss Nancy turned her steps in the
direction of the best room, and Marg'et Ann opened the door for her,
saying,--
"It's Miss McClanahan, father."
The minister looked up, wrinkling his forehead in the effort to
disentangle himself from his thoughts. The old maid crossed the room
toward him with her quick, hitching step.
"Don't try to get up, Joseph," she said, as he laid his hand on his
crutches; "I'll find myself a chair."
She sat down before him, crossing her hands in her lap. The little worn
band of gold was not on her finger, but there was a smooth white mark
where it had been.
"Samuel got home from presbytery yesterday; he told me what was before
them. I thought I'd like to have a little talk with you."
Her voice trembled as she stopped. A faint color showed itself through
the silvery stubble on the minister's cheeks; he patted the arms of his
chair nervously.
"I'm hardly prepared to discuss my opinions. They are vague, very vague,
at best. I should be sorry to unsettle the faith"--
"I don't care at all about your opinions," Miss Nancy interrupted,
pushing his words away with both hands; "I only wanted to speak to you
about Marg'et Ann."
"Marg'et Ann!" The minister's relief breathed itself out in gentle
surprise.
"Yes, Marg'et Ann. I think it's time somebody was thinking of her,
Joseph." Miss Nancy leaned forward, her face the color of a withered
rose. "She's doing over again what I did. Perhaps it was best for you. I
believe it was, and I don't want you to say a word,--you mustn't,--but I
can speak, and I'm not going to let Marg'et Ann live my life if I can
help it."
"I don't understand you, Nancy."
The minister laid his hands on his crutches and refused to be motioned
back into his chair. He stood before her, looking down anxiously into
her thin, eager face.
"I know you don't. Esther never understood, either. You didn't know that
Marg'et Ann gave up Lloyd Archer because he had doubts, but I knew it. I
wanted to speak then, but I couldn't--to her--Esther,--and now you don't
know that she's going to give him up again because you have doubts,
Joseph. That's the way with women. They have no principles, only to do
the hardest thing. But I know what it means to work and worry and pinch
and have nothing in the end, not even troubles of your own,--they would
be some comfort. And I'm going to save Marg'et Ann from it. I'm going
to come here and take her place. I've got a little something of my own,
you know; I always meant it for her."
She stopped, looking at him expectantly. The minister turned away,
rubbing his hands up and down his polished crutches. There was a soft,
troubled light in his eyes.
"Why, Nancy!"
His companion got up and moved a step backward. Her cheeks flushed a
pale, faded red.
"Oh, no," she said, with a quick, impatient movement of her head, "not
that, Joseph; that died years ago,--you are the same to me as other men,
excepting that you are Marg'et Ann's father. It's for _her_. It's the
only way I can live my life over again, by letting her live hers. I
don't know that it will be any better; but she will know, she will have
a certainty in place of a doubt. I don't know that my life would have
been any better; I know yours would not, and anyway it's all over now. I
know I can get on with the children, and I don't think people will
talk. I hope you're not going to object, Joseph. We've always been very
good friends."
He shook his head slowly.