Part II.

For the first few days after the funeral, Draxy seemed to sink; the void

was too terrible; only little Reuby's voice roused her from the apathetic

silence in which she would sit by the hour gazing out of the east

bay-window on the road down which she had last seen her husband walk. She

knew just the spot where he had paused and turned and thrown kisses back

to Reuby watching him from the window.

But her nature was too healthy, too full of energy, and her soul too full

of love to remain in this frame long. She reproached herself bitterly for

the sin of having indulged in it even for a short time.

"I don't believe my darling can be quite happy even in heaven, while he

sees me living this way," she said sternly to herself one morning. Then

she put on her bonnet, and went down into the village to carry out a

resolution she had been meditating for some days. Very great was the

astonishment of house after house that morning, as Draxy walked quietly

in, as had been her wont. She proposed to the mothers to send their

younger children to her, to be taught half of every day.

"I can teach Reuby better if I have other children too," she said. "I

think no child ought to be sent into the district school under ten. The

confinement is too much for them. Let me have all the boys and girls

between six and eight, and I'll carry them along with Reuby for the next

two or three years at any rate," she said.

The parents were delighted and grateful; but their wonder almost swallowed

up all other emotions.

"To think o' her!" they said. "The Elder not three weeks buried, an' she a

goin' round, jest as calm 'n' sweet's a baby, a gettin' up a school!"

"She's too good for this earth, that's what she is," said Angy Plummer. "I

should jest like to know if anybody'd know this village, since she came

into 't. Why we ain't one of us the same we used to be. I know I ain't. I

reckon myself's jest about eight years old, if I have got three boys. That

makes me born the summer before her Reuby, 'an that's jest the time I was

born, when my Benjy was seven months old!"

"You're jest crazy about Mis' Kinney, Angy Plummer," said her mother. "I

b'lieve ye'd go through fire for her quicker 'n ye would for any yer own

flesh an' blood."

Angy went to her mother and kissed the fretful old face very kindly.

"Mother, you can't say I hain't been a better daughter to you sence I've

knowed Mis' Kinney."

"No, I can't," grumbled the old woman, "that's a fact; but she's got a

heap o' new fangled notions I don't believe in."

The school was a triumphant success. From nine until twelve o'clock every

forenoon, twelve happy little children had a sort of frolic of learning

lessons in the Elder's sacred study, which was now Draxy's sitting-room.

Old Ike, who since the Elder's death had never seemed quite clear of

brain, had asked so piteously to come and sit in the room, that Draxy let

him do so. He sat in a big chair by the fire-place, and carved whistles

and ships and fantastic toys for the children, listening all the time

intently to every word which fell from Draxy's lips. He had transferred to

her all the pathetic love he had felt for the Elder; he often followed her

at a distance when she went out, and little Reuby he rarely lost sight of,

from morning till night. He was too feeble now to do much work, but his

presence was a great comfort to Draxy. He seemed a very close link between

her and her husband. Hannah, too, sometimes came into the school at

recess, to the great amusement of the children. She was particularly fond

of looking at the blackboard, when there were chalk-marks on it.

"Make a mark on me with your white pencil," she would say, offering her

dark cheek to Reuby, who would scrawl hieroglyphics all over it from hair

to chin.

Then she would invite the whole troop out into the kitchen to a feast of

doughnuts or cookies; very long the recesses sometimes were when the

school was watching Hannah fry the fantastic shapes of sweet dough, or

taking each a turn at the jagged wheel with which she cut them out.

Reuben also came often to the school-room, and Jane sometimes sat there

with her knitting. A strange content had settled on their lives, in spite

of the sorrow. They saw Draxy calm; she smiled on them as constantly as

ever; and they were very old people, and believed too easily that she was

at peace.

But the Lord had more work still for this sweet woman's hand. This, too,

was suddenly set before her. Late one Saturday afternoon, as she was

returning, surrounded by her escort of laughing children, from the woods,

where they had been for May-flowers, old Deacon Plummer overtook her.

"Mis' Kinney, Mis' Kinney," he began several times, but could get no

further. He was evidently in great perplexity how to say the thing he

wished.

"Mis' Kinney, would you hev--

"Mis' Kinney, me and Deacon Swift's been a sayin'--

"Mis' Kinney, ain't you got--"

Draxy smiled outright. She often smiled now, with cordial good cheer, when

things pleased her.

"What is it, Deacon? out with it. I can't possibly tell unless you make it

plainer."

Thus encouraged, good Deacon Plummer went on: "Well, Mis' Kinney, it's

jest this: Elder Williams has jest sent word he can't come an' preach

to-morrer, and there ain't nobody anywhere's round thet we can get; and

De'n Swift 'n me, we was a thinkin' whether you wouldn't be willin' some

of us should read one o' the Elder's old sermons. O Mis' Kinney, ye don't

know how we all hanker to hear some o' his blessed words agin."

Draxy stood still. Her face altered so that the little children crowded

round her in alarm, and Reuby took hold of her hand. Tears came into her

eyes, and she could hardly speak, but she replied,--

"Yes, indeed, Mr. Plummer, I should be very glad to have you. I'll look

out a sermon to-night, and you can come up to the house in the morning and

get it."

"O Mis' Kinney, do forgive me for speakin'. You have allers seem so borne

up, I never mistrusted that't'd do any harm to ask yer," stammered the

poor Deacon, utterly disconcerted by Draxy's tears, for she was crying

hard now.

"It hasn't done any harm, I assure you. I am very glad to do it," said

Draxy.

"Yes, sir, my mamma very often cries when she's glad," spoke up Reuby, his

little face getting very red, and his lips quivering. "She's very glad,

sir, if she says so."

This chivalrous defense calmed poor Draxy, but did not comfort the Deacon,

who hurried away, saying to himself,--

"Don't believe there was ever such a woman nor such a boy in this world

before. She never shed a tear when we brought the Elder home dead, nor

even when she see him let down into the very grave; 'n' I don't believe

she's cried afore anybody till to-day; 'n' that little chap a speakin' up

an' tellin' me his ma often cried when she was glad, an' I was to believe

her spite of her crying! I wish I'd made Job Swift go arter her. I'll make

him go arter that sermon anyhow. I won't go near her agin 'bout this

bisness, that's certain;" and the remorse-stricken, but artful deacon

hastened to his brother deacon's house to tell him that it was "all

settled with Mis' Kinney 'bout the sermon, an' she was quite willin';"

and, "O," he added, as if it were quite a second thought, "ye'd better go

up an' git the sermon, Job, in the mornin,' ye're so much nearer, an'

then, 's ye've to do the readin,' maybe she'll have somethin' to explain

to ye about the way it's to be read; th' Elder's writin' wan't any too

easy to make out, 's fur 's I remember it."

Next morning, just as the first bells were ringing, Deacon Swift knocked

timidly at the door of the Elder's study. Draxy met him with a radiant

face. She had been excited by reading over the sermon she had after long

deliberation selected. The text was,--

"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." The sermon had been

written soon after their marriage, and was one of her husband's favorites.

There were many eloquent passages in it, which seemed now to take on a new

significance, as coming from the lips of the Elder, absent from his flock

and present with Christ.

"O Mis' Kinney, I recollect that sermon 's if 'twas only yesterday," said

Deacon Swift. "The hull parish was talkin' on't all the week; ye couldn't

have picked out one they'd be so glad to hear; but dear me! how I'm ever

goin' to read it in any kind o' decent way, I don't know; I never was a

reader, anyhow, 'n' now I've lost my front teeth, some words does pester

me to git out."

This opened the way for Draxy. Nearly all night she had lain awake,

thinking how terrible it would be to her to hear her husband's beloved

words indistinctly and ineffectively read by Deacon Swift's cracked and

feeble voice. Almost she regretted having given her consent. At last the

thought flashed into her mind, "Why should I not read it myself? I know I

could be heard in every corner of that little church." The more she

thought of it, the more she longed to do it, and the less she shrank from

the idea of facing the congregation.

"'It's only just like a big family of children,' Seth always used to say,

'and I'm sure I feel as if they were mine now, as much as ever they were

his. I wish I dared do it. I do believe Seth would like it,' and Draxy

fell asleep comforted by the thought. Before breakfast she consulted her

father, and he approved it warmly.

"I believe your mission isn't done yet, daughter, to these people of your

husband's. The more you speak to 'em the better. It'll be jest like his

voice speaking from heaven to 'em," said Reuben, "an' I shouldn't wonder

if keepin' Elder Williams away was all the Lord's doin', as the blessed

saint used to say."

Reuben's approval was all that Draxy needed to strengthen her impulse, and

before Deacon Swift arrived her only perplexity was as to the best way of

making the proposition to him. All this difficulty he had himself smoothed

away by his first words.

"Yes, I know, Deacon Swift," she said. "I've been thinking that perhaps it

would tire you to read for so long a time in a loud voice; and besides,

Mr. Kinney's handwriting is very hard to read."

Draxy paused and looked sympathizingly in the deacon's face. The mention

of the illegible writing distressed the poor man still more. He took the

sermon from her hand and glanced nervously at the first page.

"Oh my! Mis' Kinney," he exclaimed, "I can't make out half the words."

"Can't you?" said Draxy, gently. "It is all as plain as print to me, I

know it so well. But there are some abbreviations Mr. Kinney always used.

I will explain them to you. Perhaps that will make it easier."

"O Mis' Kinney, Mis' Kinney! I can't never do it in the world," burst out

the poor deacon. "O Mis' Kinney, why can't you read it to the folks?

They'd all like it, I know they would."

"Do you really think so, Mr. Swift?" replied Draxy; and then, with a

little twinge of conscience, added immediately, "I have been thinking of

that very thing myself, that perhaps, if it wouldn't seem strange to the

people, that would be the best way, because I know the handwriting so

well, and it really is very hard for a stranger to read."

"Yes, yes, that's the very thing," hastily exclaimed the relieved

deacon,--"that's it, that's it. Why, Mis' Kinney, as for their thinkin' it

strange, there ain't a man in the parish that wouldn't vote for you for

minister twice over if ye wuz only a man. I've heerd 'em all say so more

'n a thousand times sence." Something in Draxy's face cut the Deacon's

sentence short.

"Very well, Mr. Swift," she said. "Then I will try, since you think it

best. My father thought it would be a good plan too, or else I should not

have been willing," she added, gently.

"Reuben Miller's daughter" was still as guileless, reverent, potent a

thought in Draxy's heart as when, upon her unconscious childish lips, the

words had been a spell, disarming and winning all hearts to her.

The news had gone all through the village on Saturday night, that Deacon

Swift was to read one of Elder Kinney's sermons the next day. The whole

parish was present; not a man, not a woman was missing except those who

were kept at home by sickness. A tender solemnity was in every face. Not

often does it happen to a man to be so beloved by a whole community as was

Elder Kinney by this people.

With some embarrassment and hesitation, Deacon Swift read the hymns and

made one of the prayers; Deacon Plummer made the other. Then there came a

pause. Draxy flushed scarlet and half rose in her pew. She had not thought

to tell the Deacon that he must explain to the people beforehand why she

read the sermon. She had taken it for granted that he would do so; but he

did not comprehend that he ought, and only looked nervously towards her,

waiting for her to come forward. This was the one moment which tried

Draxy's soul; there was almost vexation in her look, as hastily laying

aside her bonnet she walked up to the table in front of the pulpit, and,

turning towards the people, said in her clear, melodious voice,--

"Dear friends, I am sorry Deacon Swift did not explain to you that I was

to read the sermon. He asked me to do so because Mr. Kinney's handwriting

is very hard for a stranger to read."

She paused for a second, and then added:

"The sermon which I have chosen is one which some of you will remember. It

was written and preached nine years ago. The text is in the beautiful

Gospel of St. John, the 14th chapter and the 27th verse,--

"'Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you.'"

After pronouncing these words, Draxy paused again, and looking towards her

pew, made a slight sign to Reuby. The child understood instantly, and

walked swiftly to her.

"Sit in this chair here by mamma, Reuby darling," she whispered, and Reuby

climbed up into the big chair on her right hand, and leaned his fair

golden head against the high mahogany back. Draxy had become conscious, in

that first second, that she could not read with Reuby's wistful face in

sight. Also she felt a sudden yearning for the support of his nearer

presence.

"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you," she repeated, and went

on with the sermon. Her tones were low, but clear, and her articulation so

perfect that no syllable was lost; she could have been distinctly heard in

a room twice as large as this. The sight was one which thrilled every

heart that looked on it; no poor laboring man there was so dull of sense

and soul that he did not sit drinking in the wonderful picture: the tall,

queenly woman robed in simple flowing white, her hair a coronet of snowy

silver; her dark blue eyes shining with a light which would have been

flashingly brilliant, except for its steadfast serenity; her mouth almost

smiling, as the clear tones flowed out; sitting quiet, intent, by her

side, the beautiful boy, also dressed in white, his face lighted like hers

by serene and yet gleaming eyes; his head covered with golden curls; his

little hands folded devoutly in his lap. One coming suddenly upon the

scene might well have fancied himself in another clime and age, in the

presence of some rite performed by a mystic priestess clothed in samite.

But the words which fell from the lips were the gentlest words of the

gentlest religion earth has known; and the heart which beat under the

clinging folds of the strange white garb was no priestess' heart, but a

heart full, almost to breaking, of wifehood, of motherhood.

It does not need experience as an orator to give significance to the

magnetic language of upturned faces. Before Draxy had read ten pages of

the sermon, she was so thrilled by the consciousness that every heart

before her was thrilled too, that her cheeks flushed and her whole face

glowed.

The sermon had sounded eloquent when the Elder preached it; but now, from

Draxy's lips, it was transcendent. As she read the closing paragraph,--

"His peace He leaves with us: his peace He gives unto us: not such peace

as He knew on earth: such peace as He knows now in heaven, on the right

hand of His Father; even that peace He bids us share--that peace, the

peace of God which passeth understanding,"--she seemed to dilate in

stature, and as she let the sermon fall on the table before her, her

lifted eyes seemed arrested in mid air as by a celestial vision.

Then in a second more, she was again the humble, affectionate Draxy, whom

all the women and all the little children knew and loved; looking round on

them with an appealing expression, she said,--

"Dear friends, I hope I have not done wrong in standing up here and taking

it upon me to read such solemn words. I felt that Mr. Kinney would like to

speak to you once more through me."

Then taking little Reuby by the hand, she walked slowly back to her pew.

Then Deacon Swift made sad work of reading the hymn,--

"Blest be the tie that binds,"

And the choir made sad work of singing it. Nobody's voice could be trusted

for many syllables at a time, but nobody listened to the music. Everybody

was impatient to speak to Draxy. They clustered round her in the aisle;

they crowded into pews to get near her: all the reticence and reserve of

their New England habit had melted away in this wonderful hour. They

thanked her; they touched her; they gazed at her; they did not know what

to do; even Draxy's calm was visibly disturbed by the atmosphere of their

great excitement.

"O Mis' Kinney, ef ye'll only read us one more! just one more! won't ye,

now? Do say ye will, right off, this arternoon; or read the same one right

over, ef that's any easier for ye. We'd like to hear jest that 'n' nothin'

else for a year to come! O Mis' Kinney! 'twas jest like hearin' the Elder

himself."

Poor Draxy was trembling. Reuben came to her rescue.

"I hope you won't take it unkindly of me," he said, "but my daughter's

feeling more than's good for her. She must come home now." And Reuben drew

her hand into his arm.

The people fell back sorry and conscience-stricken.

"We orter ha' known better," they said, "but she makes us forgit she's

flesh 'n' blood."

"I will read you another sermon some time," said Draxy, slowly. "I shall

be very glad to. But not to-day. I could not do it to-day." Then she

smiled on them all, with a smile which was a benediction, and walked away

holding Reuby's hand very tightly, and leaning heavily on her father's

arm.

The congregation did not disperse; nothing since the Elder's death had so

moved them. They gathered in knots on the church steps and in the aisles,

and talked long and earnestly. There was but one sentiment, one voice.

"It's a thousand shames she ain't a man," said some of the young men.

"It 'ud be a thousand times more ef she wuz," retorted Angy Plummer. "I'd

like to see the man that 'ud do what she does, a comin' right close to the

very heart o' yer's ef she was your mother 'n' your sister 'n' your

husband, and a blessed angel o' God, all ter once."

"But Angy, we only meant that then we could hev her for our minister,"

they replied.

Angy turned very red, but replied, energetically,--

"There ain't any law agin a woman's bein' minister, thet I ever heerd on.

Howsomever, Mis' Kinney never'd hear to anythin' o' that kind. I don' no'

for my part how she ever mustered up courage to do what she's done, so

kind o' backward 'n' shy's she is for all her strength. But for my part, I

wouldn't ask for no other preachin' all the rest o' my life, than jest to

hear Mis' Kinney read one o' her husband's sermons every Sunday."

"Why, Angy Plummer!" burst from more lips than one. But the bold

suggestion was only the half-conscious thought of every one there, and the

discussion grew more and more serious. Slowly the people dispersed to

their homes, but the discussion still continued. Late into night, by many

a fireside, the matter was talked over, and late the next night, and the

next, until a vague hope and a still vaguer purpose sprang up in the

parish.

"She said she'd read another some day," they reiterated. "Most likely

she'd 's soon do it next Sunday, 'n' sooner, 'cause she'd be more used

to't than ef she waited a spell between."

"But it won't do to take it for granted she's goin' to, 'n' not git

anybody," said Deacon Swift, in great perplexity. "I think Brother Plummer

'n' me'd better go 'n' ask her."

"No," said Angy, "let me go. I can talk it over better'n you can. I'll

go."

And Angy went. The interview between the two women was long. Angy pleaded

as nobody else in the parish could have done; and Draxy's heart was all on

her side. But Draxy's judgment was unconvinced.

"If I could be sure, Angy, that it would be best for the people, I should

not hesitate. But you know very well, if I begin I shall keep on," she

said.

She consulted Reuben. His heart, too, was on the people's side, but his

judgment was like hers, perplexed.

"One thing's very certain, daughter: there is not anybody they can ever

find to settle here, or that they are likely to, who can preach as the

Elder did. His old sermons are worlds better than any new ones they'll

get."

"Yes, indeed, I know that," said Draxy. "That's what makes me feel as if I

must do it."

This had been her strongest motive. Only too well she knew what would be

the probable calibre of a man who would come to this poor and lonely

little village which she so loved.

At last she consented to make the experiment. "I will read for you every

Sunday, two sermons of Mr. Kinney's," she said, "until you hear of some

one whom you would like to settle for your minister."

Angy Plummer, clapped her hands when her father repeated at tea on

Thursday evening what "Mis' Kinney" had said.

"That's good's settlin' her," she exclaimed. "Oh, I never thought she'd

come to it," and real tears of joy stood in Angy's eyes.

"I don't know 'bout that, Angy," replied the Deacon; "there's a good deal

to be thought on, fust 'n' last. Folks '11 talk like everythin', I expect,

'n' say we've got a woman preacher. It wouldn't never do for any great

length o' time; but it will be a blessin' to hear some th' Elder's good

rousin' comfortin' sermons for a spell, arter the stuff we hev been a

havin', 'n' they can't say she's any more 'n' a reader anyhow. That's

quite different from preachin'."

"Of course it is," said Angy, who was wise enough to keep some of her

thoughts and hopes to herself; "they're's different's any other two

things. I don't suppose anybody'd say you was a settin' up to preach, if

you'd ha' read the sermons, 'n' I don't see why they need to any more o'

Mis' Kinney." And so, on the next Sunday Draxy's ministry to her husband's

people began. Again with softened and gladdened faces the little

congregation looked up to the fair, tall priestess with her snow-white

robes and snow-white hair, and gleaming steadfast eyes, standing meekly

between the communion-table and the chair in which sat her golden-haired

little son. Her voice was clearer and stronger than ever; and there was a

calm peacefulness in her whole atmosphere which had not been there at

first.

Again the people crowded around, and thanked her, and clasped her hands.

This time she answered them with cordial good cheer, and did not tremble.

To little Reuby also they spoke gratefully.

"You help too, Reuby, don't you?" said Angy Plummer,--"do you like it?"

"Very much, ma'am; mamma says I help, but I think she's mistaken," replied

the little fellow, archly.

"Yes you do, you darling," said Mrs. Plummer, stooping and kissing him

tenderly. Angy Plummer loved Reuby. She never looked at him without

thinking that but for his existence the true mother-heart would perhaps

never have been born in her bosom.

The reading of the sermons grew easier and easier to Draxy, Sunday by

Sunday. She became conscious of a strange sense of being lifted out of

herself, as soon as she began to speak. She felt more and more as if it

were her husband speaking through her; and she felt more and more closely

drawn into relation with the people.

"Oh, father dear," she said more than once, "I don't know how I shall ever

give it up when the time comes. It makes me so happy: I feel almost as if

I could see Seth standing right by me and holding my gown while I read.

And father, dear," she proceeded in a lower, slower voice, "I don't know

but you'll think it wrong; I'm almost afraid to tell you, but sometimes I

say words that aren't in the sermons; just a sentence or two, where I

think Seth would put it in if he were here now; and I almost believe he

puts the very words into my head."

She paused and looked anxiously and inquiringly at her father.

"No, Draxy," replied Reuben solemnly, "I don't think it wrong. I feel more

and more, every Sunday I listen to you, as if the Lord had set you apart

for this thing; and I don't believe he'd send any other angel except your

husband on the errand of helpin' you."

The summer passed, and the parish gave no signs of readiness for a new

minister. When Draxy spoke of it, she was met by such heartfelt grief on

all sides that she was silenced. At last she had a long, serious talk with

the deacons, which set her mind more at rest. They had, it seemed,

consulted several neighboring ministers, Elder Williams among the number,

and they had all advised that while the congregation seemed so absorbed in

interest, no change should be made.

"Elder Williams he sez he'll come over regular for the communion," said

Deacon Plummer, "and for baptisms whenever we want him, and thet's the

main thing, for, thank the Lord, we haint many funerals 'n course of a

year. And Mis' Kinney, ef ye'll excuse my makin' so bold, I'll tell ye

jest what Elder Williams said about ye: sez he, It's my opinion that ef

there was ever a woman born thet was jest cut out for a minister to a

congregation, it's that Elder's wife o' your'n; and sez we to him 'Thet's

jest what the hull town thinks, sir, and it's our opinion that ef we

should try to settle anythin' in the shape of a man in this parish, there

wouldn't be anythin' but empty pews for him to preach to, for the people'd

all be gone up to Mis' Kinney's.'"

Draxy smiled in spite of herself. But her heart was very solemn.

"It is a great responsibility, Deacon Plummer," she said, "and I feel

afraid all the time. But my father thinks I ought to do it, and I am so

happy in it, it seems as if it could not be a mistake."

As months went on, her misgivings grew less and less; and her impulses to

add words of her own to her husband's sermons grew more and more frequent.

She could not but see that she held the hearts of the people in her hands

to mould them like wax; and her intimate knowledge of their conditions and

needs made it impossible for her to refrain from sometimes speaking the

words she knew they ought to hear. Whenever she did so at any length, she

laid her manuscript on the table, that they might know the truth. Her

sense of honesty would not let her do otherwise. It was long before

anybody but Angy Plummer understood the meaning of these intervals. The

rest supposed she knew parts of the sermon by heart.

But at last came a day when her soul was so stirred within her, that she

rose up boldly before her people and said,--

"I have not brought any sermon of Mr. Kinney's to read to you to-day. I am

going to speak to you myself. I am so grieved, so shocked at events which

have taken place in this village, the past week, that I cannot help

speaking about them. And I find among Mr. Kinney's sermons no one which

meets this state of things."

The circumstances to which Draxy alluded had been some disgraceful scenes

of excitement in connection with the Presidential election. Party spirit

had been growing higher and higher in Clairvend for some years; and when,

on the reckoning of the returns on this occasion, the victorious party

proved to have a majority of but three, sharp quarreling had at once

broken out. Accusations of cheating and lying were freely bandied, and

Deacon Plummer and George Thayer had nearly come to blows on the steps of

the Town House, at high noon, just as the school-children were going home.

Later in the afternoon there had been a renewal of the contest in the

village store, and it had culminated in a fight, part of which Draxy

herself had chanced to see. Long and anxiously she pondered, that night,

the question of her duty. She dared not keep silent.

"It would be just hypocrisy and nothing less," she exclaimed to herself,

"for me to stand up there and read them one of Seth's sermons, when I am

burning to tell them how shamefully they have behaved. But I suppose it

will be the last time I shall speak to them. They'll never want to hear me

again."

She did not tell her father of her resolution till they were near the

church. Reuben started, but in a moment he said, deliberately,--

"You're quite right, daughter; may the Lord bless you!"

At Draxy's first words, a thrill of astonishment ran over the whole

congregation. Everybody knew what was coming. George Thayer colored

scarlet to the roots of his hair, and the color never faded till the

sermon was ended. Deacon Plummer coughed nervously, and changed his

position so as to cover his mouth with his hand. Angy put her head down on

the front of the pew and began to cry.

"Render, therefore, unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's and unto God

the things that are God's," came in clear ringing tones from Draxy's lips.

Then she proceeded, in simple and gentle words, to set forth the right of

every man to his own opinions and convictions; the duty of having earnest

convictions and acting up to them in all the affairs of life. George

Thayer and the Deacon looked easier. Her words seemed, after all, rather a

justification of their vehemence of feeling.

But when she came to speak of the "things that are God's," her words

pierced their very souls. The only thing that enabled George Thayer to

bear up under it at all was, as he afterwards said in the store, keeping

his "eyes fixed steady on old Plummer," "'cause, you know, boys, I never

jined the church nor made any kind o' profession o' goin' in for any

things o' God's, nohow; not but what I've often wished I could see my way

to: but sez I to myself, ef he kin stan' it I kin, an' so I held out. But

I tell you, boys, I'd rather drive the wust six-hoss team I ever got hold

on down Breakneck Hill 'n the dark, than set there agin under thet woman's

eyes, a blazin' one minnit, 'n fillin' with tears the next: 'n' I don't

care what anybody sez; I'm a goin' to see her an' tell her that she

needn't be afeard o' ever hevin to preach to me s' good s' by my name, in

the meeting 'us agin, by thunder!"

"Suppose the blessed Saviour had come walking through our streets, looking

for his children last Wednesday," said Draxy, "He would say to himself,

'I shall know them, wherever I find them: I have given them so many

badges, they will be sure to be wearing some of them. They suffer long and

are kind; they envy not, vaunt not, are not puffed up: they are not easily

provoked, think no evil, seek not their own, rejoice in the truth; they do

not behave unseemly.' Alas, would the dear Jesus have turned away,

believing Himself a stranger and friendless in our village? Which one of

you, dear men, could have sprung forward to take him by the hand? What

terrible silence would have fallen upon you as he looked round on your

angry faces!"

Tears were rolling down little Reuby's face. Slyly he tried to wipe them

away, first with one hand, then with the other, lest his mother should see

them. He had never in his life seen such an expression of suffering on

her face. He had never heard such tones of pain in her voice. He was

sorely perplexed; and the sight of his distressed little face was almost

more than the people could bear.

When Draxy stopped speaking, Deacon Plummer did a manly thing. He rose

instantly, and saying "Let us pray," poured out as humble and contrite a

petition for forgiveness as ever went up on wings of faith to Heaven. It

cleared the air, like sweet rain; it rolled a burden off everybody's

heart--most of all, perhaps, off Draxy's.

"He is not angry, after all," she said; "God has laid it to his heart;"

and when, at the end of the services, the old man came up to her and held

out his hand, she took it in both of hers, and said, "Thank you, dear

Deacon Plummer, thank you for helping me so much to-day. Your prayer was

better for the people than my little sermon, a great deal." The deacon

wrung her hands, but did not speak a word, only stooped and kissed Reuby.

After this day, Draxy had a new hold on the people. They had really felt

very little surprise at her speaking to them as she did. She had slowly

and insensibly to herself grown into the same place which the Elder had

had in their regard; the same in love and confidence, but higher in

reverence, and admiration, for although she sympathized just as lovingly

as he in all their feelings, they never for a moment ceased to feel that

her nature was on a higher plane than his. They could not have put this in

words, but they felt it.

"Donno, how 'tis," they said, "but Mis' Kinney, even when she's closest to

ye, an' a doin' for ye all the time, don't seem just like a mortal woman."

"It's easy enough to know how 'tis," replied Angy Plummer, once, in a

moment of unguarded frankness, "Mis Kinney is a kind o' daughter o' God,

somthin' as Jesus Christ was His Son. It's just the way Jesus Christ used

to go round among folks, 's near 's I can make out; 'n' I for one, don't

believe that God jest sent Him, once for all, 'n' haint never sent anybody

else near us, all this time. I reckon He's a sendin' down sons and

daughters to us oftener 'n' we think."

"Angy Plummer, I call that downright blasphemy," exclaimed her mother.

"Well, call it what you're a mind to," retorted the crisp Angy. "It's what

I believe."

"'Tis blasphemy though, to be sayin' it to folks that can't understand,"

she muttered to herself as she left the room, "ef blasphemy means what

Mis' Kinney sez it does, to speak stupidly."

Three years had passed. The novelty of Draxy's relation to her people had

worn off. The neighboring people had ceased to wonder and to talk; and the

neighboring ministers had ceased to doubt and question. Clairvend and she

had a stout supporter in old Elder Williams, who was looked upon as a high

authority throughout the region. He always stayed at Reuben Miller's

house, when he came to the town, and his counsel and sympathy were

invaluable to Draxy. Sometimes he said jocosely, "I am the pastor of

Brother Kinney's old parish and Mis' Kinney is my curate, and I wish

everybody had as good an one."

It finally grew to be Draxy's custom to read one of her husband's sermons

in the forenoon, and to talk to the people informally in the afternoon.

Sometimes she wrote out what she wished to say, but usually she spoke

without any notes. She also wrote hymns which she read to them, and which

the choir sometimes sang. She was now fully imbued with the feeling that

everything which she could do, belonged to her people. Next to Reuben,

they filled her heart; the sentiment was after all but an expanded and

exalted motherhood. Strangers sometimes came to Clairvend to hear her

preach, for of course the fame of the beautiful white-robed woman-preacher

could not be confined to her own village. This always troubled Draxy very

much.

"If we were not so far out of the world, I should have to give it up," she

said; "I know it is proper they should come; but it seems to me just as

strange as if they were to walk into the study in the evening when I am

teaching Reuby. I can't make it seem right; and when I see them writing

down what I say, it just paralyzes me."

It might have seemed so to Draxy, but it did not to her hearers. No one

would have supposed her conscious of any disturbing presence. And more

than one visitor carried away with him written records of her eloquent

words.

One of her most remarkable sermons was called "The Gospel of Mystery."

The text was Psalm xix. 2:--

"Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge."

First she dwelt on the sweet meaning of the word Gospel. "Dear friends,"

she said, "it is a much simpler word than we realize; it is only 'good

news,' 'good tidings.' We get gospels every day. Our children send us good

news of their lives. What gospels of joy are such letters! And nations to

nations send good news: a race of slaves is set free; a war has ended;

shiploads of grain have been sent to the starving; a good man has been

made ruler; these are good tidings--gospels."

After dwelling on this first, simplest idea of the word, until every one

of her hearers had begun to think vividly of all the good tidings

journeying in words back and forth between heart and heart, continent and

continent, she spoke of the good news which nature tells without words.

Here she was eloquent. Subtle as the ideas were, they were yet clothed in

the plain speech which the plain people understood: the tidings of the

spring, of the winter, of the river, of the mountain; of gold, of silver,

of electric fire; of blossom and fruit; of seed-time and harvest; of suns

and stars and waters,--these were the "speech" which "day uttered unto

day."

But "knowledge was greater" than speech: night in her silence "showed"

what day could not tell. Here the faces of the people grew fixed and

earnest. In any other hands than Draxy's the thought would have been too

deep for them, and they would have turned from it wearily. But her

simplicity controlled them always. "Stand on your door-steps on a dark

night," she said,--"a night so dark that you can see nothing: looking out

into this silent darkness, you will presently feel a far greater sense of

how vast the world is, than you do in broad noon-day, when you can see up

to the very sun himself."

More than one young face in the congregation showed that this sentence

struck home and threw light on hitherto unexplained emotions. "This is

like what I mean," continued Draxy, "by the Gospel of Mystery, the good

tidings of the things we cannot understand. This gospel is everywhere. Not

the wisest man that has ever lived can fully understand the smallest

created thing: a drop of water, a grain of dust, a beam of light, can

baffle his utmost research. So with our own lives, with our own hearts;

every day brings a mystery--sin and grief and death: all these are

mysteries; gospels of mystery, good tidings of mystery; yes, good tidings!

These are what prove that God means to take us into another world after

this one; into a world where all things which perplexed us here will be

explained.... O my dear friends!" she exclaimed at last, clasping her

hands tightly, "thank God for the things which we cannot understand:

except for them, how should we ever be sure of immortality?"

Then she read them a hymn called "The Gospel of Mystery." Coming after the

sermon, it was sweet and clear to all the people's hearts. Before the

sermon it would have seemed obscure.

The Gospel of Mystery.

Good tidings every day,

God's messengers ride fast.

We do not hear one half they say,

There is such noise on the highway,

Where we must wait while they ride past.

Their banners blaze and shine

With Jesus Christ's dear name,

And story, how by God's design

He saves us, in His love divine,

And lifts us from our sin and shame.

Their music fills the air,

Their songs sing all of Heaven;

Their ringing trumpet peals declare

What crowns to souls who fight and dare,

And win, shall presently be given.

Their hands throw treasures round

Among the multitude.

No pause, no choice, no count, no bound,

No questioning how men are found,

If they be evil or be good.

But all the banners bear

Some words we cannot read;

And mystic echoes in the air,

Which borrow from the songs no share,

In sweetness all the songs exceed.

And of the multitude,

No man but in his hand

Holds some great gift misunderstood,

Some treasure, for whose use or good

His ignorance sees no demand.

These are the tokens lent

By immortality;

Birth-marks of our divine descent;

Sureties of ultimate intent,

God's Gospel of Eternity.

Good tidings every day.

The messengers ride fast;

Thanks be to God for all they say;

There is such noise on the highway,

Let us keep still while they ride past.

But the sermon which of all others her people loved best was one on the

Love of God. This one she was often asked to repeat,--so often, that she

said one day to Angy, who asked for it, "Why, Angy, I am ashamed to.

Everybody must know it by heart. I am sure I do."

"Yes, that's jest the way we do know it, Mis' Kinney, by heart," said the

affectionate Angy, "an' that's jest the reason we want it so often. I

never told ye what George Thayer said the last time you read it to us, did

I?"

"No, Angy," said Draxy.

"Well, he was singing in the choir that day, 'n place o' his brother, who

was sick; 'n' he jumped up on one o' the seats 'n' swung his hat, jest 's

you was goin' down the aisle, 'n' we all ketched hold on him to pull him

down, 'n' try to hush him; for you can't never tell what George Thayer'll

do when his blood's up, 'n' we was afraid he was agoin' to holler right

out, 's ef he was in the town-'us; but sez he, in a real low, trembly kind

o' voice,

"'Ye needn't be afraid, I ain't agoin' to whoop;--taint that way I

feel,--but I had to do suthin' or I should bust': 'n' there was reel tears

in his eyes--George Thayer's eyes, Mis' Kinney! Then he jumped down, 'n'

sez he, 'I'll tell ye what that sermon's like: it's jest like one great

rainbow all round ye, and before 'n' behind 'n' everywheres, 'n' the end

on't reaches way to the Throne; it jest dazzles my eyes, that's what it

does.'"

This sermon had concluded with the following hymn, which Draxy had written

when Reuby was only a few weeks old:--

The Love of God.

Like a cradle rocking, rocking,

Silent, peaceful, to and fro,

Like a mother's sweet looks dropping

On the little face below,

Hangs the green earth, swinging, turning,

Jarless, noiseless, safe and slow;

Falls the light of God's face bending

Down and watching us below.

And as feeble babes that suffer,

Toss and cry, and will not rest,

Are the ones the tender mother

Holds the closest, loves the best,

So when we are weak and wretched,

By our sins weighed down, distressed,

Then it is that God's great patience

Holds us closest, loves us best.

O great Heart of God! whose loving

Cannot hindered be nor crossed;

Will not weary, will not even

In our death itself be lost--

Love divine! of such great loving,

Only mothers know the cost--

Cost of love, which all love passing,

Gave a Son to save the lost.

There is little more to tell of Draxy's ministry. It closed as suddenly as

it had begun.

It was just five years after the Elder's death that she found herself, one

Sunday morning, feeling singularly feeble and lifeless. She was bewildered

at the sensation, for in her apparent health she had never felt it before.

She could hardly walk, could hardly stand. She felt also a strange apathy

which prevented her being alarmed.

"It is nothing," she said; "I dare say most women are so all the time; I

don't feel in the least ill;" and she insisted upon it that no one should

remain at home with her. It was a communion Sunday and Elder Williams was

to preach.

"How fortunate it is that Mr. Williams was here!" she thought languidly,

as she seated herself in the eastern bay-window, to watch Reuby down the

hill. He walked between his grandparents, holding each by the hand,

talking merrily and looking up into their faces.

Draxy watched them until their figures became dim, black specks, and

finally faded out of sight. Then she listened dreamily to the notes of the

slow-tolling bell; when it ceased she closed her eyes, and her thoughts

ran back, far back to the days when she was "little Draxy" and Elder

Kinney was only her pastor. Slowly she lived her life since then over

again, its joy and its sorrow alike softened in her tender, brooding

thoughts. The soft whirring sound of a bird's wings in the air roused her:

as it flew past the window she saw that it was one of the yellow-hammers,

which still built their nests in the maple-grove behind the house.

"Ah," thought she, "I suppose it can't be one of the same birds we saw

that day. But it's going on errands just the same. I wonder, dear Seth, if

mine are nearly done."

At that instant a terrible pain shot through her left side and forced a

sharp cry from her lips. She half rose exclaiming, "Reuby, oh, darling!"

and sank back in her chair unconscious.

Just as Elder Williams was concluding the communion service, the door of

the church was burst open, and old Ike, tottering into the aisle, cried

out in a shrill voice:--

"Mis' Kinney's dead! Mis' Kinney's dead!"

The scene that followed could not be told. With flying feet the whole

congregation sped up the steep hill--Angy Plummer half lifting, half

dragging Reuby, and the poor grandparents supported on each side by strong

men. As they drew near the house, they saw Draxy apparently sitting by the

open window.

"O mamma! why that's mamma," shrieked Reuby, "she was sitting just so when

we came away. She isn't dead."

Elder Williams reached the house first, Hannah met him on the threshold,

tearless.

"She dead, sir. She's cold as ice. She must ha' been dead a long time."

Old Ike had been rambling around the house, and observing from the outside

that Draxy's position was strange, had compelled Hannah to go into the

room.

"She was a smilin' just's you see her now," said Hannah, "'n' I couldn't

ha' touched her to move her more'n I could ha' touched an angel."

There are griefs, as well as joys, to which words offer insult. Draxy was

dead!

Three days later they laid her by the side of her husband, and the

gray-haired, childless old people, and the golden-haired, fatherless and

motherless boy, returned together broken-hearted to the sunny parsonage.

On the village a terrible silence, that could be felt, settled down; a

silence in which sorrowing men and women crept about, weeping as those who

cannot be comforted.

Then week followed after week, and soon all things seemed as they had

seemed before. But Draxy never died to her people. Her hymns are still

sung in the little lonely church; her gospel still lives in the very air

of those quiet hills, and the people smile through their tears as they

teach her name to little children.

Whose Wife Was She?

I was on my knees before my chrysanthemum-bed, looking at each little

round tight disk of a bud, and trying to believe that it would be a snowy

flower in two weeks. In two weeks my cousin Annie Ware was to be married:

if my white chrysanthemums would only understand and make haste! I was

childish enough to tell them so; but the childishness came of love,--of my

exceeding, my unutterable love for Annie Ware; if flowers have souls, the

chrysanthemums understood me.

A sharp, quick roll of wheels startled me. I lifted my head. The wheels

stopped at our gate; a hurried step came down the broad garden-path, and

almost before I had had time to spring to my feet, Dr. Fearing had taken

both my hands in his, had said,--"Annie Ware has the fever,"--had turned,

had gone, had shut the garden gate, and the same sharp quick roll of

wheels told that he was far on his way to the next sufferer.

I do not know how long I stood still in the garden. A miserable sullenness

seemed to benumb my faculties. I repeated,--

"Annie Ware has the fever." Then I said,--

"Annie Ware cannot die; she is too young, too strong, and we love her

so."

Then I said again,--

"Annie Ware has the fever," and all the time I seemed not to be thinking

about her at all, but about the chrysanthemums, whose tops I still idly

studied.

For weeks a malignant typhus fever had been slowly creeping about in the

lower part of our village, in all the streets which had been under water

in the spring freshet.

These streets were occupied chiefly by laboring people, either

mill-operatives, or shopkeepers of the poorer class. It was part of the

cruel "calamity" of their "poverty" that they could not afford to have

homesteads on the high plateau, which lifted itself quite suddenly from

the river meadow, and made our village a by-word of beauty all through New

England.

Upon this plateau were laid out streets of great regularity, shaded by

grand elms, many of which had been planted by hands that had handled the

ropes of the _Mayflower_. Under the shade of these elms stood large

old-fashioned houses, in that sort of sleepy dignity peculiar to old New

England. We who lived in these houses were also sleepy and dignified. We

knew that "under the hill," as it was called, lived many hundreds of men

and women, who were stifled in summer for want of the breezes which swept

across our heights, cold in winter because the wall of our plateau shut

down upon them the icy airs from the frozen river, and cut off the

afternoon sun. We were sorry for them, and we sent them cold meat and

flannels sometimes; but their life was as remote from our life as if they

never crossed our paths; it is not necessary to go into large cities to

find sharp lines drawn between the well-to-do and the poverty-stricken.

There are, in many small villages, "districts" separated from each other

by as distinct a moral distance as divides Fifth Avenue from the Five

Points.

And so it had come to pass that while for weeks this malignant fever had

been creeping about on the river shore, we, in our clearer, purer air, had

not felt even a dread of it. There had not been a single case of it west

of the high water mark made by the terrible freshet of the previous

spring. We sent brandy and wine and beef-tea into the poor, comfortless,

grief-stricken houses; and we said at tea-time that it was strange, people

would persist in living down under the bank: what could they expect? and

besides, they were "so careless about drainage and ventilation."

Now, on the highest and loveliest spot, in the richest and most beautiful

house, the sweetest and fairest girl of all our village lay ill of the

deadly disease.

"Annie Ware has the fever." I wondered if some fiend were lurking by my

side, who kept saying the words over and over in my ear. With that

indescribable mixture of dulled and preternaturally sharpened sense which

often marks the first moments of such distress, I walked slowly to my

room, and in a short time had made all the necessary preparation for

leaving home. I felt like a thief as I stole slowly down the stairs, with

my travelling-bag in my hand. At the door I met my father.

"Hey-day, my darling, where now? Off to Annie's, as usual?"

He had not heard the tidings! Should I tell him? I might never see him

again; only too well I knew the terrible danger into which I was going.

But he might forbid me.

"Yes, off to Annie's," I said in a gay tone, and kissing him sprang down

the steps.

I did not see my father again for eighteen days.

On the steps of my uncle's house I met old Jane, a colored woman who had

nursed Annie Ware when she was a baby, and who lived now in a little

cottage near by, from whose door-steps she could see Annie's window, and

in whose garden she raised flowers of all sorts, solely for the pleasure

of carrying them to Annie every day.

Jane's face was positively gray with sorrow and fear. She looked at me

with a strange sort of unsympathizing hardness in her eyes. She had never

loved me. I knew what she thought. She was saying to herself: "Why not

this one instead of the other?"

"O auntie!" I said, "I would die for Annie; you know I would."

At this she melted. "O honey! don' ye say that. The Lord"--but she could

say no more. She threw her apron up over her head and strode away.

The doors of the house stood open. I walked through room after room, and

found no human being. At last, at the foot of the stairs in the back part

of the house, I came upon all the servants huddled together in a cowering,

weeping group. Flat on the floor, with his face to the wall, lay black

Cæsar, the coachman. I put my hand on his shoulder. He jerked away

impatiently.

"Yer jest lemme lone, will yer?" he said in a choking voice; then lifting

up his head, and seeing it was I, he half sprang to his feet, with a look

of shame and alarm, and involuntarily carrying his hand to his head,

said:--

"O miss! who's gwine to think yer"--here he too broke down, and buried his

face in his great hands.

I did not speak, but the little group instinctively opened to let me pass

up the stairs. I had a vague consciousness that they said something as I

turned into a little cross-hall which led to Annie's room; but without

attending to their words I opened her door. The room was empty; the bed

stripped of clothes; the windows wide open. I sank into a chair, and

looked from side to side. I was too late, after all! That was why none of

the servants dared speak to me. A little slipper of Annie's lay on the

floor by the bed. I took it up and turned it over and over in my hands.

Then I became conscious that my Aunt Ann was speaking to me,--was calling

me by name, earnestly, repeatedly, with terror in her voice.

"My dear, dear child; Helen, Helen, Helen, she is not dead. She is in my

room. Come and see for yourself."

I had seen my Aunt Ann every day for nineteen years,--I never knew her

until that moment; I never saw her real face until that moment.

I followed her slowly through rooms and passageways till she reached her

own chamber. The door was open; the room was very dark. On the threshold

she paused, and whispered, "You must not be frightened, darling. She will

not know you. She has not known any one for six hours."

I knelt down by the bed. In a few moments my eyes became used to the

darkness, and I saw Annie's face lying motionless on the farther edge of

the bed, turned to the wall. It was perfectly white except the lips, which

were almost black, and were swollen and crusted over with the fearful

fever. Her beautiful hair fell in tangled masses, and half covered her

face.

"She seems to be lying very uncomfortably," said Aunt Ann, "but the doctor

ordered that she should not be disturbed in any way."

I looked at my aunt's face and listened to her voice in bewilderment. The

whole world had for years called her, and with apparent justice, "a hard

and unsympathizing woman." No human being had ever seen a really free

unconstrained smile on her face, or heard from her lips an impulsive word.

When it was known that the genial, rollicking, open-hearted Henry Ware was

to marry her, everybody shuddered. As years went on, everybody who sat by

Henry Ware's fireside, and was kindled and made welcome by his

undiminished and unconquerable cheeriness, felt at the same time chilled

and paralyzed by the courteous, unexceptionable dignity of Mrs. Ware. Even

I, having the freedom of a daughter in their house, and loving my uncle

hardly less than I loved my father, had never once supposed that anybody

could love Aunt Ann, or that she would permit it. I always felt a little

terror when I saw Annie kiss her, or my uncle put his arm around her. My

own loving, caressing, over-flowing mother had given me by inheritance,

and had taught me by example, a type of love which knew no life without

expression. And very well I knew that that sweet mother of mine, whom the

whole town loved, and who herself loved the whole world, seemed always

turned into stone by the simple presence of Aunt Ann.

And now Aunt Ann was sitting on the floor by my side, clinging to my hand,

resting my head on her bosom, and, as I felt instantly and instinctively,

revealing in her every tone, look, word, such intensity and passionateness

of feeling as I had never in my whole life seen before. I saw then that

she had always held me side by side with her own child in her heart, and

that she knew the rare quality of the love I had for Annie.

"I ought not to have let you come here," she said, more as if speaking to

herself than to me; "they, too, have but one."

"But, Aunt Ann, you could not have kept me out," I whispered.

"Yes, I knew that, my child," she replied; "but no one else would know

it."

From that moment there was between my Aunt Ann and me a subtle bond which

partook of all the holiest mysteries of love. There were both motherhood

and the love of lovers in my love for Annie. Annie's mother felt them, and

was willing to have her own motherhood added to and ministered to by them.

From that moment I believe not even her husband seemed so near to her in

her relation with her child as I.

I will not write out the record of the next two weeks. They seemed, as

they passed, a thousand years; and yet, in looking back on them, they seem

only like one terrible breathless night. My aunt and I alone did all that

was done for Annie. There were whole days and whole nights during which

she talked incessantly, sometimes with such subtle semblance of her own

sweet self that we could hardly believe she did not know what she said;

sometimes with such wild ravings that we shook in terror, and could not

look at her nor at each other. There were other days and nights through

which she lay in a sleep, which seemed-no more like real sleep than the

shrill voice of her ravings had seemed like her real voice. These were

most fearful of all. Through all these days and nights, two men with white

faces and folded arms walked up and down in the rooms below, or crouched

on the thresholds of our doors, listening for sign or word from us. One

was Annie's father, and the other was her lover, George Ware. He was her

second cousin, fifteen years older than she, and had loved her since the

day she was one year old, when at the ceremony of her christening, he, a

proud shy boy of sixteen, had been allowed to carry her up-stairs with her

sweet name resting fresh and new on her little dewy forehead. Ah, seldom

does such love spring and grow and blaze on this earth as had warmed the

very air around Annie from the moment of her birth. George Ware was a man

of rare strength, as this love showed; and with just such faithfulness as

his faithfulness to Annie, he had loved and cared for his mother, who had

been for twenty years a widow. They lived on the outskirts of the town,

in a small house almost buried in the heart of a pine wood. The wood was

threaded in all directions by miles of narrow paths which shone in the

shaded sunlight as if they were satin-floored. For nineteen years it had

been George Ware's joy to roam these paths with his cousin Annie; first,

the baby whom he drew in her wicker wagon; next, the wayward little child

who walked with stumbling steps and clung to his finger; next, the gay

school-girl who brought all her perplexities and all her joys to be

confided to him under the pines; next, the shyer and more silent maiden

who came less often, but lingered helplessly until twilight made the

fragrant aisles solemn and dim as cloisters; at last, the radiant, the

child-like woman, the promised wife!

No winter could set a barrier across these pine-wood paths. When the whole

country about lay blocked and drifted, and half buried with snow, all

these spicy foot-roads were kept clear and level, and ready for Annie's

feet. Whole days of George Ware's strength went into the work and the joy

of doing this. In open spaces where the snow had drifted deep, he wrought

it into solid walls almost as high on either hand as Annie's head. In dark

nooks, where the spreading pines and hemlocks lay low and wide, he tossed

the snow into fantastic and weird masses on the right and left, and

cleared great spaces where he knew the partridge-berry would be ready with

a tiny scarlet glow to light up the spot.

This was George Ware's wooing. It never stepped into the glare, the

contention of profaner air. It was not a seeking, a finding, a conquest;

but a slow, sure growth of possession, which had as eternal foundation and

seemed as eternally safe as the results of organic law.

George's picture hung in Annie's room, opposite the foot of her bed.

Opposite the foot of the bed in her mother's room hung a large engraving

of the Sistine Madonna. I fancied that in Annie's quieter moments her eyes

rested with a troubled look upon this picture, and one day, when she was

in a deep sleep, I exchanged the pictures. I felt as if even lifeless

canvas which had George's face painted upon it, might work her good.

At last there came a night,--they said it was the fourteenth, but the

words conveyed no meaning to me,--there came a night when Dr. Fearing, who

had been sitting by Annie's bed for two hours, watching her every breath,

sprang suddenly to his feet, and beckoned to my aunt and me to follow him

into the next room. He shut the door, walked very swiftly up to us, looked

first into her face then into mine; then felt her pulse, and then mine,

and then turning to me, said,--

"It will have to be you." We looked at him in sudden terror. The tears

were rolling down his wrinkled cheeks.

"What is it, William?" gasped Aunt Ann.

"It will have to be you," he went on, looking me in the face, and taking

no notice of her question; "your pulse can be trusted. There has been a

change. When Annie wakes out of this sleep she will know you. It may be in

two hours, and it may not be for six. But if in that first moment she is

alarmed, or agitated in any way, she will die."

"O William, let me stay. I will be calm," moaned my poor aunt.

Then I observed, for the first time, that she had called him "William."

And then, for the first and last time, I heard Dr. Fearing call my Aunt

Ann "darling," and I remembered in that instant that it had been said once

in my hearing, that it was because of his love for Mrs. Henry Ware that

Dr. William Fearing had lived and would die a lonely man.

"Darling," he said, and put one hand on her shoulder, "you would kill your

child. I forbid you to cross the threshold of that room till I come back.

You will thank me to-morrow. Can you not trust me, Ann?" and he looked

down from his full height, this brave old man, into the face of the woman

he had loved, with a look like the look of one who dies to save another.

It was but for one second, and then he was again the physician, and

turning to me, went on, "I have another patient to whom I must instantly

go, and whom I may not be able to leave for hours. You can do all that I

would do,--I believe,"--then he felt my pulse again, and nodding his head

with a sort of grim professional satisfaction, which no amount of emotion

could wholly divert from its delight in the steady nerves and undisturbed

currents of a healthy body,--resumed, "You have but one thing to do: when

she wakes, look perfectly composed; if she speaks, answer her in a

perfectly natural voice; give her two drops of this medicine, and tell her

to go to sleep again. If you do this, she will fall asleep at once. If

you show the least agitation, she may die,--probably will!"--and Dr.

Fearing was gone.

My aunt sat silently weeping. I kissed her without speaking, and went back

to my chair by Annie's bed. I dropped the two drops of medicine into a

spoon, and propped the spoon carefully on a little silver tray, so that I

could reach it instantly. It was just three o'clock in the morning. Hour

after hour passed. I could not hear Annie's breath. My own dinned in my

ears like the whir of mills. A terror such as I can never describe took

possession of me. What if I were to kill Annie? How could I look composed?

speak naturally? What would she say? If I could but know and have my

answer ready!

I firmly believe that the dawn of light saved my senses and Annie's life.

When the first red beam shot through the blinds at the farther end of the

room, tears came into my eyes. I felt as if angels were watching outside.

A tiny sunbeam crept between the slats and fell on the carpet. It was no

more than a hair's breadth, but it was companionship to me. Slowly,

steadily it came towards me. I forgot all else in watching it. To this day

I cannot see a slow-moving sunbeam on a crimson floor without a shudder.

The clock struck six, seven, eight, nine. The bells rang for schools; the

distant hum of the town began. Still there was no stir, no symptom of

life, in the colorless face on the pillow. The sunbeam had crept nearly to

my feet. Involuntarily I lifted my right foot and stretched it out-to meet

the golden messenger. Had I dared to move I should have knelt and reached

my hand to it instead. Perhaps even the slight motion I did make,

hastened Annie's waking, for at that instant she turned her head uneasily

on the pillow and opened her eyes. I saw that she knew me. I wondered how

I could have distrusted my own strength to meet her look. I smiled as if

we were at play together, and said,--

"Good morning, dear."

She smiled languidly and said, "How came I in mamma's bed?"

I said, quietly, "Take this medicine, darling;" and almost before the

drops had passed her lips her eyes closed, and she had fallen asleep

again.

When Dr. Fearing came into the room at noon, he gave one swift, anxious

glance at her face, and then fell on his knees and folded his face in his

hands. I knew that Annie was safe.

Then he went into the next room, silently took Aunt Ann by the hand, and

leading her back to Annie's bedside, pointed to the little beads of

moisture on her forehead and said,--

"Saved!"

The revulsion was too much for the poor mother's heart. She sank to the

floor. He lifted her in his arms and carried her out, and for the rest of

that day my Aunt Ann, that "hard and unsympathizing woman," passed from

one strange fainting-fit into another, until we were in almost as great

fear for her life as we had been for Annie's.

At twilight Annie roused from her sleep again. She was perfectly tranquil,

but too weak to lift even her little hand, which had grown so thin and so

wrinkled that it looked like a wilted white flower lying on the white

counterpane.

Hour by hour she gained strength under the powerful restoratives which

were used, and still more from the wonderful elasticity of her

temperament. From the very first day, however, an indefinable terror of

misgiving seized me as often as I heard her voice or looked into her eyes.

In vain I said to myself: "It is the weakness after such terrible

illness;" "it is only natural." I felt in the bottom of my heart that it

was more.

On the fourth day she said suddenly, looking up at the picture of George

Ware,--

"Why! Why is Cousin George's picture in here? Where is the Madonna?"

I replied: "I moved it in here, dear, for you. I thought you would like

it."

"No," she said, "I like the Madonna best: the dear little baby! Please

carry George back into my room where he belongs."

My heart stood still with terror. She had never called George Ware her

cousin since their engagement. She especially disliked any allusion to

their relationship. This was her first mention of his name, and it was in

all respects just what it would have been a year before. Dr. Fearing had

forbidden us to allude to him, or to her wedding-day, or, in fact, to any

subject calculated to arouse new trains of thought in her mind. I wondered

afterward that we did not understand from the first how he had feared that

her brain might not fully recover itself, as the rest of her exquisitely

organized body seemed fast doing.

Day after day passed. Annie could sit up; could walk about her room; she

gained in flesh and color and strength so rapidly that it was a marvel.

She was gentle and gay and loving; her old rare, sweet self in every

little way and trait and expression; not a look, not a smile, not a tone

was wanting; but it was the Annie of last year, and not of this. She made

no allusion to her wedding, the day for which had now passed. She did not

ask for George. The whole year had dropped out of her memory; part of her

brain was still diseased. No human touch could venture to deal with it

without the risk of the most terrible consequences.

Dr. Fearing's face grew day by day more and more anxious; he was baffled;

he was afraid. He consulted the most eminent physicians who had had

experience in diseases of the brain. They all counseled patience, and

advised against any attempt to hasten her recollections upon any point;

they all had known similar cases, but never one so sharply defined or so

painful as this. Still they were unanimous in advising that nothing should

be said to startle her; that all must be trusted to time.

Through these terrible days George Ware was braver than any one else. His

faith in the absoluteness of his hold on Annie was too great to be

disturbed. He was by nature as patient as he was resolute. He had not

wooed his wife for eighteen years to lose her now in any way except by

death, he thought. He comforted us all.

"Do be brave, sweet mother of Annie," he used to say to my poor Aunt Ann;

"all will be well. It is nothing to me to wait another year, after having

waited all these. It is not even hard for me to go without seeing her, if

that is best."

Nevertheless, his face grew thin and his eye heavy and his form bent, as

week after week passed, and he came daily to the house, only to be told

the same weary thing, that Annie had not asked for him. The physicians had

said that it would be better that she should not see him until she had of

her own accord mentioned his name. Her nerves were still in such a state

that any surprise threw her into palpitation and alarm which did not pass

off for hours. No human being could tell how great might be the shock of

seeing his face; how much it might recall to her; and whether, if it

recalled all, she could bear it. From the outset George believed the

physicians were wrong in this; but he dared not urge his instinct against

their knowledge; and he was patient of nature, and so the days went on,

on, on; and there was no change except that Annie grew steadily better and

our hearts grew steadily sicker and sicker until we almost looked back

with longing on the days when we feared she would die. And yet in every

respect, except the memory of her lover, Annie was the same as before. The

closest scrutiny could discover no other change in her, except perhaps

that she seemed even gayer than she used to seem, and a shade less tender,

but this also was as she had been before she had promised to be George

Ware's wife.

One morning George brought me a small bunch of lovely wild things from the

pine woods, Tiarella leaves just tipped with claret color by the early

frosts, sprays of Linnea, two or three tiny white maiden's hair ferns, all

tied by a knot of patridge-berry vines thick-set with scarlet berries.

"Give these to Annie for me, will you, dear Helen?" he said, "and observe

very carefully how she is affected by them."

I remembered that it was just one year ago that day, that he had asked her

to be his wife, and I trembled to think of what hidden meanings I might be

messenger in carrying her this silent token. But I too felt, as George

did, that she was drifting farther and farther away from the memories we

desired she should regain; and that no physician's knowledge could be so

true as love's instinct; and I asked no counsel of any one, but went

swiftly to Annie with the leaves in my hand.

"O you darling! How perfectly lovely," she exclaimed with a laugh of

delight. "Why these must have come from George's woods. Have you been up

there?"

"No, dear," I said, "George brought them for you, this morning."

"Oh, the good darling!" she exclaimed. "Is it decided about his going to

India?"

I could not repress a little cry of anguish and terror. A year before,

there had been a plan for his going out to India on a mercantile venture,

which promised great profit. It had been given up, partly because his

mother felt that she could not live without him, partly because he felt

that he could not longer live without Annie.

"What is it, dear?" she said, in her softest, most sympathizing voice,

with a little flush of alarm on her pale cheek; "what hurt you? are you

ill? Oh, my poor Helen, you are all worn out with nursing me. I will nurse

you presently."

"Only a little twinge of my old neuralgia, dear," I said faintly; "these

autumn winds are setting it at work again."

She looked anxiously at me for a few seconds, and then began to untie the

bunch of leaves, and spread out the long vines on the bed.

"Oh, if I only had some moss," she said.

I ran to the green-house and brought her handfuls of beautiful dripping

mosses from the rocks in the fernery. She filled a saucer with them,

putting the Tiarella leaves all round the rim, and winding the Linnea

vines in and out as they grow in the woods. Then she leaned back on her

pillows and began breaking the partridge-berry vines into short bits, each

with a scarlet berry on it. These she set upright in the moss, changing

and rearranging them so often that I wondered what could be her purpose,

and leaned forward to see.

"No, no," she said playfully, pushing me back, "not till it is done."

Presently she said, "Now look!"

I looked and saw a perfect, beautifully formed G made by the scarlet

berries on the green moss.

"There," she said, "I'll send that back to George, to show him that I have

found him in the berries; or, no," she added, "we'll keep it till he comes

to see me. The doctor said I could be carried down-stairs to-morrow, and

then I shall begin to 'receive,'" and she laughed a gay little laugh, and

sank back tired.

That moment stands out in my memory as the saddest, hardest one of all. I

think at that moment hope died in my heart.

When I told George of this, and showed him the saucer of moss--for she

had ordered it to be set on the drawing-room table, saying, "It is too

pretty to stay up here with bottles and invalids,"--he buried his face in

his hands for many minutes. When he lifted it, he looked me steadily in

the eye, and said,--

"She has utterly forgotten this whole year. But I will win her again."

Then he knelt down and kissed every little leaf and berry which her hands

had touched, and went away without speaking another word.

It was decided after this that it could do no harm for him to see her.

Indeed, he now demanded it. His resolution was taken.

"You need not fear," he said to Dr. Fearing, "that I shall agitate her by

approaching her as if she were my own. She is not my own. But she will

be!"

We all sat with trembling hands and beating hearts as the hour approached

at which we knew the experiment was to be made.

Annie had been carried down-stairs, and laid upon a lounge in the western

bay-window of the library. The lounge was covered with dark green damask.

Old Cæsar had so implored to be allowed to carry her down, that Annie had

insisted that he should be gratified; and she went down as she had so

often done in her childhood, with her soft white face lying close to his

shining black one.

As he put her down, in her rose-colored wrapper, on the dark green damask,

he knelt before her and burst out in spite of himself, into a sort of wild

chant of thanksgiving; but as we entered the door he sprang up ashamed,

and turning to Aunt Ann, said: "Beg pardon, missis, but this rose yere was

too much pink rose for old Cæsar!"

It was "too much pink rose" for any human eyes to see unmoved. We all

cried: and Annie herself shed a few tears, but finally helped us all by

saying gayly,--

"You'll make me ill again if you all go on like this. I hate people that

cry."

No stranger's eye would have detected the thousandth part of a second's

pause which George Ware's feet made on the threshold of that room when his

eyes first saw Annie. Before the second had ended he was simply the eager,

glad, affectionate cousin, and had taken calmly and lovingly the child's

kiss which Annie gave him as she had given it every day of her life.

We could not speak. My uncle tried to read his newspaper; my aunt's hands

shook in their pretense of sewing; I threw myself on the floor at the foot

of Annie's lounge and hid my face in its cushions.

But George Ware's brave voice went steadily on. Annie's sweet glad tones,

weak and low, but still sweeter than any other tones I ever heard, chimed

in and out like fairy bells from upper air. More than an hour passed. I do

not know one word that we said.

Then George rose, saying: "I must not tire you, little Annie, so I am

going now."

"Will you come, again to-morrow?" she asked as simply as a little child.

"Yes, dear, if you are not the worse for this," he replied, and kissed her

forehead and walked very quickly away without looking back. I followed

him instantly into the hall, for I had seen that in his face which had

made me fear that, strong man as he was, he would fall. I found him

sitting on the lowest step of the staircase, just outside the door.

"My God, Helen," he gasped, "it isn't only this last year she has

forgotten. She has gone back five years."

"Oh no, dear George," I said; "you are mistaken. She remembers everything

up to a year ago. You know she remembered about your going to India."

"That is nothing," he said impatiently. "You can't any of you, see what I

mean, I suppose. But I tell you she has forgotten five years of me. She is

to me just as she was when she was fourteen. Do you think I don't know the

face and voice and touch of each day of my darling's life? oh, my God! my

God!" and he sank down on the stair again in a silence which was worse

than groans. I left him there and went back to Annie.

"How old Cousin George looks," she was saying, as I entered the room; "I

didn't remember that he was so old. Why, he looks as old as you do, sweet

papa. But then," reflectively, "after all, he is pretty old. He is fifteen

years older than I am--and I am nineteen: thirty-four! that is old, is it

not papa?" said she, half petulantly. "Why don't you speak, any of you?"

"You are getting too tired, my darling," said her father, "and now I shall

carry you up-stairs."

After Annie was asleep, my Aunt Ann and I sat for hours in the library,

going over and over and over, with weary hopelessness, all her words and

looks, and trying to comfort each other. I think each knew the utter

despair of the other's heart.

From this time George came and went with all his old familiarity: not a

day passed without his seeing Annie, and planning something for her

amusement or pleasure. Not a day passed without her showing in many ways

that he made a large part of her life, was really a central interest in

it. Even to us who knew the sad truth, and who looked on with intentness

and anxiety hardly less than those with which we had watched her sick-bed

weeks before--even to us it seemed many times as if all must be right. No

stranger but would believe them lovers; not a servant in the house dreamed

but that Miss Annie was still looking forward to her wedding. They had all

been forbidden to allude to it, but they supposed it was only on account

of her weakness and excitability.

But every day the shadow deepened on George Ware's face. I could see,

though he would not admit it, that the same despair which filled my soul

was settling down upon his. Dr. Fearing, too, who came and spent long

evenings with us, and cautiously watched Annie's every tone and look, grew

more and more uneasy. Dr. ----, one of the most distinguished physicians

of the insane, in the country, was invited to spend a few days in the

house. He was presented to Annie as an old friend of her father's, and won

at once her whole confidence and regard. For four days he studied her

case, and frankly owned himself baffled, and unable to suggest any measure

except the patient waiting which was killing us all.

To tell this frail and excitable girl, who had more than once fainted at

a sudden noise, that this man whom she regarded only as her loving cousin

had been her promised husband--and that having been within two weeks of

her wedding-day, she had now utterly forgotten it, and all connected with

it--this would be too fearful a risk. It might deprive her forever of her

reason.

Otherwise, she seemed in every respect, even in the smallest particular,

herself. She recollected her music, her studies, her friends. She was

anxious to resume her old life at all points. Every day she made allusions

to old plans or incidents. She had forgotten absolutely nothing excepting

the loverhood of her lover. Every day she grew stronger, and became more

and more beautiful, There was a slight under-current of arch

mischievousness and half petulance which she had never had before, and

which, added to her sweet sympathetic atmosphere, made her indescribably

charming. As she grew stronger she frolicked with every human being and

every living thing. When the spring first opened and she could be out of

doors, she seemed more like a divine mixture of Ariel and Puck than like a

mortal maiden.

I found her one day lying at full length on the threshold of the

greenhouse. Twenty great azaleas were in full bloom on the shelves--white,

pink, crimson. She had gathered handfuls of the fallen blossoms, and was

making her gray kitten, which was as intelligent and as well trained as a

dog, jump into the air to catch them as she tossed them up. I sat down on

the grass outside and watched her silently.

"Oh, you sober old Helen," she said, "you'll be an owl for a thousand

years after you die! Why can't you caper a little? You don't know how nice

it is."

Just then George came slowly walking down the garden path, his hands

clasped behind him, his head bent forward, and his eyes fixed on the

ground.

He did not see us. Annie exclaimed,--

"There's Cousin George, too! Look at him! Wouldn't you think he had just

heard he was to be executed at twelve to-day! I don't see what ails

everybody."

"George, George," she called, "come here. For how many years are you

sentenced, dear, and how could you have been so silly as to be found out?"

And then she burst into a peal of the most delicious laughter at his

bewildered look.

"I don't know, darling, for how many years I am sentenced. We none of us

know," he said, in a tone which was sadder than he meant it should be, and

sobered her loving heart instantly. She sprang to her feet, and threw both

her arms around his right arm, a pretty trick she had kept from her

babyhood, and said,--

"Oh you dear, good darling, does anything really trouble you? How

heartless I am. But you don't know how it feels to have been so awfully

ill, and then to get well again. It makes one feel all body and no soul;

but I have soul enough to love you all dearly, you know I have; and I

won't have you troubled; tell me what it is this minute;" and she looked

at him with tears in her eyes.

One wonders often if there be any limit to human endurance. If there be,

who can say he has reached it? Each year we find that the thing which we

thought had taken our last strength, has left us with strength enough to

bear a harder thing. It seemed so with such scenes as this, in those sunny

spring days when Annie Ware first went out into life again. Each day I

said, "There can never be another moment quite so hard to meet as this!"

and the next day there came a moment which made me forget the one which

had gone before.

It was an ill fortune which just at this time made it imperatively

necessary for George to go to the West for three months. He had no choice.

His mother's whole property was at stake. No one but he could save it; it

was not certain that he could. His last words to me were,--

"I trust more in you, Helen, than in any other human being. Keep my name

constantly in her thought; write me everything which you would tell me if

I were here."

It had become necessary now to tell the sad story of the result of Annie's

illness to all those friends who would be likely to speak to her of her

marriage. The whole town knew what shadow rested on our hearts; and yet,

as week after week went by, and the gay, sweet, winning, beautiful girl

moved about among people again in her old way, people began to say more

and more that it was, after all, very foolish for Annie Ware's friends to

be so distressed about her; stranger things had happened; she was

evidently a perfectly well woman; and as for the marriage, they had never

liked the match--George Ware was too old and too grave for her; and,

besides, he was her second cousin.

Oh, the torture of the "ante-mortems" of beloved ones, at which we are

all forced to assist!

Yet it could not be wondered at, that in this case the whole heart of the

community was alive with interest and speculation.

Annie Ware's sweet face had been known and loved in every house in our

village. Her father was the richest, most influential man in the county,

and the most benevolent. Many a man and woman had kissed Henry Ware's baby

in her little wagon, for the sake of Henry Ware's good deeds to them or

theirs. And while Mrs. Ware had always repelled persons by her haughty

reticence, Annie, from the first day she could speak until now, had won

all hearts by her sunny, open, sympathizing nature. No wonder that now,

when they saw her again fresh, glad, beautiful, and looking stronger and

in better health than she had ever done, they said that we were wrong,

that Annie and Nature were right, and that all would be well!

This spring there came to our town a family of wealth and position who had

for many years lived in Europe, and who had now returned to make America

their home. They had taken a furnished house for a year, to make trial of

our air, and also, perhaps, of the society, although rumor, with the usual

jealousy, said that the Neals did not desire any intimacy with their

neighbors. The grounds of the house which they had hired joined my

uncle's, and my Aunt Ann, usually averse to making new acquaintances, had

called upon them at once, and had welcomed them most warmly to her house.

The family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Neal and two sons, Arthur and Edward.

They were people of culture, and of wide experience; but they were not of

fine organization nor of the highest breeding; and it will ever remain a

mystery to me that there should have seemed to be, from the outset, an

especial bond of intimacy between them and my uncle and aunt. I think it

was partly the sense of relief with which they welcomed a new interest--a

little break in the monotony of anxiety which had been for so many months

corroding their very lives.

Almost before I knew that the Neals were accepted as familiar friends, I

was startled one morning, while we were at breakfast, by the appearance of

Annie on her pony, looking in at our dining-room window. She had a pretty

way of riding up noiselessly on the green grass, and making her pony,

which was tame as a Newfoundland dog, mount the stone steps, and tap with

his nose on the panes of the long glass door till we opened it.

I never saw her so angelically beautiful as she was this morning. Her

cheeks were flushed and her dark blue eyes sparkled like gems in the sun.

Presently she said, hesitating a little,--

"Edward Neal is at the gate; may I bring him in? I told him he might come,

but he said it was too like burglary;" and she cantered off again without

waiting to hear my mother's permission.

All that morning Annie Ware and Edward Neal sat with me on our piazza. I

looked and listened and watched like one in a dream, or under a spell. I

foresaw, I foreknew what was to come; with the subtle insight of love, I

saw all.

Never had I seen Annie so stirred into joyousness by George's presence as

she seemed to be by this boy's. The two together overflowed in a sparkling

current of gayety, which was irresistible. They seemed two divine children

sent out on a mission to set the world at play. What Edward Neal's more

sensuous and material nature lacked, was supplied by the finer, subtler

quality of Annie's. From that first day I could never disguise from myself

that they seemed, so far as mere physical life goes, the absolute

counterparts of each other.

I need not dwell on this part of my story. When young hearts are drawing

together, summer days speed on very swiftly. George Ware, alas! was kept

at the West week after week, until it came to be month after month. My

uncle and aunt seemed deliberately to shut their eyes to the drift of

events. I think they were so thankful to watch Annie's bounding health and

happiness, to hear glad voices and merry laughs echoing all day in their

house, that they could not allow themselves to ask whether a new kernel of

bitterness, of danger, lay at the core of all this fair seeming. As for

the children, they did not know that they were loving each other as man

and woman. Edward Neal was only twenty-one, Annie but nineteen, and both

were singularly young and innocent of soul.

And so it came to be once more the early autumn; the maple leaves were

beginning to be red, and my chrysanthemums had again set their tiny round

disks of buds. Edward, and Annie had said no word of love to each other,

but the whole town looked on them as lovers, and people began to reply

impatiently and incredulously to our assurances that no engagement

existed.

Early in October George came home, very unexpectedly, taking even his

mother by surprise. He told me afterwards that he came at last as one

warned of God. A presentiment of evil, against which he had struggled for

weeks, finally so overwhelmed him that he set off for home without half an

hour's delay. I found him, on the night after his arrival, sitting in his

old place in the big arm-chair at the head of Annie's lounge; she still

clung to some of her old invalid ways, and spent many evenings curled up

like a half-shut pink rose on the green damask cushions. He looked worn

and thin, but glad and eager, and was giving a lively account of his

Western experiences when the library door opened, and coming in

unannounced, with the freedom of one at home, Edward Neal entered.

"O Edward, here is Cousin George," exclaimed Annie, while a wave of rosy

color spread over her face, and half rising, she took George's hand in

hers as she leaned towards Edward.

"Oh, I'm so glad to see you, Mr. Ware," said Edward, with that indefinable

tone of gentle respect which marks a very young man's recognition of one

much older, whom he has been led to admire. "Annie has been talking to me

about you all summer. I feel as if I knew you almost as well as she does.

I'm heartily glad to see you."

A man of finer grain than Edward Neal would have known the whole truth in

that first second, by the blank stern look which spread like a cloud over

George Ware's face; but the open-hearted fellow only thought that he had

perhaps seemed too familiar and went on,--

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Ware. It must appear strange to you that I took

the liberty of being so glad; but you don't know how kindly I have been

allowed to feel that your friends here would permit me to call all their

friends mine," and he glanced lovingly and confidently at my aunt and

uncle, who answered by such smiles as they rarely gave. Oh, no wonder they

loved this genial, frank sunny boy, who had brought such light into their

life.

In a moment George was his courteous self again, and began to express his

pleasure at meeting Mr. Neal, but Annie interrupted him.

"Oh, now don't be tiresome; of course you are to be just as good friends

with Edward as you are with me: sit down, Edward. He is telling us the

most delicious stories. He is the dearest Cousin George in the world," she

added, stroking his hand which she still kept in hers.

It gave Edward no more surprise to see her do this than it would have done

to see her sit in her father's lap. Even I felt with a sudden pang that

George Ware seemed at that moment to belong to another generation than

Edward and Annie.

Edward seated himself on a low cricket at the foot of the lounge, and,

looking up in George's face, said most winningly,--

"Please go on, Mr. Ware." Then he turned one full, sweet look of greeting

and welcome upon Annie, who beamed back upon him with such a diffused

smile as only the rarest faces have. Annie's smile was one of her greatest

charms. It changed her whole face; the lips made but a small part of it;

no mortal ever saw it without smiling in answer.

It was beyond George Ware's power long to endure this. Probably his

instinct felt in both Edward's atmosphere and Annie's more than we did. He

rose very soon and said to me, "If you are going home to-night, Helen,

will you let me walk up with you? I have business in that part of the

town; but I must go now. Perhaps that will hurry you too much?" he added,

with a tone which was almost imploring.

I was only too glad to go. Our leave-taking was very short. A shade of

indefinable trouble clouded every face but Edward's and Annie's.

George did not speak until we had left the house. Then he stopped short,

took both my hands in his, with a grasp that both hurt and frightened me,

and exclaimed,--

"How dared you keep this from me! How dared you!"

"O George," I said, "there was nothing to tell."

"Nothing to tell!" and his voice grew hoarse and loud. "Nothing to tell!

Do you mean to say that you don't know, have not known that Annie loves

that boy, that puppy?"

I trembled from head to foot. I could not speak. He went on:--

"And I trusted you so; O Helen, I can never forgive you."

I murmured, miserably, for I felt myself in that moment really guilty,--

"What makes you think she loves him?"

"You cannot deceive me, Helen," he replied. "Do not torture me and

yourself by trying. Tell me now, how long this 'Edward' has been sitting

by her lounge. Tell me all."

Then I told him all. It was not much. He had seen more that evening, and

so had I, than had ever existed before. His presence had been the one

element which had suddenly defined that which before had been hardly

recognized.

He was very quiet after the first moment of bitterness, and asked me to

forgive his impatient words. When he left me he said,--

"I cannot see clearly what I ought to do. Annie's happiness is my only

aim. If this boy can create it, and I cannot--but he cannot: she was as

utterly mine as it is possible for a woman to be. You none of you knew how

utterly! Oh, my God, what shall I do!" and he walked away feebly and

slowly like an old man of seventy.

The next day Aunt Ann sent for me to come to her. I found her in great

distress. George had returned to the house after leaving me, and had had

almost a stormy interview with my uncle. He insisted upon asking Annie at

once to be his wife; making no reference to the past, but appearing at

once as her suitor. My uncle could not forbid it, for he recognized

George's right, and he sympathized in his suffering. But his terror was

insupportable at the thought of having Annie agitated, and of the possible

results which might follow. He implored George to wait at least a few

weeks.

"What! and see that young lover at my wife's feet every night!" said

George, fiercely. "No! I will risk all, lose all, if need be. I have been

held back long enough," and he had gone directly from my uncle's room to

Annie herself.

In a short time Annie had come to her mother in a perfect passion of

weeping, and told her that Cousin George had asked her to be his wife; and

that she had never dreamed of such a thing; and she thought he was very

unkind to be so angry with her; how could she have supposed he cared for

her in that way, when he had been like her elder brother all his life.

"Why, he seems almost as old as papa," said poor Annie, sobbing and

crying, "and he ought to have known that I should not kiss him and put my

arms around him if--if"--she could not explain; but she knew!

Annie had gone to her own room, ill. My aunt and I sat together in the

library silently crying; we were wretched. "Oh, if George would only have

waited," said Aunt Ann.

"I think it would have made no difference, aunty," said I.

"No, I am afraid not," replied she, and each knew that the other was

thinking of Edward Neal.

George Ware left town the next day. He sent me a short note. He could not

see any one, he said, and begged me to give a farewell kiss for him to

"the sweet mother of my Annie. For mine she is, and will be in heaven,

though she will be the wife of Edward Neal on earth."

When I next saw our Annie she was Edward Neal's promised bride. A severe

fit of illness, the result of all these excitements, confined me to my

room for three weeks after George's departure; and I knew only from Aunt

Ann's lips the events which had followed upon it.

George Ware's presence on that first evening had brought revelation to

Edward Neal as well as to all the other members of that circle. That very

night he had told his parents that Annie would be his wife.

The next night, while poor George was swiftly borne away, Edward was

sitting in my uncle's library, listening with a blanched cheek to the

story of Annie's old engagement. My uncle's sense of honor would not let

him withhold anything from the man seeking her for his wife. The pain soon

passed by, when he was told that she had that very day refused her cousin,

and betrayed almost resentment at his offer. Edward Neal had not a

sufficiently subtle nature, nor acquaintance enough with psychological

phenomena to be disturbed by any fears for the future. He dismissed it all

as an inexplicable result of the disease, but a fixed fact, and a great

and blessed fortune for him. My uncle, however, was less easily assured.

He insisted upon delay, and upon consulting the same physicians who had

studied Annie's case before. They all agreed that she was now a perfectly

healthy and strong woman, and that to persist in any farther recognition

of the old bond, after she had so intelligently and emphatically

repudiated all thought of such a relation to her cousin, was absurd. Dr.

Fearing alone was in doubt, He said little; but he shook his head and

clasped his hands tight, and implored that at least the marriage should be

deferred for a year.

Annie herself, however, refused to consent to this: of course no

satisfactory reason could be alleged for any such delay; and she said as

frankly as a little child, "Edward and I have loved each other almost

from the very first; there is nothing for either of us to do in life but

to make each other happy; and we shall not leave papa and mamma: so why

should we wait?"

They were not married, however, until spring. The whole town stood by in

speechless joy and delight when those two beautiful young beings came out

from the village church man and wife. It was a scene never to be

forgotten. The peculiar atmosphere of almost playful joyousness which they

created whenever they appeared together was something which could not be

described, but which diffused itself like sunlight.

We all tried resolutely to dismiss memory and misgiving from our hearts.

They seemed disloyalty and sin. George Ware was in India. George Ware's

mother was dead. The cottage among the pines was sold to strangers, and

the glistening brown paths under the trees were neglected and unused.

Edward and Annie led the same gay child-like lives after their marriage

that they had led before: they looked even younger and gayer and sunnier.

When they dashed cantering through the river meadows, she with rosy cheeks

and pale brown curls flying in the wind, and he with close crisp black

hair, and the rich, dark, glowing skin of a Spaniard, the farming men

turned and rested on their tools, and gazed till they were out of sight.

Sometimes I asked myself wonderingly, "Are they ever still, and tender,

and silent?" "Is this perpetual overflow the whole of love?" But it seemed

treason to doubt in the presence of such merry gladness as shone in

Annie's face, and in her husband's too. It was simply the incarnate

triumph and joy of young life.

The summer went by; the chrysanthemums bloomed out white and full in my

garden; the frosts came, and then the winter, and then Annie told me one

day that before winter came again she would be a mother. She was a little

sobered as she saw the intense look on my face.

"Why, darling, aren't you glad? I thought you would be almost as glad as I

am myself?" Annie sometimes misunderstood me now.

"Glad! O Annie," was all I could say.

From that day I had but one thought, Annie's baby. Together we wrought all

dainty marvels for its ward-robe; together we planned all possible events

in its life: from the outset I felt as much motherhood to the precious

little unseen one as Annie did. She used to say to me, often,--

"Darling, it will be half my baby, and half yours."

Annie was absolutely and gloriously well through the whole of those

mysterious first months of maternity which are to so many women exhausting

and painful. Every nerve of her body seemed strung and attuned to normal

and perfect harmony. She was more beautiful than ever, stronger than ever,

and so glad that she smiled perpetually without knowing it. For the first

time since the old days, dear Dr. Fearing's face lost the anxious look

with which his eyes always rested upon her. He was more at ease about her

now.

Before light one Sunday morning in December, a messenger rang furiously

at our bell. We had been looking for such tidings and were not alarmed. It

was a fearful storm; wind and sleet and rain and darkness had attended the

coming of Annie's little "Sunday child" into its human life.

"A boy--and Miss Annie's all right," old Cæsar said, with a voice almost

as hoarse as the storm outside; and he was gone before we could ask a

question farther.

In less than an hour I stood on the threshold of Annie's room. But I did

not see her until noon. Then, as I crept softly into the dimly-lighted

chamber, the whole scene so recalled her illness of two years before that

my heart stood still with sudden horror, in spite of all my joy. Now, as

then, I knelt silently at her bedside, and saw the sweet face lying white

and still on the pillow.

She turned, and seeing me, smiled faintly, but did not speak.

At her first glance, a speechless terror seized me. This was my Annie! The

woman who for two years had been smiling with my Annie's face had not been

she! The room grew dark. I do not know what supernatural power came to my

aid that I did not faint and fall.

Annie drew back the bed-clothes with a slow, feeble motion of her right

hand, and pointed to the tiny little head nestled in her bosom. She smiled

again, looked at me gently and steadily for a second, and then shut her

eyes. Presently I saw that she was asleep; I stole into the next room and

sat down with my face buried in my hands.

In a moment a light step aroused me. Aunt Ann stood before me, her pale

face all aglow with delight.

"O Helen my darling! She is so well. Thank God! thank God!" and she threw

her arms around me and burst into tears.

I felt like one turned to stone. Was I mad, or were they?

What had I seen in that one steady look of Annie's eyes? Was she really

well? I felt as if she had already died!

Agonizingly I waited to see Dr. Fearing's face. He came in before tea, saw

Annie for a few minutes, and came down-stairs rubbing his hands and

singing in a low tone.

"I never saw anything like that child's beautiful elasticity in my life,"

he said. "We shall have her dancing down-stairs in a month."

The cloud was utterly lifted from all hearts except mine. My aunt and

uncle looked at each other with swimming eyes. Edward tried to laugh and

look gay, but broke down utterly, and took refuge in the library, where I

found him lying on the floor, with his face buried in Annie's lounge.

I went home stupefied, bewildered. I could not sleep. A terror-stricken

instinct told me that all was not right. But how should I know more than

physician, mother, husband?

For ten days I saw my Annie every day for an hour. Her sweet, strange,

gentle, steady look into my eyes when we first met always paralyzed me

with fear, and yet I could not have told why. There was a fathomless

serenity in her face which seemed to me super-human. She said very

little. The doctor had forbidden her to talk. She slept the greater part

of the time, but never allowed the baby to be moved from her arms while

she was awake.

There was a divine ecstasy in her expression as she looked down into the

little face; it never seemed like human motherhood.

One day Edward came to me and said,--

"Do you think Annie is so well as they say? I suppose they must know; but

she looks to me as if she had died already, and it were only her glorified

angel-body that lies in that bed?"

I could not speak to him. I knew then that he had seen the same thing that

I had seen: if his strong, rather obtuse material nature had recognized

it, what could so blind her mother and father and the doctor? I burst into

tears and left him.

At the end of a week I saw a cloud on Dr. Fearing's face. As he left

Annie's room one morning, he stopped me and said abruptly,--

"What does Annie talk about?"

"She hardly speaks at all," I said.