occasion. It happened upon Michaelmas and old Aunt Viny insisted, for
luck's sake, upon dressing a pair of her master's geese, and sending
them to Benvenew. So that Peter had the pleasure of seeing pretty
Nellie blush under the sly allusion made by one of the guests to the
old proverb about "the maid that eats of the bachelor's goose." But on
the other hand, common sense told him that blushing was with Nellie
no sign of especial embarrassment. Indeed, it was probable that the
proverb was unknown to her. She was much occupied, all dinner-time,
with the account young Armstrong--now ordained and installed as the
regular preacher for Sneaking Creek church--was giving her of a
bush-meeting in the woods back of Purcellville. He was anxious for
her mother to take her to the meetings, but Mistress Amanda did not
like bush-meetings; and she was not inclined to encourage any species
of religious excitement in Nellie. Peter would gladly have offered to
drive her but he could not venture to do so in the face of her mother's
disapproval. It seemed a little hard to him that he should not be able
to avail himself of this little opportunity to please the young girl.
And if jealousy had been possible to him he must have felt a twinge of
it in seeing how absorbed Nellie was in the talk Armstrong was pouring
into her ears. But the time had not yet come for him to recognize the
significance of what was going on under his eye. The happenings of our
daily life are like the characters at a masked ball. Capering before
us, they seem entirely unrelated to ourselves in any particular, and it
is only when they unmask that we know them for what they are.
Peter, the dreamer, wove some new fancies about his dainty love as
he sat with a writing pad upon his knee, and his short pipe between
his lips. The world was very beautiful to him. And to-morrow would be
Sunday; the happiest day of all the good week; for he would see Nellie
at church.
The collie dog at his feet jumped up and ran down the walk. At the gate
stood a shabby phaeton made distinguished by carrying Mistress Amanda.
As he hastened out she called in a loud, clear tone:
"Good morning, Mr. Weaver, have you any turkey eggs to spare?"
Her hand, in its old gray gauntlet, was extended, and as he took it for
a second in his own she added, lower,
"So much as a concession to our neighbor's greed, yonder!"
Peter looked and saw Elmer Hall approaching, driving a pair of hogs
before him. Taking the cue, he talked about turkey eggs until the
grunts had died away in the distance.
Then said madam--"I didn't come to talk about turkey eggs."
Peter drew a hand through his handsome hair; looked down reflectively
and looked up smiling. "Will you come in?" he suggested. A decided
shake of the head answered that. "My five years' seniority wouldn't
excuse it--to the Greenes and Aylors! I doubt if even my mother could
venture it. We may risk ten minutes here at the gate."
Mistress Amanda began flicking her whip at a thistle; her forehead
gathering lines. Suddenly the words shot from her:
"You are a patient man!"
"Well! You haven't come two miles to tell me that?"
"But I have. Patience is a most unusual virtue--in a man, but there is
such a thing as having too much of it. Do you remember the story of the
fox and the wolf?"
"The nursery tale? Let me see. I think my grandmother used to tell it
to me, but that was long ago. I forget the point."
"The wolf bit him--put out his eyes, and so on, the fox simply saying
all the time, 'patience!' Till finally the enemy tore his heart out,
and the fox found, too late, that patience is the most dangerous of all
virtues."
Peter gazed at the narrator of this fable in amazement. For the first
time in his life the idea that women are incomprehensible found
lodgment in his mind.
"Ah, I see you think me daft," said his friend. And not for the first
time in her life, by any means, she found a man dense.
"In so many plain words, then, are you not in love?"
The blood seemed on the point of bursting through Peter's skin; his
head weighed a ton; his legs became pipe-stems. He gasped something
inarticulately. Then, manly sense asserted itself. His look grew steady
and grave and nobody could have found fault with his manner, as he said:
"You know I love your daughter. I reckon everybody knows that."
Mistress Amanda turned impulsively. Her face had been carefully averted
during this conversation, but now she let her eyes meet his. There was
the emphasis of a kept-down excitement in her tone:
"Everybody except the one person who ought to know it. It is a
well-kept secret so far as she's concerned."
"I've only been waiting for the right time--she's so young--such a
child!" Things danced in the sunshine before the man's eyes. His long,
lovely dream!--this was so sudden a call to hard reality; he could not
waken in a minute.
"Nellie is not a girl to be won by accumulated acts of worship," said
Mistress Amanda tersely. "Some girls can be won in that way; romantic
girls. They would be flattered at being made the subject of verses;
would like to feel that a great, powerful creature trembled before
them. But Nellie is wonderfully free from that sort of vanity. So far
from understanding the real feeling that is at the bottom of all the
favors you show her she looks upon you as a sort of good godfather who
has a fanciful, half-playful preference for her. You have never come
near enough to her to touch the ruling motive of her character."
It sprang to Peter's lips to ask what that was; but he forbore
the question. There seemed to him an indelicacy in arriving at a
comprehension of his love through another person's perceptions, even
if that person was her mother. Mistress Amanda, however, was no muddy
stream whence truth must be laboriously filtered out, but a clear
fountain, throwing facts high and rapidly in the air for the dullest
seer to take in.
"She has a large vein of the practical in her. Probably you think--all
you men think--that, with that soaring look, her feet never touch the
ground. But you may take sentimental flights into the region of romance
for the next ten years without interesting her enough to make her even
look to see where you are. Don't woo her with poetry, my friend. She
never reads it. I never saw her with any book of verse in her hand
except a hymn-book."
A wild idea of putting his talent to this use came to Peter. After
a moment's reflection he turned it out, as he would have locked his
barn door against a suspicious steed bearing about him marks of gipsy
ownership. And herein did my honest hero show his Dutch descent in his
characteristic rejection of schemes out of the range of his natural
inclination.
"I'm not much of a poet," he said, with an effort at a laugh.
"You look at things rather too much from a sentimental standpoint,"
observed Mistress Amanda. She had beaten the thistle quite to powder,
and, laying down her whip, adjusted her gauntlets and gathered the
reins into a firm grasp. Her fine black eyes had a singular expression.
"Not too much for _some_ women. The kind of sentiment there is in you
is the kind that makes a man loyal, tender, and--of all things the
rarest!--appreciative toward the woman you may marry. I wish girls were
able to discriminate between the shepherding qualities in men and the
huntsman's qualities. But they like the sound of the horn and the dash
of the horses--the fiery eye and the masterful grip! Only after their
gallants have thrown aside all their pretty trappings and come down
to the plain garb of the household boss do they learn that a little
kindness and consideration in a husband outranks all the more showy
qualities."
"Nellie certainly ain't one to be taken in by a glittering outside--I
sh'd think," Peter remarked.
"Not of the kind you have in your mind. But she is peculiarly
constituted--extremely susceptible to anything like an appearance of
superiority of the moral sort; or, not so much moral--I wish it was
that!--but spiritual sort. Some girls pine for a man to take them in
hand and lead them along the straight and narrow path; and a thorny
path their saintly director generally manages to make it for them.
Bah, I've no patience with the 'Queechy' species of hero!" exclaimed
Mistress Amanda, lashing her whip in the air. Her horse, however, had
sensibilities of his own, and taking this as a definite appeal to his
own intelligence he started down the road at a pretty brisk pace,
carrying his mistress off with excellent stage effect, her exit speech
vibrating in Peter's astonished ears.
He stood leaning upon the gate, after she had turned the corner of
the lane, for fifteen minutes; his cheerful face clouded slightly as
he chewed the cud his friend had shown him, gazing, ox-like, at the
present surroundings that lay about his feet, and unable to realize,
even after some effort, the meaning of the suggestions that had been
made as to possible dangers lurking in the future.
There was a placidity about Peter amounting to dulness, when he was
pricked upon the matter of threatened changes. Your light-weight men,
nervous, springy, and quick-glancing, are full of apprehensions; they
believe that it is no more than likely that to-morrow may be doomsday,
and they prepare themselves even for the most improbable crises. But
two hundred pounds gives a certain faith in the established order of
things, and it is a significant fact that bulk and the conceit that
the world moves slowly, go together. Foretellers are so apt to have a
lean and meagre frame that I should be loth to trust the pretensions
of a prophet over-endowed with flesh. So the fact that Peter had a
constitutional dislike to being stirred up to initiative acts must be
laid to his girth and his double chin; not to any lack of fine feeling.
His affection for Nellie had become so much a part of himself that it
partook of his temperament, and was deliberate and sober; incapable
of sudden transitions. Adoring her at a distance had the charm of
familiarity, and although in sentimental moods the man liked to picture
his star, his flower, as a little housewife, seated of evenings by his
side before the fire, with some sewing in her dainty fingers, and a
tenderly inclined ear toward the thing he might like to read to her;
still, he had grown so used to thinking of such scenes as afar off
that to be suddenly desired to look at the necessity of at once taking
steps to make his dream a reality, or else to abandon hope of ever
making it one, was to ask too much of his optimistic nature. For what
is an optimist but a person who believes that everything will turn out
all right; whether he chooses to go to work at dawn or lie in bed till
twelve?
But, Peter's indolence had a tinge of nobility in it. He saw a young
girl, happy in her ignorance of life's responsibilities, fresh,
sweet, and bright, with the reflection of her own innocent and tender
fancies shining in her unclouded eyes, and he was loth to interpose
his tall shadow between her and the landscape. His wish had been
to stand aside until she should come gradually to recognize him as
an agreeable feature of it, perhaps to learn to look upon him as
something indispensable to her life, making a part--a large part of
her happiness. Some men of generous nature prefer to have a woman turn
toward them of her own accord rather than to put forth the effort that
makes wooing an affair of capture. It is pretty certain to happen,
though, that the choice of a man of this view is apt to fall upon a
girl whose instinct is not so much womanly as feminine. And those who
have studied woman-kind will understand the distinction.
But Mistress Amanda's point had, nevertheless, been made, for she had
given Peter to understand that there was a rival in the field. And the
most optimistic of men does not fail to experience certain sensations
in his brain extending to his strong right arm, when an intruder
threatens to snatch away the glass where he is quietly watching the
full bead gather and waiting to raise it to his thirsting lips.
IV.
IF Peter's thoughts had sought his rival they would have found him at a
certain fine old mansion bearing upon the face of the stone gate-post
the name ROSELAWN. A well shaded drive swept up to the doorway,
hospitably broad, and in seasonable weather open, giving a view of such
a hall as can only be found in an old southern house. Family portraits
looked down from the walls upon the carefully preserved furniture,
recognizing, it may be, with some satisfaction, the presence of
articles that had been in favor during their lifetime.
It was Monday morning, and breakfast time, according to the habits of
the Armstrong family. The judge was in his place, his wife, comely,
neat, and quiet, was in hers, and the three daughters, Laura, Violet,
and Bess, had come in severally, and slipped into their chairs after a
warm greeting to their father and a rather less impulsive and loving
one to their quiet mother.
"Miles not down?" said Violet, the sprightliest of the sisters; a slim
girl with a delicately up-tilted face in which dark eyes and a saucily
curved mouth prepared one for good-humored but probably pointed banter.
"Down!" repeated that personage, coming in, and dropping discontentedly
into the vacant chair next to his mother. "If you had been _up_ and
keeping your chickens in order instead of--whatever else you were
doing--I could have got some sleep after four o'clock and been down
before. I wish you'd think proper to order that black rooster made
into fricassee," he continued to his mother, who had no time to
reply, however, for Violet put in an instant protest for her pet
Captain Jinks, who was such a darling, and so intelligent he could do
everything except talk.
Miles dropped the subject, not caring to compromise his dignity by
a dispute over such a trifle, but his entire bearing expressed that
appearance of unappreciated worth which is so exasperating to women
in a family; divining, as they do, that the root of it is invariably
some kind of causeless irritation. The girls discovered in a minute
that Miles had "got out of the wrong side of the bed" that morning;
this supplying a vague, kindly explanation of his acerbities of temper.
Undoubtedly he was cross. It showed in his way of receiving a remark
that Laura now made. Laura was of the languid type of fair women;
heavy-lidded gray eyes, peachy skin, and flesh all wrought into curving
lines. A subdued greed of pleasure is the predominating quality of this
sisterhood, often existing under the perfect disguise of plaintive,
gentle renunciation. When thoroughly understood they weep the profuse
tears of spirits feeling themselves above the comprehension of the
ordinary mind.
"Please get Wash to hitch Peg-leg to the phaeton right after breakfast,
will you?" Laura said. "I must drive over to Miss Annie's to try on my
dress she is making for the tournament."
The light of disapproval kindled in Miles' grave face.
"Are you girls going to persist in attending that silly entertainment?"
he inquired.
"You certainly didn't used to think it silly," answered the one chiefly
addressed. "Time was--and not so very long ago, either--when you rode
at tournaments yourself! I haven't forgotten the tournament at Manasses
two years ago, when we were visiting cousin Jennie Davis"----
But Miles' head had disappeared, following his hands in a dive beneath
the table for his egg-cup, rolled off by a movement of his arm that
would have seemed scarcely accidental could this young gentleman have
been suspected of an ulterior wish to cut short some embarrassing
allusion. Every one is endowed with some propensity tending to the
discomfiture of others. Laura's talent in this direction, unknown to
herself, lay in bringing up people's outgrown inclinations; so keeping
them to the mortified level of a self they conceived they had risen
above and would fain forget. Reminiscences of this kind are peculiarly
afflicting to young divines, to whom the problem of preserving an
appearance commensurate with the severity of their doctrine is often
in danger from the good memories of their intimate friends. Can we
wonder that the ordained preacher of twenty-two shrank sensitively from
reminders of the peccadilloes committed by the gay youth of twenty?
Miles suffered, in the privacy of family life, from the tendency to
treat him as an ordinary young man, whereas, he felt that he had become
remarkable. To be informed, at the instant of assuming a superior
tone, that he had been used to joining in the customs he condemned
was sufficiently humiliating. But Laura's observation held a sting for
his irritable conscience that she had no idea of. The dropping of the
egg-cup had stopped her slow speech, for she had an acute sense of
sympathy for awkwardness in a person ordinarily free from it, being
herself studiously graceful.
"Let Sally bring you another egg," she was good enough to suggest.
The yellow damsel dawdling against the side table put herself to
some trouble to carry out the order, for the admiration that was but
lukewarm in the house glowed effulgently in the kitchen; the young
preacher being idolized by the negroes.
But Miles' appetite had been satisfied. He pushed back his plate and
looked past his offending sister into space; his mind taking a flight
in search of consolation ending at Benvenew, making some pretty notes
of a pair of confiding eyes and a sweetly deferential tongue that
had never uttered a word hurtful to his self-esteem. Of one devout
disciple he was sure. Mingled with his triumph in it was a grateful
acknowledgment of the immense advantage in this connection of quality
over quantity; the sweetbriar rose being worth all the rest of feminine
creation.
"What's that about the tournament?" the judge inquired. Three girlish
voices chimed an answer of which he extracted the gist at his leisure;
managing to arrive at the important item, that Miles was setting
himself above all innocent amusements, and declined to accompany his
sisters to the tournament.
"Miles' nonsense be damned!" said the head of the house. "I'll be
your beau if he won't. I reckon I'm young enough yet to go about with
all of you." The judge was forty-five, and excepting for a little too
much fulness of chin, and a slight stiffness in his knees, he might
have passed for the handsome elder brother of his son. Secretly, he
was proud of the boy and looked upon the extreme views he held as the
natural excess of an enthusiastic temperament concentrating itself upon
theology. He expected Miles to grow more reasonable when his first
zeal should have worn off. But his own disposition was choleric, and
while he was looking forward to an amelioration of the strict views
held by the young preacher he was frequently tempted to bluster a
little upon their points of difference.
The Armstrongs were rather given to disputations, and the household
atmosphere was not seldom an uncomfortable one for the neutral mother,
who had positive opinions upon only two subjects: the flavor of cookery
and the good looks of her husband. She was quite satisfied that her
son treated her respectfully, that he had good manners, and that his
clothes set well; in less important points he was welcome to follow his
own inclinations. During little clashes she was accustomed to occupy
herself with considerations about the next dinner. Therefore, Miles was
surprised to hear her say:
"I think Miles is very much in the right in not giving his countenance
to tournaments. As a minister, he couldn't. They bet on the horses and
betting's not right. I heard that Penny Haywood bet fifty dollars last
year and lost. I'm sure, Judge, you wouldn't like Miles to bet?"
The judge had given to this unwonted animation the compliment of
wide-open eyes and smiling mouth.
"No danger of Miles betting!" he answered, reassuringly. "All I ask is
that he shouldn't be so stiff-necked about his sisters taking their
enjoyment in the way of all young folks."
Miles had again betrayed singular discomfiture at this new suggestion
about himself. The slow, faint color of one who colors seldom and then
from mortification, burned in his cheeks, and he arose with a muttered
excuse and left the room, turning at the door to say:
"I'll have Peg-Leg put in the phaeton for you, Laura."
The instinct to seek comfort for his wounded self-love would have
driven him straight to Benvenew, but it was too early in the day, and
he had no excuse. The morning wore away tediously. Unhappily for
the young man the things that had once interested him and furnished
occupation for his spare hours were now under the ban of his tyrant
conscience. He had embraced the course known as "setting a good
example," and for the sacrifices involved he found recompense both in
his own consciousness of superiority and in the fact that Nellie looked
on and admired. Yet, if he was in danger of becoming a prig, there were
sound faculties in him that made it quite as probable that some sudden
turn would swing him into the path of practical usefulness. At home
he met at every turn with just the sort of opposition to confirm his
dislike of the easy self-indulgence that swayed the rest.
Everybody else in the Armstrong family did what he or she wished to do;
it was for him to do what he thought right, regardless of inclinations.
Laura was indolently selfish, Violet energetically set upon carrying
out her own plans, and Bess, his junior by a year, was strong-minded;
something that in his view was less endurable than pure frivolity.
His bitter admiration for her cleverness sometimes found vent in
expressions of solicitude for her future husband, to which she always
responded that _his_ wife would have her profound sympathy, for his
ideas of the family state were founded upon Old Testament precedent, to
which the new dispensation and womanhood were altogether opposed.
Sauntering discontentedly along the great stretch of piazza Miles heard
stray bits of his sisters' talk as they sat at work, and contrasted
it with Nellie's sweet, sensible remarks, and the feeling of her
perfection grew strong in him. Beginning in agreement of tastes and
opinions the intimacy between the two young people had now reached the
stage where conscious preference may at any instant change to blind
attraction. Sedateness and dignity had marked their intercourse so far;
but the impulse Miles felt swelling his breast was the first rise of a
wave capable of sweeping away all the pretty dalliances of friendship,
and of carrying him out on the swift flowing sea of a great passion.
His was a temperament sure to love ardently and he had not dissipated
his energies prematurely.
Two o'clock sees our young preacher mounted on his Kentucky
thoroughbred mare, Stella, a beautiful chestnut, tractable only with
her owner. As he leaped into the saddle she looked so knowing that
he, to try her, let the reins hang, and said softly, "To Benvenew!"
Whereupon the intelligent creature gave her slender head a light toss,
and started off up the slope of the hill at a pace that brought him, in
less than an hour, to the grand old park that surrounded that historic
mansion.
He had feared to find Nellie, as usual, surrounded by the rest; but
as he drew near the little summer-house, covered with a luxuriant
grape-vine, now rich in purple clusters, he saw her standing there, a
basket on her arm, filling it with the grapes. In a moment he was on
the ground beside her, Stella standing still, untied, and docile to
his wish as an obedient child.
At the first shy glance she gave him, Miles forgot the smart to his
vanity that had sent him to her, forgot everything but that the
sweetest girl in the world stood there, blushing under his fixed gaze,
her little fingers trembling in his grasp, for when she laid her hand
in his he suddenly found it impossible to let it go.
"Come and sit down, please," he said, drawing her inside the bower and
seating himself beside her on the rustic bench. "It is an age since I
saw you."
"Yesterday?" questioned Nellie, demurely raising her brows.
"I don't count seeing you in a crowd. The last time we really had any
time together was at the fair--away back in September. There are so
many things I have always wanted to talk with you about. You are the
only person that has a real sympathy with me in the work I am trying
to do here, Miss Nellie. And you don't know how dearly I value your
sympathy."