III.

The gratitude with which James Little's wife received Hetty's

proposition was so great that it softened even her father-in-law's

heart.

“I do believe, Hetty,” he said, when he gave her their answer, “I do

believe that poor girl has suffered more 'n we've given her credit for.

When I explained to her that you was goin' to take her right in to be

like one o' your own family, she turned as white as a sheet, and says

she,--

“'You don't mean it, father: she won't ever dare to:' and when I said,

says I,--

“'Yes, she does: Hetty Gunn ain't a girl not to know what she means to

do. And that's just what she says she's goin' to do with you and Jim,'

she broke right out crying, out loud, just like a little baby, and says

she,--

“'If the Lord don't bless Hetty Gunn for bein' so good to us! she

sha'n't ever be sorry for it's long's she lives.'”

“Of course I sha'n't,” said Hetty, bluntly. “I never was sorry yet for

any thing I did which was right, and I am as sure this is right as I am

that I am alive. When will they come?”

“Sarah said she would come right over to-day, if you'd like to have her

help you; and Jim he could fix up things at home, and shut the house

up. Jim said they'd better not let the house till you had tried how

it worked havin' 'em here. Jim don't seem very sanguine about it. Poor

fellow, he's got the spirit all taken out of him.”

“Well, well, we'll put it back again, see if we don't, before the

year is out,” replied Hetty, with a beaming smile, which made her face

beautiful.

It happened fortunately that poor Sarah Little first came to her new

home alone, rather than with her husband. The years of solitude and

disgrace through which they had lived, had made him dogged and defiant

of manner, but had made her humble and quiet. She still kept a good

deal of the beauty of her youth; and there were few persons who could

be unmoved by the upward glance of her saddened blue eyes. In less than

five minutes, she conquered old Nan, and secured her as an ally for

ever. As she entered the house, Hetty met her, and saying cordially,--

“I'm glad to see you, Sally. It was so good of you to come right over at

once; we have a great deal to do,”--she kissed her on her forehead.

Sarah burst into tears. Nan stood by with a sullen face. Turning towards

her involuntarily, perhaps because she hardly dared to speak to Hetty,

Sarah said,--

“Oh, Nan, I'm only crying because she is so kind to me. I can't help

it;” and the poor thing sank into a chair and sobbed. No wonder! it was

six years since she had returned to her native village, a shame-stricken

woman, bearing in her arms the child whose birth had been her disgrace.

That its father was now her husband did little or nothing to repair the

loss which her weakness and wrong-doing had entailed on her. If there be

a pitiless community in this world, it is a small New England village.

Calvinism, in its sternest aspects, broods over it; narrowness and

monotony make rigid the hearts which theology has chilled; and a grim

Pharisaism, born of a certain sort of intellectual keen-wittedness,

completes the cruel inhumanity. It was six years since poor Sarah

Little, baby in arms, had come into such an air as this,--six years, and

until this moment, when Hetty Gunn kissed her forehead and spoke to her

with affection, no woman had ever said to her a kindly word. When the

baby died, not a neighbor came to its funeral. The minister, the weeping

father and mother, and the stern-looking grandfather, alone followed the

little unwelcomed one to its grave. After that, Sarah rarely went out of

her house except at night. The tradesmen with whom she had to deal came

slowly to have a pitying respect for her. The minister went occasionally

to see her, and in his clumsy way thought he perceived what he called

“the right spirit” in her. Sarah dreaded his calls more than any thing

else. What made her isolation much harder to bear was the fact that,

only two years before, every young girl in the county had been her

friend. There was no such milliner in all that region as Sarah Newhall.

In autumn and in spring, her little shop at Lonway Four Corners was

crowded with chattering and eager girls, choosing ribbons and hats, and

all deferring to her taste. Now they all passed her by with only a cold

and silent bow. Not one spoke. To Sarah's affectionate, mirth-loving

temperament, this was misery greater than could be expressed. She

said not a word about it, not even to her husband: she bore it as dumb

animals bear pain, seeking only a shelter, a hiding-place; but she

wished herself dead. Jim's share of the punishment had been in some ways

lighter than hers, in others harder. He had less loneliness; but, on

the other hand, by his constant intercourse with men, he was frequently

reminded of the barrier which separated himself and his wife from

all that went on in the village. He had the same mirthful, social

temperament which she had: the thoughtless, childish, pleasure-loving

quality, which they had in common, had been the root of their sin; and

was now the instrument of their suffering. Stronger people could have

borne up better; worse people might have found a certain evil solace in

evil ways and with evil associates: but Jim and Sally were incapable

of any such course; they were simply two utterly broken-spirited and

hopeless children whose punishment had been greater than they could

bear. In a dogged way, because they must live, Jim went on earning a

little money as surveyor and draughtsman. He often talked of going away

into some new faraway place where they could have, as he said, in the

same words Hetty had used, “a fair chance;” but Sally would not go. “It

would not make a bit of difference,” she said: “it would be sure to be

found out, and strange folks would despise us even more than our own

folks do; perhaps things will come round right after a while, if we stay

here.” Jim did not insist, for he loved Sally tenderly; and he felt, to

the core of his heart, that the least he could do for her now was to let

her live where she chose to live: but he grew more sullen and dogged,

day by day; and Sally grew sadder and quieter, and things were fast

coming to a bad pass, when Hetty Gunn's generous offer came to them,

like a great rift of sunlight in a black sky.

When Sally sank into the chair sobbing, Hetty made a quick movement

towards her, and was about to speak; but, seeing that old Nan was

hastening to do the same thing, she wisely waited, thinking to

herself,--

“If Nan will only take her under her wing, all will go well.”

Old Nan's tenderness of heart was unlimited. If her worst enemy were

in pain or sorrow, she would succor him: ready perhaps to take up

the threads of her resentment again, as soon as his sufferings were

alleviated; but a very Samaritan of good offices as long as he needed

them. Cæsar, so well understood this trait in her, that in their

matrimonial disputes, which, it must be confessed, were frequent and

sharp, when all other weapons failed him, he fell back on the colic. He

had only to interrupt the torrent of her reproaches, with a groan, and a

twist of his fat abdomen, and “oh, honey, I'm so bad in my stomach!”

and she was transformed, in an instant from a Xantippe into a Florence

Nightingale: the whole current of her wrath deviated from him to the

last meal he had eaten, whatever it might be.

“Now, it's jist nothin' but that pesky bacon you ate this mornin',

Cæsar: you sha'n't never touch a bit again's long's you live; do you

hear?” and with hot water and flannels, she would proceed to comfort and

coddle him as if no anger had ever stirred her heart.

When she saw poor Sarah Little sink crying into a chair, and heard the

humble gratefulness of her words; and, moreover, felt herself, as it

were, distinctly taken into confidence by the implied reference to the

unhappy past,--old Nan melted.

“There, there, honey: don't ye take on so. We're jest powerful glad to

get you here, we be. I was a tellin' Miss Hetty yesterday she couldn't

live here alone, noways: we couldn't any of us stand it. Come along

into the dinin'-room, an' Cæsar he'll give you a glass of his blackberry

wine. Cæsar won't let anybody but hisself touch the blackberry wine, an'

hain't this twenty year.”

“Here, Cæsar! you, Cæsar! where be yer? Come right in here, you loafin'

niggah.” This was Nan's most affectionate nickname for her husband; it

was always accompanied with a glance of proud admiration, which was

the key to the seemingly opprobrious epithet, and revealed that all

it really meant was a complacent satisfaction in her breast that her

husband was in a position to loaf if he liked to,--a gentleman of

leisure and dignity, so to speak, subject to no orders but her own.

Cæsar could hardly believe his ears when he heard himself called upon to

bring a glass of his blackberry wine to Mrs. Sarah Little. This was

not at all in keeping with the line of conduct which Nan had announced

beforehand that she should pursue in regard to that lady. Bewildered by

his perplexed meditations on this change of policy, he moved even more

slowly than was his wont, and was presently still more bewildered

by finding the glass snatched suddenly from his hand, with a sharp

reprimand from Nan.

“You're asleep, ain't you? p'raps you'd better go back to bed, seein'

it's nigh noon.”

“There, honey, you jest drink this, an' it'll do you good,” came in the

next second from the same lips, in such dulcet tones, that Cæsar rubbed

his head in sheer astonishment, and gazed with open mouth and eyes upon

Nan, who was holding the glass to Sally's mouth, as caressingly as she

would to a sick child's.

The battle was won; won by a tone and a tear; won, as, ever since the

days of Goliath, so many battles have been won by the feebleness of

weapons, and not by their might.

When two days later, James Little, more than half unwillingly, spite

of his gratitude to Hetty, came to take his position as overseer

at “Gunn's,” he was met at the great gate by his wife, who had been

watching there for him for an hour. He looked at her with undisguised

wonder. There was a light in her eyes, a color in her cheeks, he had not

seen there for many years. “Why, Sally!” he exclaimed, but gave no other

expression to his amazement. She understood.

“Oh, Jim!” she said, “it is like heaven here: they're all so kind. I

told you things would come round all right if we waited.”

The new overseer found himself welcomed because he was Sally's husband,

and the strangeness of this was a bewilderment indeed. He could hardly

understand the atmosphere of cordial good feeling which seemed in so

short time to have grown up between his wife and all the household. He

had become so used to Sally's sweet sad face, that he did not know

how great a charm it held for others; and he had never seen in her the

manner which she now wore to every one. One day's kindly treatment had

been to her like one day's sunlight to a drooping plant.

Hetty was relieved and glad. All her misgivings had vanished; and she

found growing up in her heart a great tenderness toward Sally. She

recollected well the bright rosy face Sally had worn only a few years

before, and the contrast between it and her pale sorrow-stricken

countenance now smote Hetty whenever she looked at her. Her sympathy,

however, took no shape in words or caresses. She was too wise for that.

She simply made it plain that Sally's place in the family was to be a

fixed and a busy one.

“I shall look after the out-door things, Sally,” she said. “I have done

that ever since father was so poorly, and I like it best. I shall trust

to you to keep the house going all straight. Old Nan isn't much of a

housekeeper, though she's a good cook: she needs looking after.”

And so the new household entered on its first summer. The crops sprang

up, abundant and green: all the cattle throve and increased: the big

garden bloomed full of its old-fashioned flowers; its wide borders of

balm and lavender made the whole road-side sweet: the doors stood open,

and the cheery sounds of brisk farm life were to be heard all day long.

To all passers-by “Gunn's” seemed unchanged, unless it were that it had

grown even more prosperous and active. But in the hall, two knobbed old

canes which used to stand in the corner were hung by purple ribbons

from the great antlers on the wall, and would never be taken down again.

Hetty had hung them there the day after the funeral, and had laid the

squire's riding-whip across them, saying to herself as she did so,--

“There! I'll keep those up there as long as I live, and I wonder what

will become of them then or of the farm either,” and she had a long and

sad reverie, standing with the riding-whip in her hand in the doorway,

and tying and untying the purple ribbons. But she shook the thought off

at last, saying to herself,--

“Well, well, I don't suppose the farm'll go begging. There are plenty of

people that would be glad enough to have me give it to them. I expect

it will have to go to Cousin Josiah after all; but father couldn't abide

him. It's a great pity I wasn't a boy, then I could have married and had

children to take it.” A sudden flush covered Hetty's face as she said

this, and with a shamefaced, impatient twist of her expressive features,

she ran in hastily and laid the whip above the canes.

The only thing which broke in on the even tenor of this summer at Gunn's

was Cæsar's experiencing religion in a great revival at the Methodist

church. Cæsar had been under conviction again and again; but, as old Nan

said pathetically to her minister, there didn't seem to be “nothin' to

ketch hold by in Cæsar.” By the time his emotions had worked up to the

proper climax for a successful result, he was “done tired out,” and

would “jest give right up” and “let go,” and “there he was as bad's

ever, if not wuss.” Poor old Nan was a very ardent and sincere

Christian, spite of her infirmities of temper, and she would wrestle

in prayer with and for her husband till her black cheeks shone under

streams of tears. She wrestled all the harder because the ungodly Cæsar

would sometimes turn upon her, and in the most sarcastic and ungenerous

way ask if he didn't keep his temper better “without religion than she

did with it:” upon which Nan would groan and travail in spirit, and

beseech the Lord not to “go an' let her be a stumbler-block in Cæsar's

way.” The Squire's death had produced a great impression on Cæsar: from

that day he had been, Nan declared, “quite a changed pusson;” and the

impression deepened until three months later, in the course of a great

midnight meeting in the Methodist church, Cæsar Gunn suddenly announced

that he had “got religion.” The one habit which it was hardest for Cæsar

to give up, in his new character, was the habit of swearing. Profanity

had never been strongly discountenanced at “Gunn's.” The old Squire and

the young Squire had both been in the habit of swearing, on occasion,

as roundly as troopers! and black Cæsar was not going to be behind his

masters, not he. So he, too, in spite of old Nan's protestations and

entreaties, had become a confirmed swearer. It had really grown into so

fixed a habit that the words meant nothing: it was no more than a trick

of physical contortion of which a man may be utterly unconscious. How to

break himself of this was Cæsar's difficulty.

“Yer see, Nan!” he said, “I dunno when it's a comin': the fust I know,

it's said and done, an' what am I goin' to do 'bout it then, 'll yer

tell me?” At last, Cæsar hit on a compromise which seemed to him a

singularly happy one. To avoid saying “damn” was manifestly impossible:

the word slipped out perpetually without giving him warning; as soon as

he heard it, however, his righteous soul remorsefully followed up the

syllable by,--

“Bress the Lord,” in Stentorian tones. The compound ejaculation thus

formed was one which nobody's gravity could resist; and the surprised

and grieved expression with which poor Cæsar would look round upon an

audience which he had thus convulsed was even more irresistible than

the original expression. Everybody who came to “Gunn's” went away and

said,--

“Have you heard the new oath Cæsar Gunn swears with since he got

religion?” and “Damn bress the Lord” soon became a very by-word in the

town.