The next months were the hardest of her life. The long dreary battle
against insurmountable obstacles she had been able to bear with a stoical
front, but the sickening alternations of emotions which now filled her
days wore upon her until she was fairly suffocated. About mail time each
day she became of an unendurable irritability, so that poor Miss Molly was
quite afraid to go near her. For the first time in her life there was no
living thing growing in her house.
"Don't you mean to have any service this Christmas?" asked Miss Molly one
day.
Miss Abigail shouted at her so fiercely that she retreated in a panic.
"Why not? Why shouldn't we? What makes you think such a thing?"
"Why, I didn't know of anybody to go but just you and me, and I noticed
that you hadn't any flowers started for decorations the way you always do."
Miss Abigail flamed and fulminated as though her timid little friend had
offered her an insult. "I've been to service in that church every
Christmas since I was born and I shall till I die. And as for my not
growing any flowers, that's _my_ business, ain't it!" Her voice cracked
under the outraged emphasis she put on it.
Her companion fled away without a word, and Miss Abigail sank into a chair
trembling. It came over her with a shock that her preoccupation had been
so great that she had _forgotten_ about her winter flowers.
The fortnight before Christmas was interminable to her. Every morning she
broke a hobbling path through the snow to the post-office, where she
waited with a haggard face for the postmaster's verdict of "nothing." The
rest of the day she wandered desolately about her house, from one window
to another, always staring, staring up at Hemlock Mountain.
She disposed of the problem of the Christmas service with the absent
competence of a person engrossed in greater matters. Miss Molly had
declared it impossible--there was no money for a minister, there was no
congregation, there was no fuel for the furnace. Miss Abigail wrote so
urgently to the Theological Seminary of the next State that they promised
one of their seniors for the service; and she loaded a hand sled with wood
from her own woodshed and, harnessing herself and Miss Molly to it, drew
it with painful difficulty through the empty village street. There was not
enough of this fuel to fill even once the great furnace in the cellar, so
she decreed that the service should be in the vestibule where a stove
stood. The last few days before Christmas she spent in sending out
desperate appeals to remote families to come. But when the morning
arrived, she and Miss Molly were the only ones there.
The young theologian appeared a little before the appointed time, brought
in the motor car of a wealthy friend of his own age. They were trying to
make a record winter trip, and were impatient at the delay occasioned by
the service. When they saw that two shabby old women constituted the
congregation, they laughed as they stood warming their hands by the stove
and waiting for the hour. They ignored the two women, chatting lightly of
their own affairs. It seemed that they were on their way to a winter house
party to which the young clergyman-to-be was invited on account of his
fine voice--an operetta by amateurs being one of the gayeties to which
they looked forward.
Miss Abigail and Miss Molly were silent in their rusty black, Miss Molly's
soft eyes red with restrained tears, Miss Abigail's face like a flint.
"A pretty place, this village is," said the motorist to the minister. "I
have visited the Ellerys here. Really charming in summer time--so utterly
deserted and peaceful." He looked out of the window speculatively. "Rather
odd we should be passing through it to-day. There's been a lot of talk
about it in our family lately."
"How so?" asked the minister, beginning cautiously to unwind the wrapping
from around his throat.
"Why, my brother-in-law--Peg's husband--don't you remember, the one who
sang so fearfully flat in----" He was off on a reminiscence over which
both men laughed loudly.
Finally, "But what did you start to tell me about him?" asked the minister.
"I forget, I'm sure. What was it? Oh, yes; he owns those print mills in
Johnsonville--hideous place for Peg to live, that town!--and of late he's
been awfully put out by the failure of his water-power. There's not much
fall there at the best, and when the river's low--and it's low most all
the time nowadays--he doesn't get power enough, so he says, to run a
churn! He's been wondering what he could do about it, when doesn't he get
a tip from some old Rube up here that, above this village, there's a
whopping water-power--the Winthrop Branch. I know it--fished it lots of
times. He didn't take any stock in it of course at first, but, just on the
chance, he sent his engineer up here to look it over, and, by Jove, it's
true. It'll furnish twice the power he's had in Johnsonville lately."
"Seems queer," said the minister a little skeptically, "that nobody's ever
thought of it before."
"Well, _I_ said that, but Pete says that his engineer tells him that there
are lots of such unknown water-powers in the East. Nobody but farmers live
near 'em, you see."
The minister was but mildly interested. "I thought the cost of
transmitting power was so great it didn't pay for any water-force but
Niagara."
"He isn't going to carry the power to Johnsonville. He's going to bring
his mill here. A lot of his operators come from around here and most of
'em have kept their old homes, so there won't be any trouble about keeping
his help. Besides, it seems the old hayseed who wrote him about it owned
the land, and offered him land, water-power, right of way--anything!--free,
just to 'help the town' by getting the mill up here. That bespeaks the
materialistic Yankee, doesn't it?--to want to spoil a quiet little
Paradise like this village with a lot of greasy mill-hands."
The minister looked at his watch. "I think I'll begin the service now.
There's no use waiting for a congregation to turn up." He felt in one
pocket after the other with increasing irritation. "Pshaw! I've left my
eyeglasses out in the car." The two disappeared, leaving the vestibule
echoing and empty.
For a moment the two women did not speak. Then Miss Molly cast herself
upon her old friend's bosom. "They're coming back!" she cried. "Annie and
her children!"
Miss Abigail stared over her head. "They are _all_ coming back," she said,
"and--we are ready for them. The library's ready--the school is ready--"
she got up and opened the door into the great, cold, lofty church, "and--"
They looked in silence at the empty pews.
"Next Christmas!" said Miss Molly. "Next Christmas--"
The young minister bustled in, announcing as he came, "We will open the
service by singing hymn number forty-nine."
He sat down before the little old organ and struck a resonant chord.
"Oh, come, all ye faithful!"
his full rich voice proclaimed, and then he stopped short, startled by a
great cry from Miss Abigail. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that the
tears were streaming down her face. He smiled to himself at the
sentimentality of old women and turned again to the organ, relieved that
his performance of a favorite hymn was not to be marred by cracked
trebles. He sang with much taste and expression.
"Oh, come, all ye faithful!"
he chanted lustily,
"Joyful and triumphant!"