The next morning the sun shone, and Mercy was herself again. Her
depression of the evening before seemed to her so causeless, so
inexplicable, that she recalled it almost with terror, as one might a
temporary insanity. She blushed to think of her unreasonable sensitiveness
to the words and tones of Stephen White. "As if it made any sort of
difference to mother and to me whether he were our friend or not. He can
do as he likes. I hope I'll be out when he calls," thought Mercy, as she
stood on the hotel piazza, after breakfast, scanning with a keen and eager
glance every feature of the scene. To her eyes, accustomed to the broad,
open, leisurely streets of the Cape Cod hamlet, its isolated little houses
with their trim flower-beds in front and their punctiliously kept fences
and gates, this somewhat untidy and huddled town looked unattractive. The
hotel stood on the top of one of the plateaus of which I spoke in the last
chapter. The ground fell away slowly to the east and to the south. A
poorly kept, oblong-shaped "common," some few acres in extent, lay just in
front of the hotel: it had once been fenced in; but the fences were sadly
out of repair, and two cows were grazing there this morning, as
composedly as if there were no town ordinance forbidding all running of
cattle in the streets. A few shabby old farm-wagons stood here and there
by these fences; the sleepy horses which had drawn them thither having
been taken out of the shafts, and tethered in some mysterious way to the
hinder part of the wagons. A court was in session; and these were the
wagons of lawyers and clients, alike humble in their style of equipage. On
the left-hand side of the hotel, down the eastern slope of the hill ran an
irregular block of brick buildings, no two of a height or size, The block
had burned down in spots several times, and each owner had rebuilt as much
or as little as he chose, which had resulted in as incoherent a bit of
architecture as is often seen. The general effect, however, was of a
tendency to a certain parallelism with the ground line: so that the block
itself seemed to be sliding down hill; the roof of the building farthest
east being not much above the level of the first story windows in the
building farthest west. To add to the queerness of this "Brick Row," as it
was called, the ingenuity of all the sign-painters of the region had been
called into requisition. Signs alphabetical, allegorical, and symbolic;
signs in black on white, in red on black, in rainbow colors on tin; signs
high up, and signs low down; signs swung, and signs posted,--made the
whole front of the Row look at a little distance like a wall of
advertisements of some travelling menagerie. There was a painted yellow
horse with a fiery red mane, which was the pride of the heart of Seth
Nims, the livery-stable keeper; and a big black dog's head with a gay
collar of scarlet and white morocco, which was supposed to draw the custom
of all owners of dogs to "John Locker, harness-maker." There was a
barber's pole, and an apothecary's shop with the conventional globes of
mysterious crimson and blue liquids in the window; and, to complete the
list of the decorations of this fantastic front, there had been painted
many years ago, high up on the wall, in large and irregular letters, the
sign stretching out over two-thirds of the row, "Miss Orra White's
Seminary for Young Ladies." Miss Orra White had been dead for several
years; and the hall in which she had taught her school, having passed
through many successive stages of degradation in its uses, had come at
last to be a lumber-room, from which had arisen many a waggish saying as
to the similarity between its first estate and its last.
On the other side of the common, opposite the hotel, was a row of
dwelling-houses, which owing to the steep descent had a sunken look, as if
they were slipping into their own cellars. The grass was too green in
their yards, and the thick, matted plantain-leaves grew on both edges of
the sodden sidewalk.
"Oh, dear," thought Mercy to herself, "I am sure I hope our house is not
there." Then she stepped down from the high piazza, and stood for a moment
on the open space, looking up toward the north. She could only see for a
short distance up the winding road. A high, wood-crowned summit rose
beyond the houses, which seemed to be built higher and higher on the
slope, and to be much surrounded by trees. A street led off to the west
also: this was more thickly built up. To the south, there was again a
slight depression; and the houses, although of a better order than those
on the eastern side of the common, had somewhat of the same sunken air.
Mercy's heart turned to the north with a sudden and instinctive
recognition. "I am sure that is the right part of the town for mother,"
she said. "If Mr. White's house is down in that hollow, we'll not live in
it long." She was so absorbed in her study of the place, and in her
conjectures as to their home, that she did not realize that she herself
was no ordinary sight in that street: a slight, almost girlish figure, in
a plain, straight, black gown like a nun's, with one narrow fold of
transparent white at her throat, tied carelessly by long floating ends of
black ribbon; her wavy brown hair blown about her eyes by the wind, her
cheeks flushed with the keen air, and her eyes bright with excitement.
Mercy could not be called even a pretty woman; but she had times and
seasons of looking beautiful, and this was one of them. The hostler, who
was rubbing down his horses in the door of the barn, came out
wide-mouthed, and exclaimed under his breath,--
"Gosh! who's she?" with an emphasis on that feminine, personal pronoun
which was all the bitterer slur on the rest of womankind in that
neighborhood, that he was so unconscious of the reflection it conveyed.
The cook and the stable-boy also came running to the kitchen door, on
hearing the hostler's exclamation; and they, too, stood gazing at the
unconscious Mercy, and each, in their own way, paying tribute to her
appearance.
"That's the gal thet comed last night with her mother. Darned sight
better-lookin' by daylight than she wuz then!" said the stable-boy.
"Hm! boys an' men, ye 're all alike,--all for looks," said the cook, who
was a lean and ill-favored spinster, at least fifty years old. "The gal
isn't any thin' so amazin' for good looks, 's I can see; but she's got
mighty sarchin' eyes in her head. I wonder if she's a lookin' for somebody
they're expectin'."
"Steve White he was with 'em down to the depot," replied the stable-boy.
"Seth sed he handed on 'em into the kerridge, 's if they were regular
topknots, sure enough."
"Hm! Seth Quin 's a fool, 'n' always wuz," replied the cook, with a
seemingly uncalled-for acerbity of tone. "I've allus observed that them
that hez the most to say about topknots hez the least idea of what
topknots really is. There ain't a touch o' topknot about that ere girl:
she's come o' real humbly people. Anybody with half an eye can see that.
Good gracious! I believe she's goin' to stand still, and let old man
Wheeler run over her. Look out there, look out, gal!" screamed the cook,
and pounded vigorously with her rolling-pin on the side of the door to
rouse Mercy's attention. Mercy turned just in time to confront a stout,
red-faced, old gentleman with a big cane, who was literally on the point
of walking over her. He was so near that, as she turned, he started back
as if she had hit him in the breast.
"God bless my soul, God bless my soul, miss!" he exclaimed, in his
excitement, striking his cane rapidly against the ground. "I beg your
pardon, beg pardon, miss. Bad habit of mine, very bad habit,--walk along
without looking. Walked on a dog the other day; hurt dog; tumbled down
myself, nearly broke my leg. Bad habit, miss,--bad habit; too old to
change, too old to change. Beg pardon, miss."
The old gentleman mumbled these curt phrases in a series of inarticulate
jerks, as if his vocal apparatus were wound up and worked with a crank,
but had grown so rusty that every now and then a wheel would catch on a
cog. He did not stand still for a moment, but kept continually stepping,
stepping, without advancing or retreating, striking his heavy cane on the
ground at each step, as if beating time to his jerky syllables. He had
twinkling blue eyes, which were half hid under heavy, projecting eyebrows,
and shut up tight whenever he laughed. His hair was long and thin, and
white as spun glass. Altogether, except that he spoke with an unmistakable
Yankee twang, and wore unmistakable Yankee clothes, you might have fancied
that he was an ancient elf from the Hartz Mountains.
Mercy could not refrain from laughing in his face, as she retreated a few
steps towards the piazza, and said,--
"It is I who ought to beg your pardon. I had no business to be standing
stock-still in the middle of the highway like a post."
"Sensible young woman! sensible young woman! God bless my soul! don't know
your face, don't know your face," said the old gentleman, peering out
from under the eaves of his eyebrows, and scrutinizing Mercy as a child
might scrutinize a new-comer into his father's house. One could not resent
it, any more than one could resent the gaze of a child. Mercy laughed
again.
"No, sir, you don't know my face. I only came last night," she said.
"God bless my soul! God bless my soul! Fine young woman! fine young woman!
glad to see you,--glad, glad. Girls good for nothing, nothing, nothing at
all, nowadays," jerked on the queer old gentleman, still shifting rapidly
from one foot to the other, and beating time continuously with his cane,
but looking into Mercy's face with so kindly a smile that she felt her
heart warm with affection towards him.
"Your father come with you? Come to stay? I'd like to know ye, child. Like
your face,--good face, good face, very good face," continued the
inexplicable old man. "Don't like many people. People are wolves, wolves,
wolves. 'D like to know you, child. Good face, good face."
"Can he be crazy?" thought Mercy. But the smile and the honest twinkle of
the clear blue eye were enough to counterbalance the incoherent talk: the
old man was not crazy, only eccentric to a rare degree. Mercy felt
instinctively that she had found a friend, and one whom she could trust
and lean on.
"Thank you, sir," she said. "I'm very glad you like my face. I like yours,
too,--you look so merry. I think I and my mother will be very glad to know
you. We have come to live here in half of Mr. Stephen White's house."
"Merry, merry? Nobody calls me merry. That's a mistake, child,--mistake,
mistake. Mistake about the house, too,--mistake. Stephen White hasn't any
house,--no, no, hasn't any house. My name's Wheeler, Wheeler. Good enough
name. 'Old Man Wheeler' some think's better. I hear 'em: my cane don't
make so much noise but I hear 'em. Ha! ha! wolves, wolves, wolves! People
are all wolves, all alike, all alike. Got any money, child?" With this
last question, the whole expression of his face changed; the very features
seemed to shrink; his eyes grew dark and gleaming as they fastened on
Mercy's face.
Even this did not rouse Mercy's distrust. There was something inexplicable
in the affectionate confidence she felt in this strange, old man.
"Only a little, sir," she said. "We are not rich; we have only a little."
"A little's a good deal, good deal, good deal. Take care of it, child.
People'll git it away from you. They're nothing but wolves, wolves,
wolves;" and, saying these words, the old man set off at a rapid pace down
the street, without bidding Mercy good-morning.
As she stood watching him with an expression of ever-increasing
astonishment, he turned suddenly, planted his stick in the ground, and
called,--
"God bless my soul! God bless my soul! Bad habit, bad habit. Never do say
good-morning,--bad habit. Too old to change, too old to change. Bad habit,
bad habit." And with a nod to Mercy, but still not saying good-morning,
he walked away.
Mercy ran into the house, breathless with amusement and wonder, and gave
her mother a most graphic account of this strange interview.
"But, for all his queerness, I like him, and I believe he'll be a great
friend of ours," she said, as she finished her story.
Mrs. Carr was knitting a woollen stocking. She had been knitting woollen
stockings ever since Mercy could remember. She always kept several on hand
in different stages of incompletion: some that she could knit on in the
dark, without any counting of stitches; others that were in the process of
heeling or toeing, and required the closest attention. She had been
setting a heel while Mercy was speaking, and did not reply for a moment.
Then, pushing the stitches all into a compact bunch in the middle of one
needle, she let her work fall into her lap, and, rolling the disengaged
knitting-needle back and forth on her knee to brighten it, looked at Mercy
reflectively.
"Mercy," said she, "queer people allers do take to each other. I don't
believe he's a bit queerer 'n you are, child." And Mrs. Carr laughed a
little laugh, half pride and half dissatisfaction. "You're jest like your
father: he'd make friends with a stranger, any day, on the street, in two
jiffeys, if he took a likin' to him; and there might be neighbors a livin'
right long 'side on us, for years an' years, thet he'd never any more 'n
jest pass the time o' day with, 'n' he wa'n't a bit stuck up, either. I
used ter ask him, often 'n' often, what made him so offish to sum folks,
when I knew he hadn't the least thing agin 'em; and he allers said, sez
he, 'Well, I can't tell ye nothin' about it, only jest this is the way 't
is: I can't talk to 'em; they sort o' shet me up, like. I don't feel
nateral, somehow, when they're round!'"
"O mother!" exclaimed Mercy, "I think I must be just like father. That is
exactly the way I feel so often. When I get with some people, I feel just
as if I had been changed into somebody else. I can't bear to open my
mouth. It is like a bad dream, when you dream you can't move hand nor
foot, all the time they're in the room with me."
"Well, I thank the Lord, I don't never take such notions about people,"
said Mrs. Carr, settling herself back in her chair, and beginning to make
her needles fly. "Nobody don't never trouble me much, one way or the
other. For my part, I think folks is alike as peas. We shouldn't hardly
know 'em apart, if 't wa'n't for their faces."
Mercy was about to reply, "Why, mother, you just said that I was queer;
and this old man was queer; and my father must have been queer, too." But
she glanced at the placid old face, and forbore. There was a truth as well
as an untruth in the inconsistent sayings, and both lay too deep for the
childish intellect to grasp.
Mercy was impatient to go at once to see their new home; but she could not
induce her mother to leave the house.
"O Mercy!" she exclaimed pathetically, "ef yer knew what a comfort 't was
to me jest to set still in a chair once more. It seems like heaven, arter
them pesky joltin' cars. I ain't in no hurry to see the house. It can't
run away, I reckon; and we're sure of it, ain't we? There ain't any thing
that's got to be done, is there?" she asked nervously.
"Oh, no, mother. It is all sure. We have leased the house for one year;
and we can't move in until our furniture comes, of course. But I do long
to see what the place is like, don't you?" replied Mercy, pleadingly.
"No, no, child. Time enough when we move in. 'T ain't going to make any
odds what it's like. We're goin' to live in it, anyhow. You jest go by
yourself, ef you want to so much, an' let me set right here. It don't seem
to me 's I'll ever want to git out o' this chair." At last, very
unwillingly, late in the afternoon, Mercy went, leaving her mother alone
in the hotel.
Without asking a question of anybody, she turned resolutely to the north.
"Even if our house is not on this street," she said to herself, "I am
going to see those lovely woods;" and she walked swiftly up the hill, with
her eyes fixed on the glowing dome of scarlet and yellow leaves which
crowned it. The trees were in their full autumnal splendor: maples,
crimson, scarlet, and yellow; chestnuts, pale green and yellow; beeches,
shining golden brown; and sumacs in fiery spikes, brighter than all the
rest. There were also tall pines here and there in the grove, and their
green furnished a fine dark background for the gay colors. Mercy had
often read of the glories of autumn in New England's thickly wooded
regions; but she had never dreamed that it could be so beautiful as this.
Rows of young maples lined the street which led up to this wooded hill.
Each tree seemed a full sheaf of glittering color; and yet the path below
was strewn thick with fallen leaves no less bright. Mercy walked
lingeringly, each moment stopping to pick up some new leaf which seemed
brighter than all the rest. In a very short time, her hands were too full;
and in despair, like an over-laden child, she began to scatter them along
the way. She was so absorbed in her delight in the leaves that she hardly
looked at the houses on either hand, except to note with an unconscious
satisfaction that they were growing fewer and farther apart, and that
every thing looked more like country and less like town than it had done
in the neighborhood of the hotel.
Presently she came to a stretch of stone wall, partly broken down, in
front of an old orchard whose trees were gnarled and moss-grown.
Blackberry-vines had flung themselves over this wall, in and out among the
stones. The leaves of these vines were almost as brilliant as the leaves
of the maple-trees. They were of all shades of red, up to the deepest
claret; they were of light green, shading into yellow, and curiously
mottled with tiny points of red; all these shades and colors sometimes
being seen upon one long runner. The effect of these wreaths and tangles
of color upon the old, gray stones was so fine that Mercy stood still and
involuntarily exclaimed aloud. Then she picked a few of the most
beautiful vines, and, climbing up on the wall, sat down to arrange them
with the maple-leaves she had already gathered. She made a most
picturesque picture as she sat there, in her severe black gown and quaint
little black bonnet, on the stone wall, surrounded by the bright vines and
leaves; her lap full of them, the ground at her feet strewed with them,
her little black-gloved hands deftly arranging and rearranging them. She
looked as if she might be a nun, who had run away from her cloister, and
coming for the first time in her life upon gay gauds of color, in strange
fabrics, had sat herself down instantly to weave and work with them,
unaware that she was on a highway.
This was the picture that Stephen White saw, as he came slowly up the road
on his way home after an unusually wearying day. He slackened his pace,
and, perceiving how entirely unconscious Mercy was of his approach,
deliberately studied her, feature, dress, attitude,--all, as
scrutinizingly as if she had been painted on canvas and hanging on a wall.
"Upon my word," he said to himself, "she isn't bad-looking, after all. I'm
not sure that she isn't pretty. If she hadn't that inconceivable bonnet on
her head,--yes, she is very pretty. Her mouth is bewitching. I declare, I
believe she is beautiful," were Stephen's successive verdicts, as he drew
nearer and nearer to Mercy. Mercy was thinking of him at that very
moment,--was thinking of him with a return of the annoyance and
mortification which had stung her at intervals all day, whenever she
recalled their interview of the previous evening. Mercy combined, in a
very singular manner, some of the traits of an impulsive nature with those
of an unimpulsive one. She did things, said things, and felt things with
the instantaneous intensity of the poetic temperament; but she was quite
capable of looking at them afterward, and weighing them with the cool and
unbiassed judgment of the most phlegmatic realist. Hence she often had
most uncomfortable seasons, in which one side of her nature took the other
side to task, scorned it and berated it severely; holding up its actions
to its remorseful view, as an elder sister might chide a younger one, who
was incorrigibly perverse and wayward.
"It was about as silly a thing as you ever did in your life. He must have
thought you a perfect fool to have supposed he had come down to meet you,"
she was saying to herself at the very moment when the sound of Stephen's
footsteps first reached her ear, and caused her to look up. The sight of
his face at that particular moment was so startling and so unpleasant to
her that it deprived her of all self-possession. She gave a low cry, her
face was flooded with crimson, and she sprang from the wall so hastily
that her leaves and vines flew in every direction.
"I am very sorry I frightened you so, Mrs. Philbrick," said Stephen, quite
unconscious of the true source of her confusion. "I was just on the point
of speaking, when you heard me. I ought to have spoken before, but you
made so charming a picture sitting there among the leaves and vines that I
could not resist looking at you a little longer."
Mercy Philbrick hated a compliment. This was partly the result of the
secluded life she had led; partly an instinctive antagonism in her
straightforward nature to any thing which could be even suspected of not
being true. The few direct compliments she had received had been from men
whom she neither respected nor trusted. These words, coming from Stephen
White, just at this moment, were most offensive to her.
Her face flushed still deeper red, and saying curtly,--"You frightened me
very much, Mr. White; but it is not of the least consequence," she turned
to walk back to the village. Stephen unconsciously stretched out his hand
to detain her.
"But, Mrs. Philbrick," he said eagerly, "pray tell me what you think of
the house. Do you think you can be contented in it?"
"I have not seen it," replied Mercy, in the same curt tone, still moving
on.
"Not seen it!" exclaimed Stephen, in a tone which was of such intense
astonishment that it effectually roused Mercy's attention. "Not seen it!
Why, did you not know you were on your own stone wall? There is the
house;" and Mercy, following the gesture of his hand, saw, not more than
twenty rods beyond the spot where she had been sitting, a shabby, faded,
yellow wooden house, standing in a yard which looked almost as neglected
as the orchard, from which it was only in part separated by a tumbling
stone wall.
Mercy did not speak. Stephen watched her face in silence for a moment;
then he laughed constrainedly, and said,--
"Don't be afraid, Mrs. Philbrick, to say outright that it is the
dismallest old barn you ever saw. That's just what I had said about it
hundreds of times, and wondered how anybody could possibly live in it. But
necessity drove us into it, and I suppose necessity has brought you to it,
too," added Stephen, sadly.
Mercy did not speak. Very deliberately her eyes scanned the building. An
expression of scorn slowly gathered on her face.
"It is not so forlorn inside as it is out," said Stephen. "Some of the
rooms are quite pleasant. The south rooms in your part of the house are
very cheerful."
Mercy did not speak. Stephen went on, beginning to be half-angry with this
little, unknown woman from Cape Cod, who looked with the contemptuous
glance of a princess upon the house in which he and his mother dwelt,--
"You are quite at liberty to throw up your lease, Mrs. Philbrick, if you
choose. It was, perhaps, hardly fair to have let you hire the house
without seeing it."
Mercy started. "I beg your pardon, Mr. White. I should not think of such a
thing as giving up the lease. I am very sorry you saw how ugly I think the
house. I do think it is the very ugliest house I ever saw," she continued,
speaking with emphatic deliberation; "but, then, I have not seen many
houses. In our village at home, all the houses are low and broad and
comfortable-looking. They look as if they had sat down and leaned back
to take their ease; and they are all neat and clean-looking, and have rows
of flower-beds from the gate to the front door. I never saw a house built
with such a steep angle to its roof as this has," said Mercy, looking up
with the instinctive dislike of a natural artist's eye at the ridgepole of
the old house.
"We have to have our roofs at a sharp pitch, to let the snow slide off in
winter," said Stephen, apologetically, "we have such heavy snows here; but
that doesn't make the angle any less ugly to look at."
"No," said Mercy; and her eyes still roved up and down and over the house,
with not a shadow of relenting in their expression. It was Stephen's turn
to be silent now. He watched her, but did not speak.
Mercy's face was not merely a record of her thoughts: it was a photograph
of them. As plainly as on a written page held in his hand, Stephen White
read the successive phases of thought and struggle which passed through
Mercy's mind for the next five minutes; and he was not in the least
surprised when, turning suddenly towards him with a very sweet smile, she
said in a resolute tone,--
"There! that's done with. I hope you will forgive my rudeness, Mr. White;
but the truth is I was awfully shocked at the first sight of the house. It
isn't your house, you know, so it isn't quite so bad for me to say so; and
I'm so glad you hate it as much as I do. Now I am never going to think
about it again,--never."
"Why, can you help it, Mrs. Philbrick?" asked Stephen, in a wondering
tone. "I can't. I hate it more and more, I verily believe, each time I
come home; and I think that, if my mother weren't in it, I should burn it
down some night."
Mercy looked at him with a certain shade of the same contempt with which
she had looked at the house; and Stephen winced, as she said coolly,--
"Why, of course I can help it. I should be very much ashamed of myself if
I couldn't. I never allow myself to be distressed by things which I can't
help,--at least, that sort of thing," added Mercy, her face clouding with
the sudden recollection of a grief that she had not been able to rise
above. "Of course, I don't mean real troubles, like grief about any one
you love. One can't wholly conquer such troubles as that; but one can do a
great deal more even with these than people usually suppose. I am not sure
that it is right to let ourselves be unhappy about any thing, even the
worst of troubles. But I must hurry home now. It is growing late."
"Mrs. Philbrick," exclaimed Stephen, earnestly: "please come into the
house, and speak to my mother a moment. You don't know how she has been
looking forward to your coming."
"Oh, no, I cannot possibly do that," replied Mercy. "There is no reason
why I should call on your mother, merely because we are going to live in
the same house."
"But I assure you," persisted Stephen, "that it will give her the greatest
pleasure. She is a helpless cripple, and never leaves her bed. She has
probably been watching us from the window. She always watches for me. She
will wonder if I do not bring you in to see her. Please come," he said
with a tone which it was impossible to resist; and Mercy went.
Mrs. White had indeed been watching them from the window; but Stephen had
reckoned without his host, or rather without his hostess, when he assured
Mercy that his mother would be so glad to see her. The wisest and the
tenderest of men are continually making blunders in their relations with
women; especially if they are so unfortunate as to occupy in any sense a
position involving a relation to two women at once. The relation may be
ever so rightful and honest to each woman; the women may be good women,
and in their right places; but the man will find himself perpetually
getting into most unexpected hot water, as many a man could testify
pathetically, if he were called upon.
Mrs. White had been watching her son through the whole of his conversation
with Mercy. She could see only dimly at such a distance; but she had
discerned that it was a woman with whom he stood talking so long. It was
nearly half an hour past supper-time, and supper was Mrs. White's one
festivity in the course of the day. Their breakfast and their mid-day
dinner were too hurried meals for enjoyment, because Stephen was obliged
to make haste to the office; but with supper there was nothing to
interfere. Stephen's work for the day was done: he took great pains to
tell her at this time every thing which he had seen or heard which could
give her the least amusement. She looked forward all through her long
lonely days to the evenings, as a child looks forward to Saturday
afternoons. Like all invalids whose life has been forced into grooves, she
was impatient and unreasonable when anybody or any thing interfered with
her routine. A five minutes' delay was to her a serious annoyance, and
demanded an accurate explanation. Stephen so thoroughly understood this
exactingness on her part that he adjusted his life to it, as a
conscientious school-boy adjusts his to bells and signals, and never
trespassed knowingly. If he had dreamed that it was past tea-time, on this
unlucky night, he would never have thought of asking Mercy to go in and
see his mother. But he did not; and it was with a bright and eager face
that he threw open the door, and said in the most cordial tone,--
"Mother, I have brought Mrs. Philbrick to see you."
"How do you do, Mrs. Philbrick?" was the rejoinder, in a tone and with a
look so chilling that poor Mercy's heart sank within her. She had all
along had an ideal in her own mind of the invalid old lady, Mr. White's
mother, to whom she was to be very good, and who was to be her mother's
companion. She pictured her as her own mother would be, a good deal older
and feebler, in a gentle, receptive, patient old age. Of so repellent,
aggressive, unlovely an old woman as this she had had no conception. It
would be hard to do justice in words to Mrs. White's capacity to be
disagreeable when she chose. She had gray eyes, which, though they had a
very deceptive trick of suffusing with tears as of great sensibility on
occasion, were capable of resting upon a person with a positively unhuman
coldness; her voice also had at these times a distinctly unhuman quality
in its tones. She had apparently no conception of any necessity of
controlling her feelings, or the expression of them. If she were pleased,
if all things went precisely as she liked, if all persons ministered to
her pleasure, well and good,--she would be graciously pleased to smile,
and be good-humored. If she were displeased, if her preferences were not
consulted, if her plans were interfered with, woe betide the first person
who entered her presence; and still more woe betide the person who was
responsible for her annoyance.
As soon as Stephen's eyes fell on her face, on this occasion, he felt with
a sense of almost terror that he had made a fatal mistake, and he knew
instantly that it must be much later than he had supposed; but he plunged
bravely in, like a man taking a header into a pool he fears he may drown
in, and began to give a voluble account of how he had found Mrs. Philbrick
sitting on their stone wall, so absorbed in looking at the bright leaves
that she had not even seen the house. He ran on in this strain for some
minutes, hoping that his mother's mood might soften, but in vain. She
listened with the same stony, unresponsive look on her face, never taking
the stony, unresponsive eyes from his face; and, as soon as he stopped
speaking, she said in an equally stony voice,--
"Mrs. Philbrick, will you be so good as to take off your bonnet and take
tea with us? It is already long past our tea-hour!"
Mercy sprang to her feet, and said impulsively, "Oh, no, I thank you. I
did not dream that it was so late. My mother will be anxious about me. I
must go. I am very sorry I came in. Good-evening."
"Good-evening, Mrs. Philbrick," in the same slow and stony syllables, came
from Mrs. White's lips, and she turned her head away immediately.
Stephen, with his face crimson with mortification, followed Mercy to the
door. In a low voice, he said, "I hope you will be able to make allowances
for my mother's manner. It is all my fault. I know that she can never bear
to have me late at meals, and I ought never to allow myself to forget the
hour. It is all my fault"
Mercy's indignation at her reception was too great for her sense of
courtesy.
"I don't think it was your fault at all, Mr. White," she exclaimed.
"Good-night," and she was out of sight before Stephen could think of a
word to say.
Very slowly he walked back into the sitting-room. He had seldom been so
angry with his mother; but his countenance betrayed no sign of it, and he
took his seat opposite her in silence. Silence, absolute, unconquerable
silence, was the armor which Stephen White wore. It was like those
invisible networks of fine chains worn next the skin, in which many men in
the olden time passed unscathed through years of battles, and won the
reputation of having charmed lives. No one suspected the secret. To the
ordinary beholder, the man seemed accoutred in the ordinary fashion of
soldiers; but, whenever a bullet struck him, it glanced off harmlessly as
if turned back by a spell. It was so with Stephen White's silence: in
ordinary intercourse, he was social genial; he talked more than average
men talk; he took or seemed to take, more interest than men usually take
in the common small talk of average people; but the instant there was a
manifestation of anger, of discord of any thing unpleasant, he entrenched
himself in silence. This was especially the case when he was reproached or
aroused by his mother. It was often more provoking to her than any amount
of retort or recrimination could have been. She had in her nature a
certain sort of slow ugliness which delighted in dwelling upon a small
offence, in asking irritating questions about it, in reiterating its
details; all the while making it out a matter of personal unkindness or
indifference to her that it should have happened. When she was in these
moods, Stephen's silence sometimes provoked her past endurance.
"Can't you speak, Stephen?" she would exclaim.
"What would be the use, mother?" he would say sadly. "If you do not know
that the great aim of my life is to make you happy, it is of no use for me
to keep on saying it. If it would make you any happier to keep on
discussing and discussing this question indefinitely, I would endure even
that; but it would not."
To do Mrs. White justice, she was generally ashamed of these ebullitions
of unreasonable ill-temper, and endeavored to atone for them afterward by
being more than ordinarily affectionate and loving in her manner towards
Stephen. But her shame was short-lived, and never made her any the less
unreasonable or exacting when the next occasion occurred; so that,
although Stephen received her affectionate epithets and caresses with
filial responsiveness, he was never in the slightest degree deluded by
them. He took them for what they were worth, and held himself no whit
freer from constraint, no whit less ready for the next storm. By the very
fact of the greater fineness of his organization, this tyrannical woman
held him chained. His submission to her would have seemed abject, if it
had not been based on a sentiment and grounded in a loyalty which
compelled respect. He had accepted this burden as the one great duty of
his life; and, whatever became of him, whatever became of his life, the
burden should be carried. This helpless woman, who stood to him in the
relation of mother, should be made happy. From the moment of his father's
death, he had assumed this obligation as a sacrament; and, if it lasted
his life out, he would never dream of evading or lessening it. In this
fine fibre of loyalty, Stephen White and Mercy Philbrick were alike:
though it was in him more an exalted sentiment; in her, simply an organic
necessity. In him, it would always have been in danger of taking morbid
shapes and phases; of being over-ridden and distorted at any time by
selfishness or wickedness in its object, as it had been by his selfish
mother. In Mercy, it was on a higher and healthier plane. Without being a
shade less loyal, she would be far clearer-sighted; would render, but not
surrender; would give a lifetime of service, but not a moment of
subjection. There was a shade of something feminine in Stephen's loyalty,
of something perhaps masculine in Mercy's; but Mercy's was the best, the
truest.
"I wouldn't allow my mother to treat a stranger like that," she thought
indignantly, as she walked away after Mrs. White's inhospitable invitation
to tea. "I wouldn't allow her. I would make her see the shamefulness of
it. What a weak man Mr. White must be!"
Yet if Mercy could have looked into the room she had just left, and have
seen Stephen listening with a face unmoved, save for a certain compression
of the mouth, and a look of patient endurance in the eyes, to a torrent of
ill-nature from his mother, she would have recognized that he had
strength, however much she might have undervalued its type.
"I should really think that you might have more consideration, Stephen,
than to be so late to tea, when you know it is all I have to look forward
to, all day long. You stood a good half hour talking with that woman, Did
you not know how late it was?"
"No, mother. If I had, I should have come in."
"I suppose you had your watch on, hadn't you?"
"Yes, mother."
"Well, I'd like to know what excuse there is for a man's not knowing what
time it is, when he has a watch in his pocket? And then you must needs
bring her in here, of all things,--when you know I hate to see people
near my meal-times, and you must have known it was near supper-time. At
any rate, watch or no watch, I suppose you didn't think you'd started to
come home in the middle of the afternoon, did you? And what did you want
her to come in for, anyhow? I'd like to know that. Answer me, will you?"
"Simply because I thought that it would give you pleasure to see some one,
mother. You often complain of being so lonely, of no one's coming in,"
replied Stephen, in a tone which was pathetic, almost shrill, from its
effort to be patient and calm.
"I wish, if you can't speak in your own voice, you wouldn't speak at all,"
said the angry woman. "What makes you change your voice so?"
Stephen made no reply. He knew very well this strange tone which sometimes
came into his voice, when his patience was tried almost beyond endurance.
He would have liked to avoid it; he was instinctively conscious that it
often betrayed to other people what he suffered. But it was beyond his
control: it seemed as if all the organs of speech involuntarily clenched
themselves, as the hand unconsciously clenches itself when a man is
enraged.
Mrs. White persisted. "Your voice, when you're angry, 's enough to drive
anybody wild. I never heard any thing like it. And I'm sure I don't see
what you have to be angry at now. I should think I was the one to be
angry. You're all I've got in the world, Stephen; and you know what a life
I lead. It isn't as if I could go about, like other women; then I
shouldn't care where you spent your time, if you didn't want to spend it
with me." And tears, partly of ill-temper, partly of real grief, rolled
down the hard, unlovely, old face.
This was only one evening. There are three hundred and sixty-five in a
year. Was not the burden too heavy for mortal man to carry?