The beautiful white New England winter had set in. As far as the eye could
reach, nothing but white could be seen. The boundary, lines of stone walls
and fences were gone, or were indicated only by raised and rounded lines
of the same soft white. On one side of these were faintly pencilled dark
shadows in the morning and in the afternoon; but at high noon the fields
were as unbroken a white as ever Arctic explorer saw, and the roads shone
in the sun like white satin ribbons flung out in all directions. The
groves of maple and hickory and beech were bare. Their delicate gray tints
spread in masses over the hillsides like a transparent, gray veil, through
which every outline of the hills was clear, but softened. The massive
pines and spruces looked almost black against the white of the snow, and
the whole landscape was at once shining and sombre; an effect which is
peculiar to the New England winter in the hill country, and is always
either very depressing or very stimulating to the soul. Dreamy and inert
and phlegmatic people shiver and huddle, see only the sombreness, and find
the winter one long imprisonment in the dark. But to a joyous, brisk,
sanguine soul, the clear, crisp, cold air is like wine; and the whiteness
and sparkle and shine of the snow are like martial music, a constant
excitement and spell.
Mercy's soul thrilled within her with new delight and impulse each day.
The winter had always oppressed her before. On the seashore, winter means
raw cold, a pale, gray, angry ocean, fierce winds, and scanty wet snows.
This brilliant, frosty air, so still and dry that it never seemed cold,
this luxuriance of snow piled soft and high as if it meant shelter and
warmth,--as indeed it does,--were very wonderful to Mercy. She would have
liked to be out of doors all day long: it seemed to her a fairer than
summer-time. She followed the partially broken trails of the wood-cutters
far into the depths of the forests, and found there on sunny days, in
sheltered spots, where the feet of the men and horses and the runners of
the heavy sledges had worn away the snow, green mosses and glossy ferns
and shining clumps of the hepatica. It was a startling sight on a December
day, when the snow was lying many inches deep, to come suddenly on Mercy
walking in the middle of the road, her hands filled with green ferns and
mosses and vines. There were three different species of ground-pine in
these woods, and hepatica and pyrola and wintergreen, and thickets of
laurel. What wealth for a lover of wild, out-door things! Each day Mercy
bore home new treasures, until the house was almost as green and fragrant
as a summer wood. Day after day, Mrs. White, from her point of observation
at her window, watched the lithe young figure coming down the road,
bearing her sheaves of boughs and vines, sometimes on her shoulder, as
lightly and gracefully as a peasant girl of Italy might bear her poised
basket of grapes. Gradually a deep wonder took possession of the lonely
old woman's soul.
"Whatever can she do with all that green stuff?" she thought. "She's
carried in enough to trim the 'Piscopal church twice over."
At last she shared her perplexity with Marty.
"Marty," said she one day, "have you ever seen Mrs. Philbrick come into
the house without somethin' green in her hands? What do you suppose she's
goin' to do with it all?"
"Lord knows," answered Marty. "I've been a speckkerlatin' about that very
thing myself. They can't be a brewin' beer this time o' year; but I see
her yesterday with her hands full o' pyroly."
"I wish you would make an errand in there, Marty," said Mrs. White, "and
see if you can any way find out what it's all for. She's carried in pretty
near a grove of pine-trees, I should say."
The willing Marty went, and returned with a most surprising tale. Every
room was wreathed with green vines. There were evergreen trees in boxes;
the window-seats were filled with pots of green things growing; waving
masses of ferns hung down from brackets on the walls.
"I jest stood like a dumb critter the minnit I got in," said Marty. "I
didn't know whether I wuz in the house or out in the woods, the whole
place smelled o' hemlock so, an' looked so kind o' sunny and shady all ter
oncet.--I jest wished Steve could see it. He'd go wild," added the
unconsciously injudicious Marty.
Mrs. White's face darkened instantly.
"It must be very unwholesome to have rooms made so dark and damp," she
said. "I should think people might have more sense."
"Oh, it wa'n't dark a mite!" interrupted Marty, eagerly. "There wuz a
blazin' fire on the hearth in the settin'-room, an' the sun a-streamin'
into both the south winders. It made shadders on the floor, jest as it
does in the woods. I'd jest ha' liked to set down there a spell, and not
do nothin' but watch 'em."
At this moment, a low knock at the door interrupted the conversation.
Marty opened the door, and there stood Mercy herself, holding in her hands
some wreaths of laurel and pine, and a large earthen dish with ferns
growing in it. It was the day before Christmas; and Mercy had been busy
all day, putting up the Christmas decorations in her rooms. As she hung
cross after cross, and wreath after wreath, she thought of the poor,
lonely, and peevish old woman she had seen there weeks before, and
wondered if she would have any Christmas evergreens to brighten her room.
"I don't suppose a man would ever think of such things," thought Mercy.
"I've a great mind to carry her in some. I'll never muster courage to go
in there, unless I go to carry her something; and I may as well do it
first as last. Perhaps she doesn't care any thing about things from the
woods; but I think they may do her good without her knowing it. Besides, I
promised to go." It was now ten days since Stephen, meeting Mercy in the
town one day, had stopped, and said to her, in a half-sad tone which had
touched her,--
"Do you really never mean to come again to see my mother? I do assure you
it would be a great kindness."
His tone conveyed a great deal,--his tone and his eyes. They said as
plainly as words could have said,--
"I know that my mother treated you abominably, I know she is very
disagreeable; but, after all, she is helpless and alone, and if you could
only once get her to like you, and would come and see her now and then, it
would be a kindness to her, and a great help to me; and I do yearn to know
you better; and I never can, unless you will begin the acquaintance by
being on good terms with my mother."
All this Stephen's voice and eyes had said to Mercy's eyes and heart,
while his lips, pronounced the few commonplace words which were addressed
to her ear. All this Mercy was revolving in her thoughts, as she deftly
and with almost a magic touch laid the soft mosses in the earthen dish,
and planted them thick with ferns and hepatica and partridge-berry vines
and wintergreen. But all she was conscious of saying to herself was, "Mr.
White asked me to go; and it really is not civil not to do it, and I may
as well have it over with."
When Mrs. White's eyes first fell on Mercy in the doorway, they rested on
her with the same cold gaze which had so repelled her on their first
interview. But no sooner did she see the dish of mosses than her face
lighted up, and exclaiming, "Oh, where did you get those partridge-berry
vines?" she involuntarily stretched out her hands. The ice was broken.
Mercy felt at home at once, and at once conceived a true sentiment of
pity for Mrs. White, which never wholly died out of her heart. Kneeling on
the floor by her bed, she said eagerly,--
"I am so glad you like them, Mrs. White. Let me hold them down low, where
you can look at them."
Some subtle spell must have linked itself in Mrs. White's brain with the
dainty red partridge berries. Her eyes filled with tears, as she lifted
the vines gently in her fingers, and looked at them. Mercy watched her
with great surprise; but with the quick instinct of a poet's temperament
she thought, "She hasn't seen them very likely since she was a little
girl."
"Did you use to like them when you were a child, Mrs. White?" she asked.
"I used to pick them when I was young," replied Mrs. White,
dreamily,--"when I was young: not when I was a child, though. May I have
one of them to keep?" she asked presently, still holding an end of one of
the vines in her fingers.
"Oh, I brought them in for you, for Christmas," exclaimed Mercy. "They are
all for you."
Mrs. White was genuinely astonished. No one had ever done this kind of
thing for her before. Stephen always gave her on her birthday and on
Christmas a dutiful and somewhat appropriate gift, though very sorely he
was often puzzled to select a thing which should not jar either on his own
taste or his mother's sense of utility. But a gift of this kind, a simple
little tribute to her supposed womanly love of the beautiful, a thoughtful
arrangement to give her something pleasant to look upon for a time, no
one had ever before made. It gave her an emotion of real gratitude, such
as she had seldom felt.
"You are very kind, indeed,--very," she said with emphasis, and in a
gentler tone than Mercy had before heard from her lips. "I shall have a
great deal of comfort out of it."
Then Mercy set the dish on a small table, and hung up the wreaths in the
windows. As she moved about the room lightly, now and then speaking in her
gay, light-hearted voice, Mrs. White thought to herself,--
"Steve was right. She is a wonderful cheery body." And, long after Mercy
had gone, she continued to think happily of the pleasant incident of the
fresh bright face and the sweet voice. For the time being, her jealous
distrust of the possible effect of these upon her son slumbered.
When Stephen entered his mother's room that night, his heart gave a sudden
bound at the sight of the green wreaths and the dish of ferns. He saw them
on fhe first instant after opening the door; he knew in the same instant
that the hands of Mercy Philbrick must have placed them there; but, also,
in that same brief instant came to him an involuntary impulse to pretend
that he did not observe them; to wait till his mother should have spoken
of them first, that he might know whether she were pleased or not by the
gift. So infinitely small are the first beginnings of the course of deceit
into which tyranny always drives its victim. It could not be called a
deceit, the simple forbearing to speak of a new object which one observed
in a room. No; but the motive made it a sure seed of a deceit: for when
Mrs. White said, "Why, Stephen, you haven't noticed the greens! Look in
the windows!" his exclamation of apparent surprise, "Why, how lovely!
Where did they come from?" was a lie. It did not seem so, however, to
Stephen. It seemed to him simply a politic suppression of a truth, to save
his mother's feelings, to avoid a possibility of a war of words. Mercy
Philbrick, under the same circumstances, would have replied,--
"Oh, yes, I saw them as soon as I came in. I was waiting for you to tell
me about them," and even then would have been tortured by her conscience,
because she did not say why she was waiting.
While his mother was telling him of Mercy's call, and of the report Marty
had brought back of the decorations of the rooms, Stephen stood with his
face bent over the ferns, apparently absorbed in studying each leaf
minutely; then he walked to the windows and examined the wreaths. He felt
himself so suddenly gladdened by these tokens of Mercy's presence, and by
his mother's evident change of feeling towards her, that he feared his
face would betray too much pleasure; he feared to speak, lest his voice
should do the same thing. He was forced to make a great effort to speak in
a judiciously indifferent tone, as he said,--
"Indeed, they are very pretty. I never saw mosses so beautifully arranged;
and it was so thoughtful of her to bring them in for you for Christmas
Eve. I wish we had something to send in to them, don't you?"
"Well, I've been thinking," said his mother, "that we might ask them to
come in and take dinner with us to-morrow. Marty's made some capital
mince-pies, and is going to roast a turkey. I don't believe they'll be
goin' to have any thing better, do you, Stephen?"
Stephen walked very suddenly to the fire, and made a feint of rearranging
it, that he might turn his face entirely away from his mother's sight. He
was almost dumb with astonishment. A certain fear mingled with it. What
meant this sudden change? Did it portend good or evil? It seemed too
sudden, too inexplicable, to be genuine. Stephen had yet to learn the
magic power which Mercy Philbrick had to compel the liking even of people
who did not choose to like her.
"Why, yes, mother," he said, "that would be very nice. It is a long time
since we had anybody to Christmas dinner."
"Well, suppose you run in after tea and ask them," replied Mrs. White, in
the friendliest of tones.
"Yes, I'll go," answered Stephen, feeling as if he were a man talking in a
dream. "I have been meaning to go in ever since they came."
After tea, Stephen sat counting the minutes till he should go. To all
appearances, he was buried in his newspaper, occasionally reading a
paragraph aloud to his mother. He thought it better that she should remind
him of his intention to go; that the call should be purely at her
suggestion. The patience and silence with which he sat waiting for her to
remember and speak of it were the very essence of deceit again,--twice in
this one hour an acted lie, of which his dulled conscience took no note
or heed. Fine and impalpable as the meshes of the spider's-web are the
bands and bonds of a habit of concealment; swift-growing, too, and in
ever-widening circles, like the same glittering net woven for death.
At last Mrs. White said, "Steve, I think it's getting near nine o'clock.
You'd better go in next door before it's any later."
Stephen pulled out his watch. By his own sensations, he would have said
that it must be midnight.
"Yes, it is half-past eight. I suppose I had better go now," he said, and
bade his mother good-night.
He went out into the night with a sense of ecstasy of relief and joy. He
was bewildered at himself. How this strong sentiment towards Mercy
Philbrick had taken possession of him he could not tell. He walked up and
down in the snowy path in front of the house for some minutes, questioning
himself, sounding with a delicious dread the depths of this strange sea in
which he suddenly found himself drifting. He went back to the day when
Harley Allen's letter first told him of the two women who might become his
tenants. He felt then a presentiment that a new element was to be
introduced into his life; a vague, prophetic sense of some change at hand.
Then came the first interview, and his sudden disappointment, which he now
blushed to recollect. It seemed to him as if some magician must have laid
a spell upon his eyes, that he did not see even in that darkness how
lovely a face Mercy had, did not feel even through all the embarrassment
and strangeness the fascination of her personal presence. Then he dwelt
lingeringly on the picture, which had never faded from his brain, of his
next sight of her, as she sat on the old stone wall, with the gay
maple-leaves and blackberry-vines in her lap. From that day to the
present, he had seen her only a half dozen times, and only for a chance
greeting as they had passed each other in the street; but it seemed to him
that she had never been really absent from him, so conscious was he of her
all the time. So absorbed was he in these thoughts that a half-hour was
gone before he realized it, and the village bells were ringing for nine o'
clock when he knocked on the door of the wing.
Mrs. Carr had rolled up her knitting, and was just on the point of going
upstairs. Their little maid of all work had already gone to bed, when
Stephen's loud knock startled them all.
"Gracious alive! Mercy, what's that?" exclaimed Mrs. Carr, all sorts of
formless terrors springing upon her at once. Mercy herself was astonished,
and ran hastily to open the door. When she saw Stephen standing there, her
astonishment was increased, and she looked it so undisguisedly that he
said,--
"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Philbrick. I know it is late, but my mother sent
me in with a message." ...
"Pray come in, Mr. White," interrupted Mercy. "It is not really late, only
we keep such absurdly early hours, and are so quiet, as we know nobody
here, that a knock at the door in the evening makes us all jump. Pray
come in," and she threw open the door into the sitting-room, where the
lamps had already been put out, and the light of a blazing hickory log
made long flickering shadows on the crimson carpet. In this dancing light,
the room looked still more like a grove than it had to Marty at high noon.
Stephen's eyes fastened hungrily on the sight.
"Your room is almost too much to resist," he said; "but I will not come in
now. I did not know it was so late. My mother wishes to know if you and
your mother will not come in and eat a Christmas dinner with us to-morrow.
We live in the plainest way, and cannot entertain in the ordinary
acceptation of the term. We only ask you to our ordinary home-dinner," he
added, with a sudden sense of the incongruity between the atmosphere of
refined elegance which pervaded Mercy's simple, little room, and the
expression which all his efforts had never been able to banish from his
mother's parlor.
"Oh thank you, Mr. White. You are very good. I think we should like to
come very much. Mother and I were just saying that it would be the first
Christmas dinner we ever ate alone. But you must come in, Mr. White,--I
insist upon it," replied Mercy, stretching out one hand towards him, as if
to draw him in.
Stephen went. On the threshold of the sitting-room he paused and stood
silent for some minutes. Mercy was relighting the lamps.
"Oh, Mrs. Philbrick!" he exclaimed, "won't you please not light the lamps.
This firelight on these evergreens is the loveliest thing I ever saw."
Too unconventional to think of any reasons why she should not sit with
Stephen White alone by firelight in her own house, Mercy blew out the lamp
she had lighted, and drawing a chair close up to the hearth sat down, and
clasping her hands in her lap looked eagerly into Stephen's face, and said
as simply as a child,--
"I like firelight, too, a great deal better than any other light. Some
evenings we do not light the lamps at all. Mother can knit just as well
without much light, and I can think better."
Mercy was sitting in a chair so low that, to look at Stephen, she had to
lift her face. It was the position in which her face was sweetest. Some
lines, which were a shade too strong and positive when her face fully
confronted you, disappeared entirely when it was thrown back and her eyes
were lifted. It was then as ingenuous and tender and trustful a face as if
she had been but eight instead of eighteen.
Stephen forgot himself, forgot the fact that Mercy was comparatively a
stranger, forgot every thing, except the one intense consciousness of this
sweet woman-face looking up into his. Bending towards her, he said
suddenly,--
"Mrs. Philbrick, your face is the very loveliest face I have ever seen in
my life. Do not be angry with me. Oh, do not!" he continued, seeing the
color deepen in Mercy's cheeks, and a stern expression gathering in her
eyes, as she looked steadily at him with unutterable surprise. "Do not be
angry with me. I could not help saying it; but I do not say it as men
generally say such things. I am not like other men: I have lived alone
all my life with my mother. You need not mind my saying your face is
lovely, any more than my saying that the ferns on the walls are lovely."
If Stephen had known Mercy from her childhood, he could not have framed
his words more wisely. Every fibre of her artistic nature recognized the
possibility of a subtle truth in what he said, and his calm, dreamy tone
and look heightened this impression. Moreover, as Stephen's soul had been
during all the past four weeks slowly growing into the feeling which made
it inevitable that he should say these words on first looking closely and
intimately into Mercy's face, so had her soul been slowly growing into the
feeling which made it seem not really foreign or unnatural to her that he
should say them.
She answered him with hesitating syllables, quite unlike her usual fluent
speech.
"I think you must mean what you say, Mr. White; and you do not say it as
other men have said it. But will you please to remember not to say it
again? We cannot be friends, if you do."
"Never again, Mrs. Philbrick?" he said,--he could almost have said
"Mercy,"--and looked at her with a gaze of whose intentness he was hardly
aware.
Mercy felt a strange terror of this man; a few minutes ago a stranger, now
already asking at her hands she hardly knew what, and compelling her in
spite of herself. But she replied very quietly, with a slight smile,--
"Never, Mr. White. Now talk of something else, please. Your mother seemed
very much pleased with the ferns I carried her to-day. Did she love the
woods, when she was well?"
"I do not know. I never heard her say," answered Stephen, absently, still
gazing into Mercy's face.
"But you would have known, surely, if she had cared for them," said Mercy,
laughing; for she perceived that Stephen had spoken at random.
"Oh, yes, certainly,--certainly. I should have known," said Stephen, still
with a preoccupied air, and rising to go. "I thank you for letting me come
into this beautiful room with you. I shall always think of your face
framed in evergreens, and with flickering firelight on it."
"You are not going away, are you, Mr. White?" asked Mercy, mischievously.
"Oh, no, certainly not. I never go away. How could I go away? Why did you
ask?"
"Oh," laughed Mercy, "because you spoke as if you never expected to see my
face after to-night. That's all."
Stephen smiled. "I am afraid I seem a very absent-minded person," he said.
"I did not mean that at all. I hope to see you very often, if I may.
Good-night."
"Good-night, Mr. White. We shall be very glad to see you as often as you
like to come. You may be sure of that; but you must come earlier, or you
will find us all asleep. Good-night."
Stephen spent another half-hour pacing up and down in the snowy path in
front of the house. He did not wish to go in until his mother was asleep.
Very well he knew that it would be better that she did not see his face
that night. When he went in, the house was dark and still. As he passed
his mother's door, she called, "Steve!"
"All right, mother. They'll come," he replied, and ran swiftly up to his
own room.
During this half-hour, Mercy had been sitting in her low chair by the
fire, looking steadily into the leaping blaze, and communing very sternly
with her own heart on the subject of Stephen White. Her pitiless honesty
of nature was just as inexorable in its dealing with her own soul as with
others; she never paltered with, nor evaded an accusation of, her
consciousness. At this moment, she was indignantly admitting to herself
that her conduct and her feeling towards Stephen were both deserving of
condemnation. But, when she asked herself for their reason, no answer came
framed in words, no explanation suggested itself, only Stephen's face rose
up before her, vivid, pleading, as he had looked when he said, "Never
again, Mrs. Philbrick?" and as she looked again into the dark blue eyes,
and heard the low tones over again, she sank into a deeper and deeper
reverie, from which gradually all self-accusation, all perplexity, faded
away, leaving behind them only a vague happiness, a dreamy sense of joy.
If lovers could look back on the first quickening of love in their souls,
how precious would be the memories; but the unawakened heart never knows
the precise instant of the quickening. It is wrapped in a half-conscious
wonder and anticipation; and, by the time the full revelation comes, the
impress of the first moments has been wiped out by intenser experiences.
How many lovers have longed to trace the sweet stream back to its very
source, to the hidden spring which no man saw, but have lost themselves
presently in the broad greenness, undisturbed and fertile, through which,
like a hidden stream through an emerald meadow, the love had been flowing
undiscovered.
Months after, when Mercy's thoughts reverted to this evening, all she
could recollect was that on the night of Stephen's first call she had been
much puzzled by his manner and his words, had thought it very strange that
he should seem to care-so much for her, and perhaps still more strange
that she herself found it not unpleasing that he did so. Stephen's
reminiscences were at once more distinct and more indistinct,--more
distinct of his emotions, more indistinct of the incidents. He could not
recollect one word which had been said: only his own vivid consciousness
of Mercy's beauty; her face "framed in evergreens, with the firelight
flickering on it," as he had told her he should always think of it.
Christmas morning came, clear, cold, shining bright. A slight thaw the day
before had left every bough and twig and pine-needle covered with a
moisture that had frozen in the night into glittering crystal sheaths,
which flashed like millions of prisms in the sun. The beauty of the scene
was almost solemn. The air was so frosty cold that even the noon sun did
not melt these ice-sheaths; and, under the flood of the full mid-day
light, the whole landscape seemed one blaze of jewels. When Mercy and her
mother entered Mrs. White's room, half an hour before the dinner-hour,
they found her sitting with the curtains drawn, because the light had hurt
her eyes.
"Oh, Mrs. White!" exclaimed Mercy. "It is cruel you should not see this
glorious spectacle! If you had the window open, the light would not hurt
your eyes. It is the glare of it coming through the glass. Let us wrap you
up, and draw you close to the window, and open it wide, so that you can
see the colors for a few minutes. It is just like fairy-land."
Mrs. White looked bewildered. Such a plan as this of getting out-door air
she had never thought of.
"Won't it make the room too cold?" she said.
"Oh, no, no!" cried Mercy; "and no matter if it does. We can soon warm it
up again. Please let me ask Marty to come?" And, hardly waiting for
permission, she ran to call Marty. Wrapped up in blankets, Mrs. White was
then drawn in her bed close to the open window, and lay there with a look
of almost perplexed delight on her face. When Stephen came in, Mercy stood
behind her, a fleecy white cloud thrown over her head, pointing out
eagerly every point of beauty in the view. A high bush of sweet-brier,
with long, slender, curving branches, grew just in front of the window.
Many of the cup-like seed-vessels still hung on the boughs: they were all
finely encrusted with frost. As the wind faintly stirred the branches,
every frost-globule flashed its full rainbow of color; the long sprays
looked like wands strung with tiny fairy beakers, inlaid with pearls and
diamonds. Mercy sprang to the window, took one of these sprays in her
fingers, and slowly waved it up and down in the sunlight.
"Oh, look at it against the blue sky!" she cried. "Isn't it enough to make
one cry just to see it?"
"Oh, how can mother help loving her?" thought Stephen. "She is the
sweetest woman that ever drew breath."
Mrs. White seemed indeed to have lost all her former distrust and
antagonism. She followed Mercy's movements with eyes not much less eager
and pleased than Stephen's. It was like a great burst of sunlight into a
dark place, the coming of this earnest, joyous, outspoken nature into the
old woman's narrow and monotonous and comparatively uncheered life. She
had never seen a person of Mercy's temperament. The clear, decided,
incisive manner commanded her respect, while the sunny gayety won her
liking. Stephen had gentle, placid sweetness and much love of the
beautiful; but his love of the beautiful was an indolent, and one might
almost say a-haughty, demand in his nature. Mercy's was a bounding and
delighted acceptance. She was cheery: he was only placid. She was full of
delight; he, only of satisfaction. In her, joy was of the spirit,
spiritual. Keen as were her senses, it was her soul which marshalled them
all. In him, though the soul's forces were not feeble, the senses foreran
them,--compelled them, sometimes conquered them. It would have been
impossible to put Mercy in any circumstances, in any situation, out of
which, or in spite of which, she would not find joy. But in Stephen
circumstance and place might as easily destroy as create happiness. His
enjoyment was as far inferior to Mercy's in genuineness and enduringness
as is the shallow lake to the quenchless spring. The waters of each may
leap and sparkle alike, to the eye, in the sunshine; but when drought has
fallen on the lake, and the place that knew it knows it no more, the
spring is full, free, and glad as ever.
Mrs. White's pleasure in Mercy's presence was short-lived. Long before
the simple dinner was over, she had relapsed into her old forbidding
manner, and into a silence which was more chilly than any words could have
been. The reason was manifest. She read in every glance of Stephen's eyes,
in every tone of his voice, the depth and the warmth of his feeling
towards Mercy. The jealous distrust which she had felt at first, and which
had slept for a brief time under the spell of Mercy's kindliness towards
herself, sprang into fiercer life than ever. Stephen and Mercy, in utter
unconsciousness of the change which was gradually taking place, talked and
laughed together in an evident gay delight, which made matters worse every
moment. A short and surly reply from Mrs. White to an innocent question of
Mrs. Carr's fell suddenly on Mercy's ear. Keenly alive to the smallest
slight to her mother, she turned quickly towards Mrs. White, and, to her
consternation, met the same steady, pitiless, aggressive look which she
had seen on her face in their first interview. Mercy's first emotion was
one of great indignation: her second was a quick flash of comprehension of
the whole thing. A great wave of rosy color swept over her face; and,
without knowing what she was doing, she looked appealingly at Stephen.
Already there was between them so subtle a bond that each understood the
other without words. Stephen knew all that Mercy thought in that instant,
and an answering flush mounted to his forehead. Mrs. White saw both these
flushes, and compressed her lips still more closely in a grimmer silence
than before. Poor, unsuspecting Mrs. Carr kept on and on with her
meaningless and childish remarks and inquiries; and Mercy and Stephen were
both very grateful for them. The dinner came to an untimely end; and
almost immediately Mercy, with a nervous and embarrassed air, totally
foreign to her, said to her mother,--
"We must go home now. I have letters to write."
Mrs. Carr was disappointed. She had anticipated a long afternoon of chatty
gossip with her neighbor; but she saw that Mercy had some strong reason
for hurrying home, and she acquiesced unhesitatingly.
Mrs. White did not urge them to remain. To all Mrs. White's faults it must
be confessed that she added the virtue of absolute sincerity.
"Good-afternoon, Mrs. Carr," and "Good-afternoon, Mrs. Philbrick," fell
from her lips in the same measured syllables and the same cold, unhuman
voice which had so startled Mercy once before.
"What a perfectly horrid old woman!" exclaimed Mercy, as soon as they had
crossed the threshold of their own door. "I'll never go near her again as
long as I live!"
"Why, Mercy Carr!" exclaimed her mother, "what do you mean? I don't think
so. She got very tired before dinner was over. I could see that, poor
thing! She's drefful weak, an' it stan's to reason she'd be kind o'
snappish sometimes."
Mercy opened her lips to reply, but changed her mind and said nothing.
"It's just as well for mother to keep on good terms with her, if she can,"
she thought. "Maybe it'll help divert a little of Mrs. White's temper from
him, poor fellow!"
Stephen had followed them to the door, saying little; but at the last
moment, when Mercy said "good-by," he had suddenly held out his hand, and,
clasping hers tightly, had looked at her sadly, with a world of regret and
appeal and affection and almost despair in the look.
"What a life he must lead of it!" thought Mercy. "Dear me! I should go
wild or else get very wicked. I believe I'd get very wicked. I wonder he
shuts himself up so with her. It is all nonsense: it only makes her more
and more selfish. How mean, how base of her, to be so jealous of his
talking with me! If she were his wife, it would be another thing. But he
doesn't belong to her body and soul, if she _is_ his mother. If ever I
know him well enough, I'll tell him so. It isn't manly in him to let her
tyrannize over him and everybody else that comes into the house. I never
saw any human being that made one so afraid, somehow. Her tone and look
are enough to freeze your blood."
While Mercy was buried in these indignant thoughts, Stephen and his
mother, only a few feet away, separated from her only by a wall, were
having a fierce and angry talk. No sooner had the door closed upon Mercy
than Mrs. White had said to Stephen,--
"Have you the slightest idea how much excitement you showed in conversing
with Mrs. Philbrick? I have never seen you look or speak in this way."
The flush had not yet died away on Stephen's face. At this attack, it grew
deeper still. He made no reply. Mrs. White continued,--
"I wish you could see your face. It is almost purple now."
"It is enough to make the blood mount to any man's face, mother, to be
accused so," replied Stephen, with a spirit unusual for him.
"I don't accuse you of any thing," she retorted. "I am only speaking of
what I observe. You needn't think you can deceive me about the least
thing, ever. Your face is a perfect tell-tale of your thoughts, always."
Poor Stephen groaned inwardly. Too well he knew his inability to control
his unfortunate face.
"Mother!" he exclaimed with almost vehemence of tone, "mother! do not
carry this thing too far. I do not in the least understand what you are
driving at about Mrs. Philbrick, nor why you show these capricious changes
of feeling towards her. I think you have treated her so to-day that she
will never darken your doors again. I never should, if I were in her
place."
"Very well, I hope she never will, if her presence is to produce such an
effect on you. It is enough to turn her head to see that she has such
power over a man like you. She is a very vain woman, anyway,--vain of her
power over people, I think."
Stephen could bear no more. With a half-smothered ejaculation of "O
mother!" he left the room.
And thus the old year went out and the new year came in for Mercy
Philbrick and Stephen White,--the old year in which they had been nothing,
and the new year in which they were to be every thing to each other.