AUNT KATHARINE SAXON
In the privacy of their room that night Kate confided to Esther two
resolutions. The first was that she would not again, during her stay at
her grandfather’s, needlessly expose her ignorance of any point of Bible
history: “For if we’re going to get mother into disgrace, and make him
think she never taught us anything about it, it’ll be a pretty
business,” she ended with feeling.
To this Esther gave cordial assent, but she was not so sure of Kate’s
wisdom in the other matter; for the girl, with her usual penetration,
had guessed that the Eastern relatives held a somewhat exalted opinion
of the superiority of New England to the rest of the United States, and
announced her intention of correcting it to the best of her ability.
Esther, whose loyalty to her own section was not of a combative sort,
suggested mildly that people’s opinions about things didn’t alter them,
and that the grandfather, at his advanced age, should at least be left
to the enjoyment of any prejudices he might have in favor of his native
section.
But the allusion to his age should have been omitted. Kate shook her
head at this, and declared that he of all others was the one not to be
spared. Was it not his pride and boast that time had not robbed him of
either mental or physical vigor? No, no; she should not hold herself
debarred from supplying him with new ideas on any subject. It was only
when he stood on Bible ground that she should let him alone.
It was evident the next morning that on this ground he did not intend to
let her alone, for at family prayers he read the pathetic story of
David’s flight from his unworthy son, and his eyes sought hers for a
moment with pointed meaning as he paused on the name of the loyal friend
whose swift generosity remembered the fugitives, “hungry and weary and
thirsty in the wilderness,” and who of good right met them again with
rejoicing in their hour of victory.
The quaint old story held the girl’s absorbed attention to the end. She
wished it were longer, and told her grandfather so after breakfast,
adding that the way he read the Old Testament made it more interesting
than common.
He received the compliment with complacence. “Well,” he said, “I guess I
do read it better than some folks. I guess I’m a little like those men
in the days of Ezra the scribe, who stood up before the people, and
‘read in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them
to understand.’”
Kate privately wondered how many more people in the Bible her
grandfather resembled, but she refrained from suggesting the query, lest
he should claim her attention at once for the whole list.
It was while they sat at table that morning that he said, looking at her
with the sudden lighting of face which marks a mental discovery: “It’s
your great-aunt Katharine that you put me in mind of. I knew there was
somebody. It ain’t your looks so much; but a way you have.”
“Oh, grandfather, how can you?” cried Stella. “Kate, you won’t thank him
much for that when you know Aunt Katharine.”
“She’s the one I was named for, I suppose,” said Kate. “I’ve heard
mother tell about her. Well, if she’s disagreeable, there won’t be any
love lost between us on account of the name. I never did like it
particularly.”
“Disagreeable!” cried Stella, “why, she’s the queerest, most
cross-grained, cantankerous—”
“Stella! Stella!” said her mother, severely. “Why will you prejudice
your cousins against your poor Aunt Katharine?”
“My poor Aunt Katharine will do it herself quick enough,” said Stella.
“Oh, yes,” she added with a little shrug, as she saw her mother’s lips
parting again, “my mother’s going to tell you that Aunt Katharine has
had a great deal in her life to try her, and that she is really a
remarkably bright and capable woman. It’s perfectly true; and several
other things are true besides.”
“The trouble with my sister Katharine,” said Ruel Saxon, setting down
his cup of tea, which he had been drinking so hot that every swallow was
accompanied by an upward jerk of the head and a facial contortion, “the
trouble with Katharine Saxon don’t lay in her nat’ral faculties. It lays
in a stiff-necked and perverse disposition. When she gets a notion into
her head she won’t change it for anybody, and she’s wiser in her own
conceit than ‘seven men that can render a reason.’”
“Grandfather himself frequently personates the whole seven,” observed
Stella, with a nod at her cousins. She smiled, as if the memory of some
past scenes amused her, then said soberly: “The fact of it is, Aunt
Katharine is a regular crank. There’s nothing in this world that goes
right according to her notion of it, but she’s particularly down on the
ways of the men. She _would_ have a little patience with women—for she
thinks their faults are mostly due to their being so down-trodden—if
they only wouldn’t marry. I’ve heard her say so! She never married
herself, you know, and she has an awfully poor opinion of the whole
institution.”
Ruel Saxon looked as if he had a word to offer at this point in regard
to his sister’s matrimonial opinions, but Aunt Elsie was before him.
“Now, don’t you think,” she said, looking gravely at Stella, and
incidentally including him in the passing glance, “that we’d better let
the girls form their own impressions of Aunt Katharine? They may like
her a great deal better than you do, Stella.”
“I’m sure I’m willing,” said the girl, with another shrug, and her
grandfather, after wrestling with a little more extremely hot tea,
seemed to be willing too; but he suggested that the girls should make an
early call on their Aunt Katharine. It would give them a chance of
forming the desired impressions, and besides she would expect it.
The girls accepted the suggestion promptly. Indeed Kate, whose interest
in her namesake had been considerably whetted by what had been said of
her, proposed that they should go that very morning; but to this Aunt
Elsie’s judgment was again opposed. It seemed that Aunt Katharine had a
special dislike to being interrupted in her morning duties by callers,
and was disposed to think slightingly of people who hadn’t “work enough
to keep them at home in the fore part of the day.” In the case of her
nieces, who must certainly be excused for being at leisure, she might
waive the last objection, but it was best to be on the safe side.
It was settled that the girls, accompanied by their grandfather, should
go that afternoon, and if the call had been upon some distinguished
person they could not have taken more pains with their toilets. Esther
debated between three gowns, and finally settled on a soft gray, with
plain white cuffs and collar, while Kate put on a pretty lawn and the
dashing Roman sash which had been Aunt Milly’s parting gift.
It was less than a half hour’s walk across the fields to Aunt
Katharine’s house, but the grandfather had decided to go by the road in
state, and had Dobbin and the two-seated carriage at the door in good
time. He had taken a little more pains than usual with his own
appearance, and his daughter-in-law added the last touches with careful
hand.
She was not much inclined to the giving of gratuitous advice; but, in
the absence of the young people from the room, she did say,
persuasively, as she adjusted the old gentleman’s cravat: “If I were
you, father, I’d try not to get into one of those discussions to-day
with Aunt Katharine. We want the girls to have as pleasant an opinion of
her as possible, and you know she always appears at a disadvantage when
she’s arguing with you.”
Sly Aunt Elsie! There were moments when the wisdom of the serpent was as
nothing to hers. Ruel Saxon twisted his neck for a moment impatiently in
his cravat, then replied meekly: “Well, I s’pose it does kind of put her
out to have me always get the better of her. Katharine has her good
p’ints as well as anybody, and I’d be glad to have Lucia’s children see
’em. If she don’t rile me up too much I’ll—yes, I’ll try to bear with
her this afternoon. Solomon says there’s a time for everything: a time
to keep silence and a time to speak; and mebbe it’s a time to keep
silence to-day.”
In this accommodating frame of mind he started off with his
granddaughters. Stella had declined an invitation to accompany
them—possibly at her mother’s suggestion—though the fact that the way
lay along one of her favorite drives, the old county road, had been
something of an inducement to go.
It was one of those dear old roads, familiar in every part of New
England, through which the main business of the region, now diverted to
other highways, once took its daily course, but which, as its importance
dwindled, had gained in every roadside charm. The woods, sweet with all
summer odors, had crept close to its edge; daisies and ferns encroached
on its borders, and its wavy line made gracious curve for the rock which
had rolled from the hill above and lay beside it still, a moss-covered
perch for children and squirrels. Here, the birds, not startled too
often in their secret haunts, tilted on sprays of the feathery sumach,
finishing their songs with confident clearness as the traveller drew
near, and the swift brown lizards darted across the way before the very
wheels of his carriage.
Miss Katharine Saxon’s farm was one of those which still had contact
with the world through this deserted highway, but its comparative
isolation had not affected its well-kept appearance. The house was
white, with green blinds at the front and sides, but presented a red end
to the fields behind, after the fashion of many in that section. The
dooryard, a small rectangle, was shut off from the surrounding pastures
by a high picket fence, though there were no shrubs, or even a
flower-bed, inside the enclosure. The owner was not visible at any of
the windows as her guests walked up the gravel path, which was too
narrow to admit of their advancing in any but single file, but the brass
knocker had scarcely fallen before she opened the door in person.
[Illustration: “SHE OPENED THE DOOR IN PERSON.”]
Even Esther had no remembrance of having seen her before, but there
could be no doubt of her identity. In feature she was singularly like
her brother, but her small thin figure was not trim and straight like
his. She was so painfully bent as plainly to need the aid of the stout
oak stick on which she leaned, and her hair, in striking contrast with
his, was snowy white. She greeted her nieces with as little effusion as
their Aunt Elsie, but her quick bright eyes betrayed a much keener
interest as they darted sharply from one to the other.
“Well, Ruel, I s’pose you’re feeling just as smart as ever to-day, and
just as able to bless the Lord that you ain’t as the rest of us are.
Thank you, my rheumatism ain’t a mite better ’n ’twas the last time you
was here, and my sight and hearing are mebbe a little grain worse.”
She delivered herself of this with surprising rapidity as she walked
before them into the parlor, looking back with short quick glances at
her brother. He responded by a rather discomfited grunt. Evidently she
had the start of him. The parlor was of the primmest New England type,
and so dark that for some moments the girls, sitting uncomfortably on
straight-backed chairs whose hard stuffed seats seemed never before to
have been pressed by a human figure, could scarcely make out what manner
of place they had entered. It dawned on them by degrees, and if anything
had been needed to enhance the charm of the parlor at the old homestead,
the necessary contrast would certainly have been furnished here.
There was nothing to suggest that any of the ordinary occupations of
human life had ever been carried on in this room. The pictures which
Stella had banished would seem to have been dragged from their
hiding-places and hung on these walls, and beside them there was nothing
of mural ornament except three silver coffin plates framed in oak on a
ground of black. The Northmore girls, gazing in wonder at these shining
tablets, could scarcely believe that they were really what they seemed,
but Stella, to whom they appealed on their return, promptly disabused
them of the doubt. Most certainly these sombre ornaments had their
original place on the funeral casket. It was not uncommon, she said, to
find such relics displayed in old-fashioned houses in this region.
“There were some in our house once,” she added, “but I persuaded
grandfather to let me lay them away in the best bureau drawers. He
objected at first, but after I put up my Madonnas and cathedrals he
succumbed. I believe he considered the place unfit to display the names
of those who had died in the faith.”
But this was afterward. At present Esther was occupied with the
strenuous effort to read the names thus honored of Aunt Katharine, and
Kate was bending all her energies to discover the points in which she
herself resembled that lady. The latter turned upon them now with one of
her sharp glances.
“So you’re Lucia’s girls,” she said with deliberation. “Well, you ain’t
as good looking as she was, neither of you. But handsome is that
handsome does; and if you behave yourselves, you’ll do.”
The girls were somewhat taken aback by this, but Kate rallied in a
moment. “You can’t hurt our feelings by telling us we aren’t as good
looking as mother was,” she said gayly, “for we know she was a regular
beauty. Father’s told us that over and over.”
“I’ll warrant he thought so,” chuckled her grandfather, “and he wasn’t
the only one, neither. Why all the likeliest young fellows in town came
courting your mother. She didn’t have to take up with a Western man
because she couldn’t get anybody nearer home.”
“Perhaps it was because she had a chance to compare the Western man with
those around here that she _did_ take up with him,” said Kate, quickly.
It was a fair retort; but the old gentleman’s forehead puckered for a
moment as if he were not quite prepared for it. Before he could say
anything in reply his sister had changed the subject, by asking, in her
abrupt way, with her eyes fixed on her younger niece, “What do you think
of this country?”
It is the stereotyped question from the old resident to the newcomer in
all parts of the world. Perhaps, convenient as it is in bridging over
the awkwardness of first acquaintance, it would be oftener omitted if
society remembered that dictum of Dr. Johnson’s, that no one has a right
to put you in such a position that you must either hurt him by telling
the truth, or hurt yourself by not telling it. Kate Northmore had never
faced the alternative under very crucial conditions, but whatever twinge
there might be she preferred on general principles to resign to the
other party, and she did so promptly now.
“Well, I can’t say I’m very much struck with the looks of it,” she said
frankly. “It’s different from ours, you know; and these little bits of
fields are so funny, all checkered off with stone walls. I haven’t got
used to them yet.”
Miss Saxon looked at her niece without speaking, but the grandfather
bristled at this. “Hm!” he grunted, “You Western folks seem to think
nothing’s of any account unless it’s big. ’Taint the size of things, but
what you do with ’em, that counts.”
“Well, it’s a wonder to me what you can do with some of this land of
yours, it’s so rough and poor,” said Kate, lightly. “I don’t see how the
farmers manage to make a living, scratching round among the rocks.”
Then, with a good-natured laugh, she added: “Oh, we don’t despise the
littles, out our way, as much as you think; but when it comes to wheat
and corn, and things of that sort, we do like to see a lot of it growing
all together. It looks as if there was enough to go round, you know, and
makes people feel sort of free and easy.”
Perhaps, in his heart, Ruel Saxon doubted whether it was good for people
to feel free and easy in this transient mortal state, but he had no
chance just then to discuss the moral advantages of large labor and
small returns, for Esther exclaimed, with a glance at her sister which
was half reproachful: “But there are so many other things in a country
besides the crops! For my part, I think New England is perfectly
beautiful. I believe I’m in love with it all.”
Miss Katharine Saxon turned her head and looked at the girl attentively.
The mother must have been very pretty indeed if she had ever looked
prettier than Esther did at that moment. A delicate pink had risen in
her cheeks, and her brown eyes seemed unusually soft and lustrous in the
warmth with which she had spoken. She had made a lucky suggestion, and
her grandfather took his cue instantly.
“We never pretended that our strong p’int was raising wheat ’n’ corn
here in New England,” he said loftily. “The old Bay State can do better
than that. She can raise men; men who fear God and honor their country,
and can guide her in the hour of need with the spirit of wisdom and
sound understanding.”
“We’ve got some of that sort, too,” said Kate, cutting in at the first
pause. “The only difference is you started on your list a little ahead
of us.”
But the remark was lost on her grandfather. He was on solid ground now,
and he felt his eloquence rising. “You talk about our land being poor.
Well, mebbe ’tis; mebbe we do have to scratch round among the rocks to
make a living, but we’ve scratched lively enough to do it, and support
our schools and churches, and start yours into the bargain. We’ve
scratched deep enough to find the money to send lots of our boys to
college—there’s been a good many of ’em right from this district. There
was Abner Sickles that went to Harvard from the back side of Rocky Hill,
where they used to say the stones were so thick you had to sharpen the
sheep’s nose to get ’em down to the grass between; there was Baxter
Slocum—thirteen children his father had—there were the Dunham boys,
three out of six in one family.”
For the last minute Miss Katharine Saxon had been moving uneasily in her
chair. Her square chin, which had been resting on her clasped hands at
the top of her cane, had come up, and her eyes were fixed sharply on her
brother.
“While you’re about it, Ruel,” she said, interrupting him in the dryest
of tones, “you might just mention some o’ the _girls_ that have been
sent to college from these old farms.”
Ruel Saxon, reined up thus suddenly in the onward charge of his
eloquence, opened and closed his lips for a moment with a rather
helpless expression. She waited for him to speak, her thin hands
gripping the cane, and the corners of her mouth twitching ominously.
“Well, of course, Katharine,” he said testily, “there hain’t been as
many girls. For that matter there warn’t the female colleges to send ’em
to fifty years ago; but you know yourself there hain’t been the means to
send ’em both, the boys _and_ the girls, and if it couldn’t be but one—”
He paused to moisten his lips, and she took up the word with an accent
of intense bitterness. “If there couldn’t be but one, it must be the
boy, of course,—always the boy. Oh, I know! Yes, and I know how the
girls ’n’ their mothers have slaved to send ’em. It ain’t the men that
have learned how to get more out of the farms; it’s the women that have
learned how to get along with less in the house. There was Abner
Sickles! Yes, there was; and there was his sister Abigail, too. I went
to school with ’em both. She was enough sight smarter ’n he was; always
could see into things quicker, ’n’ handle ’em better, but they took a
notion to send him to college,—wanted to make a minister of him,—and she
stopped going to school when she was fourteen, and did the housework for
the family,—her mother was always sickly,—and then sat up nights, sewing
straw and binding shoes to earn money for Abner.” She paused, with a
note in her voice which suggested a clutch at the throat, then added:
“She died when she was twenty. Went crazy the last part of the time, and
thought she’d committed the unpardonable sin. It’s my opinion somebody
_had_ committed it; but ’twarn’t her.”
It was the old gentleman who was moving uneasily now. “It was too bad
about Abigail,” he said, with a shake of the head. “I remember her case,
and ’twas one of the strangest we ever had in the church. I went out to
see her once, with two of the other deacons, and we set out the doctrine
of the unpardonable sin clear and strong, and showed her that if she
really _had_ committed it she wouldn’t be feeling so bad about it—she’d
have her conscience seared as with a hot iron; but she couldn’t seem to
lay hold of any comfort. However, it was plain that her mind wasn’t
right, and I don’t believe the Lord held her responsible for her lack of
faith.”
The old woman gave an impatient snort. “If he didn’t hold somebody
responsible, you needn’t talk to me about justice,” she said fiercely.
“I don’t know how you and the other deacons figured it out, Ruel, but if
it ain’t the unpardonable sin for folks to act like fools, when the Lord
has given ’em eyes to see with, and sense enough to put two and two
together, I don’t know what ’tis. I tell you the whole trouble grew out
of that notion that a boy must be sent away to school just because he
was a boy, and a girl must be kept at home just because she was a girl.
If the Almighty ever meant to have things go that way why didn’t He give
the men the biggest brains, and put the strongest backs ’n’ arms on the
women? Heaven knows they’ve needed ’em.”
A good memory was undoubtedly one of Ruel Saxon’s strong points, but all
recollection of the gentle warning his daughter-in-law had given him was
put utterly to flight by this speech of his sister’s. He stiffened
himself in his chair, and his nostrils dilated (to use a pet figure of
his own) “like a war-horse smelling the battle from afar.”
“Katharine,” he said, “you darken counsel by words without knowledge. I
don’t pretend, and nobody ever pretended, that Abigail Sickles or’ to
have worked herself to death to keep Abner in college. Her folks or’ to
have seen it in time, and stopped her. But you take too much upon
yourself when you want to change things round from the way the Lord made
’em. It’s the _men_ that have got to be at the head of things in church
and state; it’s the _men_ that have got to go out into the world and
earn the living for the women and children; and it’s because they’ve
needed the education more, and had more call to use it, that the boys
have been sent to college instid of the girls. There’s reason in all
things.”
She broke in upon him with a short, scornful laugh. “There’s a terrible
good reason sometimes, Ruel, why the women have to earn the living for
themselves, ’n’ the children too; and that’s to keep themselves from
starving. Who earned the living for Nancy’s children when she brought
’em all home to the old house forty years ago? Well, I guess she ’n’ I
earned most of it.”
She lifted her shoulders with an effort, and added: “Shouldn’t be quite
so near doubled together now if it hadn’t been for bending over that
spinning-wheel day in ’n’ day out, working to get food ’n’ clothes for
those children, the six of ’em that John Proctor ran away ’n’ left. You
talk about men going out in the world to earn the living. It would be a
good thing for the women to go into the world too, sometimes. Mebbe they
wouldn’t be quite so helpless then when they’re left to shift for
themselves.”
The old man winced. “You had an awful hard time, Katharine, you ’n’
Nancy. John Proctor didn’t do his duty by his family,” he said; and then
he faced her with a fresh impatience. “But that ain’t the way the men
gener’ly do, is it? To hear you talk a body’d think the women had just
naturally got to plan for that sort of thing. You want ’em to go out
into the world, like the men, and make a business of it. I’d like to
know who’d take care of the home ’n’ the children if they did. Home is
the place for women. The Apostle Paul—”
There was a distinct flash of anger now in the small, bright eyes of
Miss Katharine Saxon. “Don’t tell me what Paul said,” she exclaimed. “I
tell you that notion o’ his, that there was nothing a woman had a right
to do but marry, ’n’ have children, ’n’ tend the house, is at the bottom
of half the foolishness there is in the world to-day. Women have just as
good a right to pick ’n’ choose what they shall do as the men have. And
some of ’em had a good deal better do something else than marry the men
that want ’em. I tell you Paul didn’t know it all. ’Cording to his own
account he had to be struck by lightning before he could see some
things, and if another streak had come his way mebbe he’d caught sight
of a few more that were worth looking at.”
Ruel Saxon gazed at his sister for a minute speechless. Then he said
solemnly, “Katharine, there _is_ such a thing as blasphemy, and I’d be a
little careful if I was you how I talked about the Lord’s dealings with
his saints.”
He glanced at his granddaughters as he said it, as if to suggest that
their morals, if not his own, might be impaired by such language.
“Laws, Ruel,” she said briskly, “I’d somehow got it into my head that
that thing happened to him on the way to Damascus, and I didn’t know as
you or anybody else called Saul of Tarsus a saint.”
She had him at a moment’s disadvantage, and the thin, high, mocking
laugh with which she ended put the finishing touch to his irritation.
“As the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of a fool,”
he said, with slow emphasis.
It should be observed in passing that Deacon Saxon’s use of the name
which he had just bestowed by implication on his sister was, like the
text itself, Solomonic. The person lacking, not in knowledge, but in
moral sense, was the one whom the wise man called a fool, and there were
moments when Katharine Saxon appeared to her brother to be so wanting in
this respect as to come fairly under the title. It was not the first
time that his frankness had led him to bestow it on her.
“Hey?” she said, leaning forward suddenly, with her hand curled about
her ear.
That she had not caught the words was by no means certain. It suited her
humor sometimes to offset his boastfulness as to his good hearing with a
certain parade of her own slight deafness, and the occasions for making
him repeat himself were often cunningly chosen. For once he did not do
it. Perhaps, a second time, he remembered the presence of his
granddaughters.
As for the girls themselves, they caught their breath, in the silence
that followed, with something like a gasp. It is safe to say that they
had never been present before at such an interview between relatives.
Kate would not have minded a renewal of hostilities, but Esther, with
better grace, seized the chance to effect a truce by turning the
conversation into a more peaceful channel.
“Aunt Katharine,” she said eagerly, “you spoke of the spinning you used
to do. Have you the old wheel now? I’ve heard mother tell what a
wonderful spinner you were, and I should so like to see the very wheel
you used.”
The old woman took her hand from her ear and turned toward the girl.
“No,” she said, “I hain’t got the old wheel now; one of Nancy’s girls
wanted it, and I let her carry it off. ’Twasn’t any account; pretty near
as much wore out as I was when it stopped running.”
Evidently she felt that her passage-at-arms with her brother was ended.
The sharpness of her expression relaxed, and she rose from her place
with her ordinary manner. “I can show you a piece of linen your mother
wove, if you want to see it. She’d have made a good spinner herself if
she’d stuck to it, but I s’pose she forgot all about it long ago. Well,
there’s plenty other ways for women to use their time nowadays, and I’m
glad of it.”
The rest of the call ran smoothly. Miss Saxon could be even gracious
when she was so disposed, and she treated her guests to a bottle of
raspberry vinegar, which, in spite of the fact that she had brewed it
herself, was not in the least too sharp, with fruit cake which time had
brought to the most perfect mellowness. Her nieces would have left her
house imagining that the “queerness,” of which she had given such ample
proof, was confined to the one subject which she had discussed with her
brother, had it not been for a little episode at the very end of the
call, and for this, as it happened, the old gentleman was again
responsible.
“How are you getting along with your garden, Katharine?” he asked. “I
was thinking mebbe I or’ to send Tom down here to do a little weeding
for you.”
A peculiar smile gleamed suddenly in the eyes of his sister. “Thank ye,
Ruel, I’ve got all the help I need jest now,” she said. “Come out ’n’
take a look at my garden.”
She led the way to the rear of the house, and stepped before them into
the trim little garden. It was of the old-fashioned sort, with
vegetables growing in thrifty rows, and bunches of such flowers as
phlox, sweet william, and bachelor’s buttons standing at the corners of
the walks. It would have seemed a model of conventional primness, but
for a curious figure seated on a three-legged stool, puffing tobacco
smoke from a long Dutch pipe in among the branches of a rose-bush.
He might have been upwards of sixty; a dapper little man with a shining
face, and a round head covered as to its top by an embroidered cap
adorned with a crimson tassel. His waistcoat was of gay old-fashioned
silk, across which was strung a huge gold chain, and a flaming topaz pin
adorned the front of his calico shirt. At sight of the company issuing
from the house he started from his seat and trotted up the walk to meet
them, his hand extended and his face expressive of the most beaming
cordiality.
Ruel Saxon, who was following his sister with a meekness of deportment
which had sat uneasily upon him ever since the close of their
discussion, started as his eye fell on this person, and threw up his
head with a movement of surprise and irritation. “Good day, Solomon,” he
said stiffly, as they came together, Miss Saxon having stepped aside to
give free course for the meeting.
“Why, how d’y’ do, Deacon, how d’y’ do?” exclaimed the other, seizing
the old gentleman’s hand, which, to tell the truth, had not been offered
him, and shaking it furiously. “It’s been a terrible long time since you
and I met. I—I was thinkin’ the other day I or’ to come round and see
how you was gittin’ along.”
The deacon did not look overjoyed at the mention of the intended honor.
“How long has Solomon been here?” he asked rather curtly, turning to his
sister.
“Two weeks to-morrow,” she replied, with equal curtness. Then, turning
to the little man, and from him to the girls, she said with marked
politeness, “Mr. Ridgeway, these are my nieces, Lucia Saxon’s children.
I guess you remember her.”
The little man pulled the cap from his head, revealing a crown as bald
as a baby’s, and bowed himself up and down with the fervor of an
Oriental. “Lucia Saxon? What, her that married the doctor and went out
West? Why, sartin, sartin. She was one of the nicest gals I ever see,
and the prettiest spoken. I—I guess your mother must ’av’ told you about
me,” he added eagerly. “I took her home from spellin’ school once. She
had spelled down everybody but me; but I was older’n she was, you know,
a good deal older.” The delight of the remembrance seemed to overcome
him, and he hopped first on one foot, then on the other, like an excited
child.
Ruel Saxon’s face worked curiously while this performance lasted. “I
don’t see but what your garden truck is getting on all right,” he said
in the dryest of tones, “and I guess the girls ’n’ I’d better be going.”
He turned, making his way past the others, regardless of the fact that
his footprints were left in the onion-bed which bordered the walk, and
headed the line again toward the house.
“I shall write to mother that we have seen you,” said Esther, smiling
back at the little man, who still stood bowing with his cap in his
hands, and Kate gave him a friendly nod, though her mouth was twitching
with amusement.
Aunt Katharine said good-by to them at the front door. “If you ever feel
like seeing the old woman again, come down,” she said to the girls.
“’Tain’t so very far across the fields, and you can follow the
cow-path.” Then, without waiting to see them go, she closed the door.
“Grandfather,” Kate burst out when they were fairly off, “who in the
world is that man, and how does he come to be at Aunt Katharine’s?”
“That man,” he repeated, deepening his tone with an accent of disgust,
“is a poor half-witted cretur that belongs at the poorhouse. He stays
there most of the time, but now ’n’ then he gets a restless spell and
they let him out. Then he always comes round to your Aunt Katharine’s,
and she takes him in.”
“Well, he’s the queerest acting man I ever came across,” said Kate, “and
how he was dressed out, with his fine flowered vest and his jewellery!”
“‘Jewellery!’” grunted her grandfather. “He didn’t have on any compared
with what he has sometimes. Why, when he really dresses up, that cretur
covers himself all over with it.”
The girls looked so astonished that he apparently felt it incumbent on
him to attempt some explanation of the man. “The fact is,” he said,
“Solomon Ridgeway is as crazy as a loon on one p’int. He thinks he’s
rich, though for aught I know he’s got as much sense about other things
as he ever had. He thinks he’s terrible rich, and that the best way to
keep his property, as he calls it, is in gold and jewels. He’s got a
trunkful of it—wo’thless stuff, of course—that he carries with him
everywhere. I s’pose it’s stowed away somewhere at your Aunt Katharine’s
now.”
Kate really seemed past speaking for a moment, and Esther exclaimed in a
tone of utter bewilderment, “Well, I should have thought Aunt Katharine
was the last person in the world who would want such a man at her house.
What makes her do it?”
“The Lord only knows,” said the old gentleman solemnly. And then he
jerked the reins and urged Dobbin on his way in a tone of uncommon
asperity.
The fact was, the question had a special irritation for him. That his
sister, who flouted wise men and scorned the opinions of those having
authority, should bear with the vagaries of a being like Solomon
Ridgeway was a thing that passed his understanding. With the man himself
he _might_ have had some patience, though his form of mania was
peculiarly exasperating to his own hard common sense, and somehow he
could not help resenting it that “Solomon,” of all names, should have
lighted on so foolish a creature; but that, such as he was, he should be
the object of Katharine Saxon’s pointed and continuous favor was trying
beyond measure to her brother. He lapsed into a silence quite unusual
with him, and the girls did not disturb it again on the way home.
They were longing to talk the visit over with Stella, but she was away
when they reached the house, and Aunt Elsie asked no questions beyond an
inquiry for Aunt Katharine’s health. It was at supper that the subject
found its way into the family talk, and then Stella, who had just come
in, opened it.
“Well, I hope you enjoyed your call on Aunt Katharine,” she said,
smiling at her cousins.
“Of course we did,” said Kate, promptly. “You didn’t begin to tell us
how interesting she is.”
“Oh, but you should have been there on a day when she and grandfather
discussed things,” said Stella. “That’s the time when she really shows
her quality.” She sent a demure glance at the old gentleman as she
spoke. How she had become possessed of his intention to refrain from
controversy is not certain, but somehow she had it.
He glanced with obvious embarrassment at his granddaughters. Then he set
down his cup of tea, and faced his daughter-in-law. “Elsie,” he said, in
a tone whose humility was really touching, “I meant to stand by what I
said to you. I certainly did; but I couldn’t do it.” He cleared his
throat and his tone grew firmer. “I couldn’t do it, and I don’t know as
I shall be held responsible for it, either. The Bible says, ‘As much as
lieth in you, live peaceably with all men,’—and I s’pose that means
women too,—but it don’t lie in me, and it never will, to keep my mouth
shut while folks are advancing such notions as Katharine did this
afternoon. I did contend with her; I certainly did.”
The Northmore girls could not keep straight faces, and Stella broke into
a delighted giggle. “I’m sure ’twas your duty, grandpa, and I’m glad you
did it,” she said. “What was it this time; woman’s rights, or the folly
of getting married, or what?”
She glanced at her cousins as she asked the question, and Esther spoke
first. “It was education partly, and the question whether women ought
not to be as free as men to choose what they shall do. I must say that
for my part I thought Aunt Katharine made some real good points, though
of course she needn’t have been quite so bitter.”
“It was my speaking about Abner Sickles that stirred her up to begin
with,” said the old gentleman, still addressing himself in
half-apologetic tone to Aunt Elsie. “That put her in mind of his sister
Abigail, and how she worked herself to death helping him through
college.”
“I shouldn’t wonder if helping Abner was the greatest comfort the poor
girl had,” observed Aunt Elsie.
The unemphatic way in which she sometimes made important suggestions was
one of Aunt Elsie’s peculiarities. No one spoke for a minute, and she
turned the conversation away from Aunt Katharine by suddenly asking a
question on a wholly different subject.