Christopher on his mountainside. He drove Christopher's gray horse
harnessed in his old buggy, and realized that he himself was getting
much pleasure out of the other man's idiosyncrasy. The morning was
beautiful, and Stephen carried in his mind a peculiar new beauty,
besides. Ellen, Christopher's niece, had arrived the night before, and,
early as it was, she had been astir when he reached the Dodd house. She
had opened the door for him, and she was a goodly sight: a tall girl,
shaped like a boy, with a fearless face of great beauty crowned with
compact gold braids and lit by unswerving blue eyes. Ellen had a square,
determined chin and a brow of high resolve.
“Good morning,” said she, and as she spoke she evidently rated Stephen
and approved, for she smiled genially. “I am Mr. Dodd's niece,” said
she. “You are the minister?”
“Yes.”
“And you have come for the things aunt is to send him?”
“Yes.”
“Aunt said you were to drive uncle's horse and take the buggy,” said
Ellen. “It is very kind of you. While you are harnessing, aunt and I
will pack the basket.”
Stephen, harnessing the gray horse, had a sense of shock; whether
pleasant or otherwise, he could not determine. He had never seen a girl
in the least like Ellen. Girls had never impressed him. She did.
When he drove around to the kitchen door she and Myrtle were both there,
and he drank a cup of coffee before starting, and Myrtle introduced him.
“Only think, Mr. Wheaton,” said she, “Ellen says she knows a great deal
about farming, and we are going to hire Jim Mason and go right ahead.”
Myrtle looked adoringly at Ellen.
Stephen spoke eagerly. “Don't hire anybody,” he said. “I used to work on
a farm to pay my way through college. I need the exercise. Let me help.”
“You may do that,” said Ellen, “on shares. Neither aunt nor I can think
of letting you work without any recompense.”
“Well, we will settle that,” Stephen replied. When he drove away, his
usually calm mind was in a tumult.
“Your niece has come,” he told Christopher, when the two men were
breakfasting together on Silver Mountain.
“I am glad of that,” said Christopher. “All that troubled me about being
here was that Myrtle might wake up in the night and hear noises.”
Christopher had grown even more radiant. He was effulgent with pure
happiness.
“You aren't going to tap your sugar-maples?” said Stephen, looking up
at the great symmetrical efflorescence of rose and green which towered
about them.
Christopher laughed. “No, bless 'em,” said he, “the trees shall keep
their sugar this season. This week is the first time I've had a chance
to get acquainted with them and sort of enter into their feelings. Good
Lord! I've seen how I can love those trees, Mr. Wheaton! See the pink on
their young leaves! They know more than you and I. They know how to grow
young every spring.”
Stephen did not tell Christopher how Ellen and Myrtle were to work the
farm with his aid. The two women had bade him not. Christopher seemed to
have no care whatever about it. He was simply happy. When Stephen left,
he looked at him and said, with the smile of a child, “Do you think I am
crazy?”
“Crazy? No,” replied Stephen.
“Well, I ain't. I'm just getting fed. I was starving to death. Glad
you don't think I'm crazy, because I couldn't help matters by saying I
wasn't. Myrtle don't think I am, I know. As for Ellen, I haven't seen
her since she was a little girl. I don't believe she can be much like
Myrtle; but I guess if she is what she promised to turn out she wouldn't
think anybody ought to go just her way to have it the right way.”
“I rather think she is like that, although I saw her for the first time
this morning,” said Stephen.
“I begin to feel that I may not need to stay here much longer,”
Christopher called after him. “I begin to feel that I am getting what I
came for so fast that I can go back pretty soon.”
But it was the last day of July before he came. He chose the cool of
the evening after a burning day, and descended the mountain in the full
light of the moon. He had gone up the mountain like an old man; he came
down like a young one.
When he came at last in sight of his own home, he paused and stared.
Across the grass-land a heavily laden wagon was moving toward his barn.
Upon this wagon heaped with hay, full of silver lights from the moon,
sat a tall figure all in white, which seemed to shine above all things.
Christopher did not see the man on the other side of the wagon leading
the horses; he saw only this wonderful white figure. He hurried forward
and Myrtle came down the road to meet him. She had been watching for
him, as she had watched every night.
“Who is it on the load of hay?” asked Christopher.
“Ellen,” replied Myrtle.
“Oh!” said Christopher. “She looked like an angel of the Lord, come to
take up the burden I had dropped while I went to learn of Him.”
“Be you feeling pretty well, Christopher?” asked Myrtle. She thought
that what her husband had said was odd, but he looked well, and he might
have said it simply because he was a man.
Christopher put his arm around Myrtle. “I am better than I ever was in
my whole life, Myrtle, and I've got more courage to work now than I had
when I was young. I had to go away and get rested, but I've got rested
for all my life. We shall get along all right as long as we live.”
“Ellen and the minister are going to get married come Christmas,” said
Myrtle.
“She is lucky. He is a man that can see with the eyes of other people,”
said Christopher.
It was after the hay had been unloaded and Christopher had been shown
the garden full of lusty vegetables, and told of the great crop with no
drawback, that he and the minister had a few minutes alone together at
the gate.
“I want to tell you, Mr. Wheaton, that I am settled in my mind now. I
shall never complain again, no matter what happens. I have found that
all the good things and all the bad things that come to a man who tries
to do right are just to prove to him that he is on the right path. They
are just the flowers and sunbeams, and the rocks and snakes, too, that
mark the way. And--I have found out more than that. I have found out the
answer to my 'why?'”
“What is it?” asked Stephen, gazing at him curiously from the
wonder-height of his own special happiness.
“I have found out that the only way to heaven for the children of men is
through the earth,” said Christopher.
DEAR ANNIE
ANNIE HEMPSTEAD lived on a large family canvas, being the eldest of six
children. There was only one boy. The mother was long since dead. If
one can imagine the Hempstead family, the head of which was the Reverend
Silas, pastor of the Orthodox Church in Lynn Corners, as being the
subject of a mild study in village history, the high light would
probably fall upon Imogen, the youngest daughter. As for Annie, she
would apparently supply only a part of the background.
This afternoon in late July, Annie was out in the front yard of the
parsonage, assisting her brother Benny to rake hay. Benny had not cut
it. Annie had hired a man, although the Hempsteads could not afford to
hire a man, but she had said to Benny, “Benny, you can rake the hay and
get it into the barn if Jim Mullins cuts it, can't you?” And Benny had
smiled and nodded acquiescence. Benny Hempstead always smiled and nodded
acquiescence, but there was in him the strange persistency of a willow
bough, the persistency of pliability, which is the most unconquerable
of all. Benny swayed gracefully in response to all the wishes of others,
but always he remained in his own inadequate attitude toward life.
Now he was raking to as little purpose as he could and rake at all. The
clover-tops, the timothy grass, and the buttercups moved before his rake
in a faint foam of gold and green and rose, but his sister Annie raised
whirlwinds with hers. The Hempstead yard was large and deep, and had two
great squares given over to wild growths on either side of the gravel
walk, which was bordered with shrubs, flowering in their turn, like a
class of children at school saying their lessons. The spring shrubs had
all spelled out their floral recitations, of course, but great clumps
of peonies were spreading wide skirts of gigantic bloom, like dancers
courtesying low on the stage of summer, and shafts of green-white Yucca
lilies and Japan lilies and clove-pinks still remained in their school
of bloom.
Benny often stood still, wiped his forehead, leaned on his rake, and
inhaled the bouquet of sweet scents, but Annie raked with never-ceasing
energy. Annie was small and slender and wiry, and moved with angular
grace, her thin, peaked elbows showing beneath the sleeves of her pink
gingham dress, her thin knees outlining beneath the scanty folds of the
skirt. Her neck was long, her shoulder-blades troubled the back of
her blouse at every movement. She was a creature full of ostentatious
joints, but the joints were delicate and rhythmical and charming. Annie
had a charming face, too. It was thin and sunburnt, but still charming,
with a sweet, eager, intent-to-please outlook upon life. This last was
the real attitude of Annie's mind; it was, in fact, Annie. She was
intent to please from her toes to the crown of her brown head. She
radiated good will and loving-kindness as fervently as a lily in the
border radiated perfume.
It was very warm, and the northwest sky had a threatening mountain
of clouds. Occasionally Annie glanced at it and raked the faster, and
thought complacently of the water-proof covers in the little barn. This
hay was valuable for the Reverend Silas's horse.
Two of the front windows of the house were filled with girls' heads, and
the regular swaying movement of white-clad arms sewing. The girls sat in
the house because it was so sunny on the piazza in the afternoon. There
were four girls in the sittingroom, all making finery for themselves.
On the other side of the front door one of the two windows was blank; in
the other was visible a nodding gray head, that of Annie's father taking
his afternoon nap.
Everything was still except the girls' tongues, an occasional burst of
laughter, and the crackling shrill of locusts. Nothing had passed on the
dusty road since Benny and Annie had begun their work. Lynn Corners was
nothing more than a hamlet. It was even seldom that an automobile got
astray there, being diverted from the little city of Anderson, six miles
away, by turning to the left instead of the right.
Benny stopped again and wiped his forehead, all pink and beaded with
sweat. He was a pretty young man--as pretty as a girl, although large.
He glanced furtively at Annie, then he went with a soft, padding glide,
like a big cat, to the piazza and settled down. He leaned his head
against a post, closed his eyes, and inhaled the sweetness of flowers
alive and dying, of new-mown hay. Annie glanced at him and an angelic
look came over her face. At that moment the sweetness of her nature
seemed actually visible.
“He is tired, poor boy!” she thought. She also thought that probably
Benny felt the heat more because he was stout. Then she raked faster
and faster. She fairly flew over the yard, raking the severed grass
and flowers into heaps. The air grew more sultry. The sun was not yet
clouded, but the northwest was darker and rumbled ominously.
The girls in the sitting-room continued to chatter and sew. One of them
might have come out to help this little sister toiling alone, but Annie
did not think of that. She raked with the uncomplaining sweetness of an
angel until the storm burst. The rain came down in solid drops, and the
sky was a sheet of clamoring flame. Annie made one motion toward the
barn, but there was no use. The hay was not half cocked. There was no
sense in running for covers. Benny was up and lumbering into the house,
and her sisters were shutting windows and crying out to her. Annie
deserted her post and fled before the wind, her pink skirts lashing her
heels, her hair dripping.
When she entered the sitting-room her sisters, Imogen, Eliza, Jane, and
Susan, were all there; also her father, Silas, tall and gaunt and gray.
To the Hempsteads a thunder-storm partook of the nature of a religious
ceremony. The family gathered together, and it was understood that they
were all offering prayer and recognizing God as present on the wings of
the tempest. In reality they were all very nervous in thunder-storms,
with the exception of Annie. She always sent up a little silent petition
that her sisters and brother and father, and the horse and dog and cat,
might escape danger, although she had never been quite sure that she was
not wicked in including the dog and cat. She was surer about the horse
because he was the means by which her father made pastoral calls upon
his distant sheep. Then afterward she just sat with the others and
waited until the storm was over and it was time to open windows and see
if the roof had leaked. Today, however, she was intent upon the hay. In
a lull of the tempest she spoke.
“It is a pity,” she said, “that I was not able to get the hay cocked and
the covers on.”
Then Imogen turned large, sarcastic blue eyes upon her. Imogen was
considered a beauty, pink and white, golden-haired, and dimpled, with
a curious calculating hardness of character and a sharp tongue, so at
variance with her appearance that people doubted the evidence of their
senses.
“If,” said Imogen, “you had only made Benny work instead of encouraging
him to dawdle and finally to stop altogether, and if you had gone
out directly after dinner, the hay would have been all raked up and
covered.”
Nothing could have exceeded the calm and instructive superiority of
Imogen's tone. A mass of soft white fabric lay upon her lap, although
she had removed scissors and needle and thimble to a safe distance. She
tilted her chin with a royal air. When the storm lulled she had stopped
praying.
Imogen's sisters echoed her and joined in the attack upon Annie.
“Yes,” said Jane, “if you had only started earlier, Annie. I told Eliza
when you went out in the yard that it looked like a shower.”
Eliza nodded energetically.
“It was foolish to start so late,” said Susan, with a calm air of wisdom
only a shade less exasperating than Imogen's.
“And you always encourage Benny so in being lazy,” said Eliza.
Then the Reverend Silas joined in. “You should have more sense of
responsibility toward your brother, your only brother, Annie,” he said,
in his deep pulpit voice.
“It was after two o'clock when you went out,” said Imogen.
“And all you had to do was the dinner-dishes, and there were very few
to-day,” said Jane.
Then Annie turned with a quick, cat-like motion. Her eyes blazed under
her brown toss of hair. She gesticulated with her little, nervous hands.
Her voice was as sweet and intense as a reed, and withal piercing with
anger.
“It was not half past one when I went out,” said she, “and there was a
whole sinkful of dishes.”
“It was after two. I looked at the clock,” said Imogen.
“It was not.”
“And there were very few dishes,” said Jane.
“A whole sinkful,” said Annie, tense with wrath.
“You always are rather late about starting,” said Susan.
“I am not! I was not! I washed the dishes, and swept the kitchen, and
blacked the stove, and cleaned the silver.”
“I swept the kitchen,” said Imogen, severely. “Annie, I am surprised at
you.”
“And you know I cleaned the silver yesterday,” said Jane.
Annie gave a gasp and looked from one to the other.
“You know you did not sweep the kitchen,” said Imogen.
Annie's father gazed at her severely. “My dear,” he said, “how long must
I try to correct you of this habit of making false statements?”
“Dear Annie does not realize that they are false statements, father,”
said Jane. Jane was not pretty, but she gave the effect of a long,
sweet stanza of some fine poetess. She was very tall and slender and
large-eyed, and wore always a serious smile. She was attired in a purple
muslin gown, cut V-shaped at the throat, and, as always, a black velvet
ribbon with a little gold locket attached. The locket contained a coil
of hair. Jane had been engaged to a young minister, now dead three
years, and he had given her the locket.
Jane no doubt had mourned for her lover, but she had a covert pleasure
in the romance of her situation. She was a year younger than Annie, and
she had loved and lost, and so had achieved a sentimental distinction.
Imogen always had admirers. Eliza had been courted at intervals
half-heartedly by a widower, and Susan had had a few fleeting chances.
But Jane was the only one who had been really definite in her heart
affairs. As for Annie, nobody ever thought of her in such a connection.
It was supposed that Annie had no thought of marriage, that she was
foreordained to remain unwed and keep house for her father and Benny.
When Jane said that dear Annie did not realize that she made false
statements, she voiced an opinion of the family before which Annie was
always absolutely helpless. Defense meant counter-accusation. Annie
could not accuse her family. She glanced from one to the other. In her
blue eyes were still sparks of wrath, but she said nothing. She felt, as
always, speechless, when affairs reached such a juncture. She began,
in spite of her good sense, to feel guiltily responsible for
everything--for the spoiling of the hay, even for the thunder-storm.
What was more, she even wished to feel guiltily responsible. Anything
was better than to be sure her sisters were not speaking the truth, that
her father was blaming her unjustly.
Benny, who sat hunched upon himself with the effect of one set of bones
and muscles leaning upon others for support, was the only one who spoke
for her, and even he spoke to little purpose.
“One of you other girls,” said he, in a thick, sweet voice, “might have
come out and helped Annie; then she could have got the hay in.”
They all turned on him.
“It is all very well for you to talk,” said Imogen. “I saw you myself
quit raking hay and sit down on the piazza.”
“Yes,” assented Jane, nodding violently, “I saw you, too.”
“You have no sense of your responsibility, Benjamin, and your sister
Annie abets you in evading it,” said Silas Hempstead with dignity.
“Benny feels the heat,” said Annie.
“Father is entirely right,” said Eliza. “Benjamin has no sense of
responsibility, and it is mainly owing to Annie.”
“But dear Annie does not realize it,” said Jane.
Benny got up lumberingly and left the room. He loved his sister Annie,
but he hated the mild simmer of feminine rancor to which even his
father's presence failed to add a masculine flavor. Benny was always
leaving the room and allowing his sisters “to fight it out.”
Just after he left there was a tremendous peal of thunder and a blue
flash, and they all prayed again, except Annie; who was occupied with
her own perplexities of life, and not at all afraid. She wondered, as
she had wondered many times before, if she could possibly be in the
wrong, if she were spoiling Benny, if she said and did things without
knowing that she did so, or the contrary. Then suddenly she tightened
her mouth. She knew. This sweet-tempered, anxious-to-please Annie was
entirely sane, she had unusual self-poise. She KNEW that she knew
what she did and said, and what she did not do or say, and a strange
comprehension of her family overwhelmed her. Her sisters were truthful;
she would not admit anything else, even to herself; but they confused
desires and impulses with accomplishment. They had done so all their
lives, some of them from intense egotism, some possibly from slight
twists in their mental organisms. As for her father, he had simply
rather a weak character, and was swayed by the majority. Annie, as she
sat there among the praying group, made the same excuse for her sisters
that they made for her. “They don't realize it,” she said to herself.
When the storm finally ceased she hurried upstairs and opened the
windows, letting in the rain-fresh air. Then she got supper, while her
sisters resumed their needlework. A curious conviction seized her, as
she was hurrying about the kitchen, that in all probability some, if
not all, of her sisters considered that they were getting the supper.
Possibly Jane had reflected that she ought to get supper, then she
had taken another stitch in her work and had not known fairly that her
impulse of duty had not been carried out. Imogen, presumably, was sewing
with the serene consciousness that, since she was herself, it followed
as a matter of course that she was performing all the tasks of the
house.
While Annie was making an omelet Benny came out into the kitchen and
stood regarding her, hands in pockets, making, as usual, one set of
muscles rest upon another. His face was full of the utmost good nature,
but it also convicted him of too much sloth to obey its commands.
“Say, Annie, what on earth makes them all pick on you so?” he observed.
“Hush, Benny! They don't mean to. They don't know it.”
“But say, Annie, you must know that they tell whoppers. You DID sweep
the kitchen.”
“Hush, Benny! Imogen really thinks she swept it.”
“Imogen always thinks she has done everything she ought to do, whether
she has done it or not,” said Benny, with unusual astuteness. “Why don't
you up and tell her she lies, Annie?”
“She doesn't really lie,” said Annie.
“She does lie, even if she doesn't know it,” said Benny; “and what is
more, she ought to be made to know it. Say, Annie, it strikes me that
you are doing the same by the girls that they accuse you of doing by me.
Aren't you encouraging them in evil ways?”
Annie started, and turned and stared at him.
Benny nodded. “I can't see any difference,” he said. “There isn't a day
but one of the girls thinks she has done something you have done, or
hasn't done something you ought to have done, and they blame you all the
time, when you don't deserve it, and you let them, and they don't know
it, and I don't think myself that they know they tell whoppers; but they
ought to know. Strikes me you are just spoiling the whole lot, father
thrown in, Annie. You are a dear, just as they say, but you are too much
of a dear to be good for them.”
Annie stared.
“You are letting that omelet burn,” said Benny. “Say, Annie, I will go
out and turn that hay in the morning. I know I don't amount to much, but
I ain't a girl, anyhow, and I haven't got a cross-eyed soul. That's
what ails a lot of girls. They mean all right, but their souls have been
cross-eyed ever since they came into the world, and it's just such
girls as you who ought to get them straightened out. You know what has
happened to-day. Well, here's what happened yesterday. I don't tell
tales, but you ought to know this, for I believe Tom Reed has his eye
on you, in spite of Imogen's being such a beauty, and Susan's having
manners like silk, and Eliza's giving everybody the impression that she
is too good for this earth, and Jane's trying to make everybody think
she is a sweet martyr, without a thought for mortal man, when that is
only her way of trying to catch one. You know Tom Reed was here last
evening?”
Annie nodded. Her face turned scarlet, then pathetically pale. She bent
over her omelet, carefully lifting it around the edges.
“Well,” Benny went on, “I know he came to see you, and Imogen went to
the door and ushered him into the parlor, and I was out on the piazza,
and she didn't know it, but I heard her tell him that she thought you
had gone out. She hinted, too, that George Wells had taken you to the
concert in the town hall. He did ask you, didn't he?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Imogen spoke in this way.” Benny lowered his voice and imitated
Imogen to the life. “'Yes, we are all well, thank you. Father is busy,
of course; Jane has run over to Mrs. Jacobs's for a pattern; Eliza is
writing letters; and Susan is somewhere about the house. Annie--well,
Annie-George Wells asked her to go to the concert--I rather--' Then,”
said Benny, in his natural voice, “Imogen stopped, and she could say
truthfully that she didn't lie, but anybody would have thought from what
she said that you had gone to the concert with George Wells.”
“Did Tom inquire for me?” asked Annie, in a low voice.
“Didn't have a chance. Imogen got ahead of him.”
“Oh, well, then it doesn't matter. I dare say he did come to see
Imogen.”
“He didn't,” said Benny, stoutly. “And that isn't all. Say, Annie--”
“What?”
“Are you going to marry George Wells? It is none of my business, but are
you?”
Annie laughed a little, although her face was still pale. She had folded
the omelet and was carefully watching it.
“You need not worry about that, Benny dear,” she said.