Читать книгу The Gayworthys - Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney - Страница 16

After that, for days and days, Joanna watched and waited. Not visibly. Hardly consciously. She never stood looking out of doors and windows, to see if anybody were coming. She omitted nothing of her ordinary share of household duties. She took care of Say; put on her long-sleeved tyers when she sent her out to play; changed her stockings when she came in with wet feet, from playing by the brook; told her stories; went down to the orchard with her, to pick up red, spicy summer apples; filled every moment of her time more busily even than her wont, with successive small objects and employments; never paused to think what it was that she expected, or that she expected anything; yet, each day, put some slight freshness of decoration to her simple summer-afternoon toilet, thinking, away down secretly in the heart that turned a deaf ignoring to its own whispers,—"To-night, to-night! surely, he will come!"

She could not think he would let it all end here. That he had taken her little flippancy for final answer to the question not yet fairly asked.

She avoided with marvelous ingenuity any little plan of walk or visit, that should appropriate those after-tea, twilight hours, when, nothing else occupying the time, they were accustomed to gather about the great open front-door, that faced down a grass-walk of some ten or twelve yards' length, to the white gate in the garden fence. Through this white gate, often, neighbors came, strolling in to spend a leisure half-hour. Down the green vista Joanna gazed as the shadows deepened, night after night,—sometimes left sitting there alone,—in an unconfessed expectation of a coming fate. And night after night the katydids sang in the maples, and the long summer twilight faded away, and the dews grew chill, and a dull soreness gathered and spread about her heart, and what she looked for came not. Everything else that could come, came, at one time or another, startling her with successive shocks of certainty and disappointment, as the little gate swung, clattering, after each entrance, and figures, that might at first glimpse be anybody's, moved up out of the shadow of the great trees. The minister dropped in for a minute with revival news; a farmer's wife had a word for Prue; village girls came, laughing and chatting, and stayed, and chattered on, till Joanna could have shrieked at them; little boys after the doctor; and then everybody, at last, in all Hilbury, was safe at home for the night; and Prue was locking up, and Rebecca's gentle voice called her remonstratingly in, out of the dampness; and the katydids were shriller and more insulting than ever; and the starch was all out of her pretty muslin dress; and that day's hope was over.

Forty rods or less away, down the road, at the Hartshorne farmhouse, somebody else spent those same twilight hours, thinking and brooding, expecting nothing. Forty rods, at most, long measure; what had that to do with it? There was a space widening between these two not measurable by rods.

One night the doctor came in late to tea,—with something very evidently on his mind. He had been to the village at the Bridge.

"Prue," he asked, suddenly, "have you seen anything of Hartshorne's folks for a week or two back? Seems to me I haven't."

"Why, no," says Prue. "Not to speak of. And it's a little singular, too. I suppose Mrs. Hartshorne gets pretty well tired out with all the work she has, in haying-time, and we've been busy. But I can't think what's come of Gabe. He's rather left us off, lately, I must say."

"There's something wrong there, Prue!"

Joanna started up from the table,—all but the doctor had long finished the meal,—and hastened suddenly out after Say, who had run off, in her clean stockings and pantalets, to sail chips in the horse-trough.

"They say down at Barstow's that the old man grows queerer every day. He drives down and buys odd things in ridiculous quantities; things he can't possibly have any use for; and perhaps Gabriel comes along afterward and brings 'em back, with some excuse. Yesterday, there were half a dozen in there, standing round, and in comes the old man,—his otter-skin cap on, too, in the doggiest of dog-days,—and calls for 'axe-heads. Six of 'em.'"

"'That's a good many,' says Barstow, not knowing exactly how to manage. 'Want any helves?' 'Didn't I say 'axe-heads?' he snarls out, quite fierce. 'When I want anything else, I'll ask for't.' 'What yer goin' to set 'em to?' says old Hines, speaking up from the corner, in his shrill way, and winking to the others, that upside-down wink of his that takes all one side of his face to do it. 'Hallelujah metre!' roars Hartshorne again, and then laughs. 'No more sense to him than a partridge,' says Hines, chuckling. Just here, Gabriel came in, looking hot and hurried. He shook his head at Barstow over his father's shoulder, and he turned round and waited on another customer, and presently they began to talk of something else, and then the old man seemed to forget all about it, and Gabe got him away.—He looks strange, too. If they asked me, I should tell 'em not to trust him about alone. Gabriel does seem anxious and keeps round after him as well as he can. But the old man fires up if he notices."

"O dear!" replies Prue, shocked. "I do hope he isn't going to lose his mind!"

The Doctor moved his head slowly, twice, from side to side.

"I've had my thoughts before now," said he. "I hope, whatever it is, it'll take a quiet turn with him. It's hard enough, anyway, on Gabriel and the old lady.—He oughtn't to be irritated, though. It's queer what there is in human nature that turns out Hineses. People that never had any wits to spare themselves, always ready to egg on, and chuckle, when they see a better fellow going a bit astray. Every cur runs after and barks, when a noble-blooded mastiff gets a tin can tied to his tail. Barstow's is a bad place for Hartshorne."

"But, father," cried Rebecca, with an eager, horrified look, "can't something be done? Why don't you tell them?"

"Child," answered the Doctor, almost impatiently, "what can I do? it's in the hands of God. And, next to Him, they know more than anybody else, already."

The Doctor finished his tea, presently, and got up and went out.

Joanna came in. Prue turned round upon her with the news. She stood straight up between them, growing pale, and looking from one to the other, with such an expression as she had never shown them on her face before.

"I don't believe one word of it," she said, slowly, with a sort of trample in her tone. "And, you two! don't ever you mention it again to a living soul. It's a shame. It's Hilbury gossip. I wonder father listens to all they say, down there at Barstow's!" And with this, she left them and went out to the front doorstone, and sat down, alone. Could this be why "things didn't look quite clear ahead" to Gabriel? Was this the unspoken hindrance that lay between them? Had she from a heedless, unreasoning impulse, checked the avowal, that breaking through a harsh restraint, was ready in that moment only, to have rushed from his lips? Might she have given him love and comfort, that now he would never come to ask again?—She laid her hands upon her knees, and her face in them, and questioned herself of these things bitterly.

By and by, her head flung itself up again, with a sudden spring.

"After all, he knew I couldn't have understood. And they were all close by. There was no time. He wouldn't give it up so, if he meant anything. I wouldn't, if I were a man! At any rate, he can't keep out of the way forever."

With another sudden movement, she stood up. Then, she walked restlessly down the grass-path to the gate beneath the maples. She looked up the road, down the road, in a clear, early evening light. To the top of the long, sloping hill, on one side; to the red buildings of the Hartshorne farm, below, upon the other. A few steps would take her there; doubtless the old lady was wondering why some of them did not come. A month ago it would have been the most natural thing in the world to run down, and call in. Now, how impossible it had become! She and Gabriel might as well have been set apart on opposite oceanshores.—Would this be so always? Would this mysterious gulf lie between them, unknown of others, holding them asunder, all their lives?—Might they "grow old before each other's eyes," yet miss the "comfortable friendliness?"

A man's figure came into view, moving up, in the softening and uncertain twilight.

Joanna's heart beat hard. He was coming at last. And she would not be shy and cold. She would even give him opportunity. Poor fellow! he had difficulty enough in his way, if all were true. She would be kind. She would stand still, there at the gate,—hold herself, forcibly, against her own wayward wish,—and meet him, alone. She would,—well it mattered not what she would have done. The figure drew nearer while these thoughts were flashing through her mind.

"What a fool I am!" she muttered, in a whisper, angrily, between her teeth; her hand clutching with a fierce pressure the upper bar of the white gate, as one clutches at any outward thing, to bear a horrible pain. She turned, and moved swiftly off under the screening boughs to the house-door, whence at the moment Rebecca came out.

"Here comes your revival man," said she sharply. "Stay and attend to him. I can't." And she ran up-stairs to her own chamber, shutting herself in.

The quiet enduring of some souls gets laid upon it not only its own unstinted measure of pain, but half the burden of others' impatient suffering. Gordon King was coming to tell them of his betrothment. And Rebecca, of all the household, must stay alone and listen to his news. I think if he had known how this would chance, the young minister, clear as he might be of any falsity in word, would yet have shrunk, with a certain secret compunction, from the ordeal.

"I suppose," said he, after a few commonplaces, "you know something, already, of what I have to tell you. I hope you are glad for us?" So he asked her for congratulation. What could Rebecca say? Her face was pale and earnest in the dim light, as she answered him in words given her surely by that Spirit who teacheth His own in each moment of their need what they shall say and what they shall speak.

"I hope," she replied, slowly and solemnly, "that you may both be glad, all your lives, and forever, in each other,—and in the Lord!" And she stretched out her hand to him untremblingly, as an angel might.

Did no secret intimation whisper to him then, in the presence of that grander, purer womanhood, of something he might have missed in grasping after a mere witchery of prettiness?

He uncovered his head, involuntarily, with one hand, as he met hers with the other, and held it fervently. For a minute or two, he stood silent in the solemnity of such giving joy. In those instants perhaps, these two souls were nearer to each other, though they knew it not, than common souls, in common mood, can be even in the avowal and acceptance of what such call love; nearer than either might be again, to any other, while flesh should hold them darkling.

Afterward, he said, "I hope you will see Stacy soon. A friend like you will be a strength for her. She is younger than you, spiritually. Her feet, you know, are newly set in the upward way."

This almost went beyond. Something that Rebecca in her lowliness struggled with, as a motion of the old depravity, rose up within her at this demand from him. For she could not help—saint as she was—her own clear, native, common sense. Stacy was a good two years her elder, as the world reckons. A lifetime beyond her, in that which Rebecca Gayworthy had never lived at all. She might wish her well; she truly did; honestly, in her inmost soul, she prayed for her the prayer of self-forgetting faith. But go to her! As she was now! In the fresh exultation of her double achievement, for this world and the next! To read, and to be read, as those two woman-souls would surely decipher each other, and to utter words of spiritual sympathy and earthly congratulation! What she did, she would do truly. Not this now.

"Stacy has better strength than mine to lean on. Even human. She will not need me yet. If ever she does, be sure I will not fail her. Give her my good wishes."

This was all; said with a calm, pure smile. Nothing to answer, nothing that he need translate beyond the letter. Yet Gordon King knew, dimly, as he listened, that he had wronged that gracious nature; knew, yet more dimly,—it was a thought away back in the embryo shadows of his soul, that only years might give a form wherewith to haunt him,—that he also wronged himself.

This he shook off; thanked her for her friendly words; pressed once again the hand that let itself lie passively in his; bade her good-night; and passed on, up over the hill, in the golden, growing starlight, to Stacy's home, where there were sweet words, and bewitching looks, and winning smiles and willing kisses waiting him.

Rebecca, alone under the still heaven, as his last quick footfall came faintly back upon her ear, took up the cross that lay upon her path, and went away to God with it.