Читать книгу The Gayworthys - Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney - Страница 6

"From all points of the compass" they began to arrive. Not that this implies necessarily any mighty concourse; there was no other way for a gathering to be made in Hilbury. It was one of those great, thinly populated townships that lie about among the hills in certain New England regions, which have a small settlement—sometimes that only of a single family, with its branches—in each corner, and a meeting-house in the middle. There were, in Hillbury, the separate villages of the Center, the Bridge, Lawton's and Gibson's Corners, and Gair's Hill. So, from all these they came,—from up the road and down the road,—and, driving across the chip-yard, tied their horses to the garden fence.

Dr. Gayworthy's house stood, if mathematics admit of such an expression, in the edge of the Center. It was a fair, prosperous-looking building, kept fresh with seasonable paintings, of a mellow, sunny, smiling straw-color; the color in the country, most indicative of well-to-do-ing. It had an air somehow, among the neighboring dwellings of dusky red, as of a dainty lady in primrose silk among rustics wearing common scarlet cotton print.

The children—Gershom and Say—watched the arrival of the company from the "clothes-room" window,—the clothes-room being a large, light closet, off the southwest end of the great kitchen-chamber.

Say's spirits were reacting merrily from her terror and disgrace. Mrs. Reuben, intent at the moment upon the placing of the iced plum-cakes, had but half comprehended the catastrophe which Gershom tried to convey to her knowledge, taking to himself as large a share of the blame as might be.

"I'll warrant it!" was her exclamation. "If there's a mischief to be got into, she'll be sure to find it!"

"She's very sorry about it, Aunt Jane. You won't scold her, will you?"

Something in this appeal, whatever it may have been, of word or manner, seemed to give "Aunt Jane" more annoyance than all the previous recital. She motioned—I might say, if it were elegant, elbowed—him off, with the arm against which, in his eagerness to follow her along the table, he pressed a little, to the damage of the new French embroidered cape, with its innumerable delicate lace finishings and frills, the like of which had never before been seen in Hilbury. The gesture was more pettish than it was like her usual self to be; for Mrs. Reuben Gair rarely allowed herself to be "put about," as the common saying is; she had a way of smoothly steering along toward her ends, whether great or small; without ever jostling against anything or anybody.

"There, go away," she returned, hastily. "I've no time, now, for scolding, or anything else. If you've got her into a mess, you'll have to take care of her and keep her out of the way."

Gershom skipped up the out-room stairs, well pleased at gaining even this much.

"The worst's over, Say," he said. "She knows. And she wasn't so terrible angry, after all. She seemed more put out about my tumbling her new-fashioned vandyke, or whatever you call it, than anything else."

So Say was in spirits again; and sat, like a barefooted princess, upon the divan of blankets and "comfortables" that lay piled below the clothes-room window, and watched the gay arrivals; and Gershom, by and by, when the strawberry feasting began below, ran up and down the out-room staircase, receiving from friendly Huldah Brown nice bits of what he and Say liked best; and Say thought nothing in the world worth wishing for any longer, since Gershie was so good-natured.

"I told you I didn't care about my boots," she cried. "I'd rather be here than down among the company, a great deal!"

Down among the company, however it might be as to bodily wants, there was perhaps many a heart-hunger less abundantly ministered to than little Sarah Gair's.

Stacy Lawton felt no scruple about wearing her hair in the new puffs. She had thought of little else since Mrs. Reuben Gair appeared in them at Mrs. Fairbrother's sewing-circle.

She, as well as Rebecca Gayworthy, had heard the young minister, Gordon King, preach his two sermons last Sunday, the one upon "seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness;" after which, Stacy, with a party of other young girls, had adjourned to spend the "noon-time" with a friend close by the meeting-house, in eating cold pie, cake, and cheese, and in low-toned discussion among themselves as to how it—not this seeking of the kingdom, but the hair-dressing was done; the other, at afternoon service, upon the "mortifying of the flesh"; from which she went straightway home, and used her leisure hours of twilight in patient experiments before her glass, until the hairs of her head, which the Scripture-reading of the day had admonished her she "could neither make white nor black," took shape and place as she desired.

Rebecca Gayworthy shut herself in her chamber, also; but she sat there in a still, solemn presence that pervaded her soul; and in the fair garden thereof the Lord God walked in this cool of His day.

So Stacy Lawton came to the strawberry party with her dark hair banded stylishly from off her face; and the consciousness that she was looking very pretty, and that people were noticing it, gave a sparkle to her eyes, and a sprightly grace and ease to her movements that made her, as indeed she was very apt at all times to be, quite the belle of the occasion. Say what you will of violets, and unconscious charms, the perk little daisy gets the better of it in the eye of the world; and there is nothing that helps beauty so to its full success as just the spice of consciousness that gives confidence.

And Rebecca had put from her the like adornment, for conscience's sake. Foolishly, you say? I am not sure. There is somewhere this written—that "all things shall work together for good to them that love God." Even a mistaken or needless self-sacrifice, then. "There is none that hath forsaken anything for the kingdom of heaven's sake but shall receive manifold more." God's promise to pay holds good, I think.

Nevertheless, it is very true that Gordon King, as he stood talking for a few moments with Rebecca upon his first entrance, thought silently that "somehow, she wasn't quite so pretty, after all, as he had fancied;" and that Stacy Lawton's bright glance and musical laugh enticed him presently to that corner of the room where she held small, merry court; where she made room for him at her side with a beaming look that seemed warm welcome only, but was secretly, also, kindled of a coquettish triumph.

The Reverend Gordon King was very like other young men, it must be owned; and although he preached from the Bible on a Sunday the truth he found there, he went out from his pulpit of a week-day into the little world about him, and valued the things thereof greatly after the world's own fashion. "Take no thought for raiment, what ye shall put on," he had read and exhorted; yet here he was, quite appreciative of the results of Miss Stacy's "taking thought" which had brought about all this blooming prettiness in puffed-hair and pink muslin.

I do not mean that Gordon King was a hypocrite,—to be ranked with the Scribes and Pharisees in the condemnation. I mean simply, that he was no better than human; and as yet, perhaps, not wholly sanctified human. There may be snuffling, canting "shepherds,"—Stigginses, Chadbands, and the like in the world. I have not known them. I only speak of people of whom I know such to have been.

Preaching ran in the King family; as politics or doctoring, sailoring or soldiering, run in some others. The uncle of Gordon had been a divine, eminent in his neighborhood, degreed in due course, as Doctor Divinitatis, and now occupying a good college professor-ship. His elder brother was in Batavia, sent out by the A. B. C. F. M. His father was an influential deacon in the church; his sister had married the Rev. Felix Fairbrother; which brings him into the pulpit of Hilbury and into the scene of our story. He had gone through a college course; he had studied in the Divinity School; he had also, as needful preliminary to this,—not feignedly, but of good faith,—putting himself "in the way of grace,"—gone through what passed with himself and those about him for the genuine order of religious experience; he believed himself, and was believed, to have received the renewing gift—the intangible ordinance of the Spirit. How was he truly to know if what he had gotten were the same wherein another soul rejoiced?

Life was to test for him and teach him this. God, who worked, doubtless, in these very cues of circumstance, calling him outwardly, might have laid up for him in his future, a nobler, intenser experience than any whereto he had yet reached in these five and twenty years that were past.

Meanwhile, for this party at the Gayworthys, he had dressed with thoughts not very different from those that any other bachelor of twenty-five might have had, in dressing for a ladies' party. There was an external difference. He folded about his neck the white cravat, at that time the still distinctive badge of his order. Two white cravats, successively, I should say; for the first that he essayed proving to be but limply starched, and the great houseclock below reminding him at the same moment of the lateness of the hour, he had flung it down with a very unclerical gesture of—to say the least—impatience; and an inarticulate ejaculation that, on ruder or unconsecrated lips might have gone nigh to syllable itself profanely. I don't say that it wasn't a great deal better so than if he had actually said anything that would need to be spelt with a black ——; and I don't suppose he ever did use bad words. But I wonder if, after all, the angels up above listen so needfully for the vibrations of these gases about our earth which feed and pulsate to our human breath as for the tremblings of the unseen spirit; and whether the state of mind of the Reverend Gordon King for the moment was really so widely unlike that of the poor man whose hay-cart I saw topple over in the field the other day, and who did say something with a dash in the middle. And I am afraid that, as a general statement men are but men, too often; and that, lest they might be worse, it behooves somebody to look after them pretty carefully, even in the matter of white cravats.

Howbeit, this was he whom Rebecca, in her innocent reverence, held as one sanctified of God above common men. For whom she would not use any harmless art of outer adornment; but rather hallow herself, and hold herself pure of earthly vanity, if so, at least, she might keep her soul upon the plane of such as his; if so, at least, she might be utterly worthy, whether it should please God that she might win his love, or no. Ah, there is a sainthood to whose companionship such life reaches, though that which it believes in seem to mock its faith!

If Gordon King had held the answering talisman in his own soul, he should not, this night, have been lured away to the false princess, while the true, veiled in her meek-heartedness, waited so near his side.

Rebecca, moving about among the guests with her Madonna hair and quiet look, grew even a shade more quiet, perhaps, but that was all. Joanna, bright and laughing, with a little positive emphatic way of her own of uttering droll or absurdly extravagant things, that made everybody else laugh with her, was somehow also a little more pronounced in her special characteristics,—a little more queer, and animated, and hyperbolical than usual. Nobody guessed,—as she kept a knot of the Hilbury girls in chimes of merriment with a carefully detailed receipt for the famous short-cake, in which she gravely asserted "soft soap, beaten to a cream" to be the chief ingredient, and described to their eager questionings the secret arrangement of "seventeen crash flounces" which she declared—ladies were not caged or coopered then—held Mrs. Reuben's skirts in such graceful rotundity,—the stealthy anxiety that glanced through all her fun, in the quick half-turn of her head at each movement near the door; or the disappointment that was gradually settling down cold upon her heart, as time wore on, and somebody, whom she looked for, did not come; and no one around her caught, as she did, a chance word of Mrs. Hartshorne's, who stood a dozen feet off, in answer to a question put by Mrs. Prue, that Joanna dared not, for her life, have put, herself.

"Gabriel's gone over to Deepwater, sailing with the Purcells. He promised a week ago, to go, when they settled on a day; and Aleck Purcell came over this morning to get him."

"Are the Frank Purcells staying there still?"

"O yes—the young folks. Mr. and Mrs. went back last Tuesday."

After that, Joanna laughed more merrily yet, and became yet more absurd. And her end of the room grew quite noisy with the "gale" the girls got into; and plaintive Mrs. Fairbrother, away over opposite, quite worn out with continual mild, ineffectual remonstrances with "Malviny," who, as the minister's child, was privileged to be taken everywhere, said to her husband,—"It's Joanna Gayworthy. She's always in such high spirits. She'll get sobered down, one of these days, when she comes to see care and trouble."

Joanna Gayworthy, at the same moment, was thinking, in her secret heart, how nice it would be, when all these people were gone, and the china set away, and the house shut up, and lights put out, and she in bed, having a good cry to herself, in the dark.

Well,—this was a strawberry party. It makes no difference. That, or anything else, as it might happen. It was life, which finds slight outside seeming and excuse, and veils so its great workings. You don't hold out to people, undisguisedly, the hundred different hopes and motives which you know will bring them together, when you invite them to your house. You ask them to eat strawberries, or to listen to music, or to dance the polka. The rest is incidental,—thrown in. So we come to live double. Nobody says anything about it, but every one is conscious of something, be it what it may, that underlies the dressing and the dancing, and the feasting, and the words of the hour, which is the reality; else there is none, in it all. Take this away, and the whole crumbles into nothing. The game is not worth the candle. The candle, henceforth, goes out.

Doctor Gayworthy knew all this; but he had got past the time for thinking much about it. He could have remembered hours wherein all life had seemed to him centered; hours that seemed an existence, questioning nothing of a beginning or an end; a husking, or a quilting, or a winter dance, the simple scene of which had widened out with a breadth of experience that made it as a theater whereon the pivotal act of a human life was played, while all the eager stars looked down; he could have remembered when, as his real life withdrew itself, and centered otherwise and elsewhere, such gatherings began to lose their charm, and he came to wonder how it was that there were no longer any such drives, or dances, or bees, or frolics, as had been when he was young. Now, even this was past; he neither participated nor wondered; but accepted or offered a hospitality that was part of a routine, and only looked to it, that, so far as depended upon him, everybody got their tea and cake, which was what they had ostensibly come for.

So, to-night, the Doctor, worthy gentleman, looked up and down among his daughters' guests, and saw that all was plentiful and comfortable; and he walked about the rooms after tea was over, and noticed everybody, and chatted with a few; and observed, indeed, that Rebecca was a little pale and still to-night,—tired, perhaps, with her preparations; and that Joanna was, as always, a gay little gipsy, and the life of the company; and it never occurred to him to imagine that these two or three hours wherein he wore his best coat, and submitted to this little temporary stir in the house, were any more to them, by chance, than they might be to himself.

As the company thinned off, toward nine o'clock, this little scene took place between him and Mrs. Reuben in the tea-room, whence Huldah was removing the "things," and whither the doctor had come for a surreptitious "third cup" which he had not got at the regular time.

"Where are the children? I haven't seen them to-night."

"Why, Gershom got Say into some sort of a scrape in the shed-chamber, while the pigs were being fed; and splashed her with the pails, I believe; I hadn't time to dress her over, or to inquire much about it. I wish the boy wasn't so rude and teasing."

"Got into a scrape, did they? I'm sorry for that. He's a very good sort of boy, though, Jane. A remarkably good boy; and steady, too, for his age. I don't know what I should do without Gershom."

Mrs. Gair was apparently intent upon a stain of something which had fallen upon the front breadth of her new silk, and which she was trying to wipe off with a wet napkin.

"He ought to be a good boy," she remarked. "He owes more to you than he'll ever be able to pay."

"Well, I don't know about that,—yet," said the doctor. "If things were squared up between Prue and the boy and me, I don't know exactly how the balance would stand, I'm sure."

"Everybody else knows. Why, father, you could not have done more for them if they'd been your own. To be sure," she added, as glancing up from her labor, she caught a darkening look upon the doctor's face, "I know, of course, they seem just like your own. And I don't suppose there was ever a mixed-up family like ours, that thought so little of the difference. But when you talk of squaring up accounts! By the way, father,"—and Mrs. Gair laid down the napkin and reached the sugar for the doctor, standing by, with a thoughtful expression, while he bountifully sweetened his tea,—"now you speak of him, have you ever thought what it will be best for him to do, one of these days? He's getting to be a great boy. I must have a talk with you about him when you're at leisure, sometime, before I go. I dare say Mr. Gair might find something for him in Selport."

Mrs. Reuben was scrupulous in always speaking of her husband as "Mr. Gair," in this neighborhood, where he had some thirty years before, run barefooted.

"Time enough to talk about that," replied the doctor, a little impatiently. Then, setting down his cup, resting the knuckles of his hands upon the table-edge, and bending forward so, for a moment, he seemed to take thought, and come to a resolve.

"Jane," he said, seriously, after this instant's pause, changing his posture and moving a pace closer to her side,—"don't speak to Reuben of anything of the sort; and don't talk to the boy about Selport. There's time enough, as I said; and I haven't made up my mind. At least I shouldn't have spoken if you hadn't begun. But Hilbury has always done well enough for me, and I've been in hopes it might do well enough for Gershom. He's all the boy I've got, you know."

Yes, Mrs. Gair knew now just what she had wanted to find out. The good doctor had no thought of Gershom Vorse but as his boy. "All the boy he'd got."

Jane Gair's work lay straight before her, and then and there she made an initial stroke.

She, too, held herself an instant in deliberation, the while she resumed again the napkin, she had laid down, and with its dry corner wiped, leisurely and solicitously, the damp spot upon her dress. "O yes," she said, half absently, as people do when they are mainly intent on that which occupies their fingers, and speak mechanically. "There's no hurry. And I don't know as it would have occurred to me to say anything about it, only that Gershom has been asking me some questions, now and then, since I came up, about the city. It seemed to me as though he had got a little restless. Boys will, you know. There,"—once more dropping the napkin, and stroking down the folds of silk with her fingers,—"I don't see as I can do anything better for it, now."

"Better let it be," said Huldah Brown, coming in for a fresh relay of dishes, and catching the last sentence. "It's grease, I guess. It's easier to spot things than to clean 'em, a good deal."

"Oh, well, never mind," answered Mrs. Reuben, good-naturedly, "I'll manage it among the gathers, and it won't show." And she moved away into the front rooms.

"Jane Gayworthy, all over!" ejaculated Huldah, as she came into the out-room again, where Eben sat, eating strawberry short-cake. "She allus thinks it's no matter what's done, as long as it's tucked away in the gethers, out of sight. For my part, I like things good and clean, clear through. As soon as they're spotted they're sp'ilt, to my thinkin'."

Eben pushed his emptied plate into the middle of the table, and tilting his chair upon its hinder legs, made a quadruped of himself so, and walked himself back a few paces, as Yankees know how, till he rested comfortably against the wall. He had been seated within six feet, or thereabouts, of the steps that led up into the kitchen proper, through all the foregoing conversation. The busy handmaiden, in the clatter of her dishes, farther off, had caught nothing of it, save in her passages to and fro.

"Huldy Brown!" said Eben, emphatically, throwing up his arms over his head against the partition, and crossing his long legs in the air. "I tell you what it is! I don't want to jedge nobody; but I b'lieve, as I've got a created soul, she's thunderin sly!"