Читать книгу Purple Springs - Nellie Letitia McClung - Страница 7

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When Pearl came out of the doctor’s office into the sunshine of the village street, she had but one thought—one overwhelming desire, expressed in the way she held her head, and the firm beat of her low-heeled shoes on the sidewalk—she must get away where she would not see him or the people she knew. She realized that whatever it was that had come between them was painful to him, and that he really cared for her. To see her, would be hard on him, embarrassing to them both, and she would do her share by going away—and she remembered, with a fresh pang—that when she had spoken of this, he had made no objection, thus confirming her decision that for her to go would be the best way.

The three glorious years, so full of hopes and dreams, were over! Pearl’s house of hopes had fallen! All was over! And it was not his fault—he was not to blame. Instinctively, Pearl defended him in her mind against a clamorous sense of injustice which told her that she had not had a square deal! The pity of it all was what choked her and threatened to storm her well guarded magazine of self-control! It was all so sudden, so mysterious and queer, and yet, she instinctively felt, so inexorable!

Pearl had always been scornful of the tears of lovelorn maidens, and when in one of her literature lessons at the Normal, the sad journey of the lily-maid on her barge of black samite, floating down the river, so dead and beautiful, with the smile on her face and the lily in her hand, reduced form A to a common denominator of tears, and made the whole room look like a Chautauqua salute, Pearl had stoutly declared that if Elaine had played basketball or hockey instead of sitting humped up on a pile of cushions in her eastern tower, broidering the sleeve of pearls so many hours a day, she wouldn’t have died so easily nor have found so much pleasure in arranging her own funeral.

But on this bright March day, the village street seemed strangely dull and dead to her, with an empty sound like a phone that has lost its connection. Something had gone from her little world, leaving it motionless, weary and old! A row of icicles hung from the roof of the corner store, irregular and stained from the shingles above, like an ugly set of ill-kept teeth, dripping disconsolately on the sidewalk below, and making there a bumpy blotch of unsightly ice!

In front of the store stood the delivery sleigh, receiving its load of parcels, which were thrown in with an air of unconcern by a blocky young man with bare red hands. The horse stood without being tied, in an apparently listless and melancholy dream. A red and white cow came out of the lane and attempted to cross the slippery sidewalk, sprawling helplessly for a moment, and then with a great effort recovered herself and went back the way she came, limping painfully, the blocky young man hastening her movements by throwing at her a piece of box lid, with the remark that that would “learn her.”

The sunshine so brilliant and keen, had a cold and merciless tang in it, and a busy-body look about it, as if it delighted in shining into forbidden corners and tearing away the covers that people put on their sorrows, calling all the world to come and see! Pearl shuddered with the sudden realization that the sun could shine and the wind could blow bright and gay as ever, though hearts were writhing in agony!

She hoped she would not see any of the people she knew, for the pain that lay like a band of ice around her heart might be showing in her face—and Pearl knew that the one thing she could not stand was a word of sympathy. That would be fatal. So she hurried on. She would send a wire of acceptance to her inspector friend, and then go over to the stable for her horse, and be on her way home.

But there is something whimsical about fate. It takes a hand in our affairs without apology, and throws a switch at the last moment. If Pearl had not met Mrs. Crocks at the corner, just before she took the street to the station, this would have been a different story. But who knows? We never get a chance to try the other way, and it is best and wisest and easiest of comprehension to believe that whatever is, is best!

Mrs. Crocks was easily the best informed person regarding local happenings, in the small town of Millford. She really knew. Every community has its unlicensed and unauthorized gossips, who think they know what their neighbors are thinking and doing, but who more often than not get their data wrong, and are always careless of detail. Mrs. Crocks was not one of these.

When Bill Cavers got drunk, and spent in one grand, roaring spree all the money which he and his wife and Libby Anne had saved for their trip to Ontario, there were those who said that he went through six hundred dollars that one night, making a rough guess at the amount. Mrs. Crocks did not use any such amateur and unsatisfactory way of arriving at conclusions. She did not need to—there was a way of finding out! To the elevator she went, and looked at the books under cover of looking up a wheat ticket which her husband had cashed and found that Bill Cavers had marketed seventeen hundred and eight dollars worth of wheat. From this he had paid his store bill, and the blacksmith’s bill, which when deducted, left him eight hundred and fourteen dollars—she did not bother with the cents. The deductions were easily verified—both the storekeeper and the blacksmith were married men!

This was the method she followed in all her research—careful, laborious and accurate at all costs, with a fine contempt for her less scientific contemporaries. The really high spots in her life had been when she was able to cover her competitors with confusion by showing that their facts were all wrong, which process she referred to as “showing up these idle gossips.”

James Crocks, her husband, had chosen for himself a gentler avocation than his wife’s, and one which brought him greater peace of mind—proprietor of the big red stable which spread itself over half a block, he had unconsciously defined himself, as well as his place of business, by having printed in huge white letters with black edging across the shingled roof, the words:

“HORSE REPOSITORY” Prop.J. Crocks.

Here the tired horses could forget the long trail and the heavy loads, in the comfortable stalls, with their deep bedding of clean straw; and here also, James Crocks himself was able to find the cheerful company, who ate their meals in quietude of heart, asking no questions, imputing no motives, knowing nothing of human intrigue, and above all, never, never insisting that he tell them what he thought about anything! Most of his waking hours were spent here, where he found the gentle sounds of feeding horses, the honest smell of prairie hay and the blessed absence of human chatter very soothing and restful.

As time went on, and James Crocks grew more and more averse to human speech—having seen it cause so much trouble one way’n another, Mrs. Crocks found it was an economy of effort to board one of the stable boys, and that is how it came about that Mr. Bertie Peters found himself called from the hay-mow above the stable, to his proprietors’ guest chamber, and all the comforts of a home, including nightly portions of raisin pie—and best of all, an interested and appreciative audience who liked to hear him talk. Mrs. Crocks as usual had made a good choice, for as Bertie talked all the time, he was sure to say something once in a while. A cynical teacher had once said of Bertie, that he never had an “unuttered thought.”

But even though the livery stable happenings as related by Bertie gave Mrs. Crocks many avenues of information, all of her prescience could not be explained through that or any other human agency. The young doctor declared she had the gift or divination, was a mind reader, and could see in the dark! Many a time when he had gone quietly to the stable and taken out his team without as much as causing a dog to bark, removing his sleigh bells to further cover his movements, and stealing out of town like an absconding bank-teller, to make a call, returning the same way, still under cover of night, and flattering himself that he had fooled her this time, she would be waiting for him, and timed her call to the exact minute. Just as he got in to his room after putting his team away, his phone would ring and Mrs. Crocks would ask him about the patient he had been to see. She did not always call him, of course, but he felt she knew where he had been. There was no explanation—it was a gift!

Pearl had been rather a favorite with Mrs. Crocks when the Watsons family lived in Millford, but since they had gone to the farm and prosperity had come to them as evidenced by their better clothes, their enlarged house, their happier faces, and more particularly Pearl’s success in her school work in the city, all of which had appeared in the local paper, for the editor was enthusiastic for his own town—Mrs. Crock’s friendly attitude had suffered a change. She could put up with almost anything in her friends, but success!

But when she met Pearl on the street that day, her manner was friendly.

“Hello stranger,” she said, “I hear you have been doing big things down there in the city, winnin’ debates and makin’ speeches. Good for you, Pearl—I always said you were a smart girl, even when your people were as poor as get-out. I could see it in you—but don’t let it spoil you, Pearl—and don’t ever forget you are just a country girl. But I am certainly glad you did so well—for your mother’s sake—many a time I was dead sorry for her having to work so hard! It’s a comfort to her now to see you doin’ so well. Where have been now? I saw you comin’ out of the doctor’s office just now—anybody sick? You’re not looking as pert as usual yourself—you haven’t been powdering’ your face, I hope! No one sick, eh? Just a friendly call then, was it? See here, Pearl—when I was young, girls did not do the chasin’, we let the men do that, and I’m here to tell you it’s the best way. And look here, there’s enough girls after Doctor Clay without you—there was a man from the city telling Bertie at the stable that he seen our doctor in a box at the Opera with the Senator’s daughter two weeks ago, and that she is fair dippy about him, and now that he is thinking of goin’ into politics, it would be a great chance for him. The other side are determined to make him run for them against old Steadman, and the old lady is that mad she won’t let his name be mentioned in the house. She says the country owes it to Mr. Steadman to put him in by acclamation! And the doctor hasn’t accepted it yet. The committee went to see him yesterday and he turned them down but they won’t take no for an answer, and they asked him to think it over—I suppose he told you all about it—”

For the first time Mrs. Crocks stopped for breath. Her beady eyes were glistening for excitement. Here was a scoop—if Pearl would only tell her. She would be able to anticipate the doctor’s answer.

“What is he goin’ to do, Pearl, I know he would tell you; I have always said that doctor thinks more of you than he does of any of the other girls! What did he say about it, will he take it?”

Pearl was quite herself now—composed, on her guard, even smiling.

“I think the doctor would prefer to make his own announcement,” she said, “and he will make it to the committee.”

Mrs. Crocks’ eyes narrowed darkly, and she breathed heavily in her excitement. Did Pearl Watson mean to tell her in as many words, to mind her own business. But in Pearl’s face there was no guile, and she was going on her way.

“Don’t be in a hurry, Pearl,” said Mrs. Crocks, “can’t you wait a minute and talk to an old friend. I am sure I do not care a pin whether the doctor runs or not. I never was one to think that women should concern themselves with politics—that surely belongs to the men. I have been a home body all my life, as you know, and of course I should have known that the doctor would not discuss his business with a little chit like you—but dear, me, he is one terrible flirt, he cannot pass a pretty face. Of course now he will settle down no doubt, every one thinks he will anyway, and marry Miss Keith of Hampton—the Keiths have plenty of money, though I don’t believe that counts as much with the doctor as family, and of course they have the blue blood too, and her father being the Senator will help. What! must you go—you’re not half as sociable as you used to be when you brought the milk every morning to the back door—you sure could talk then, and tell some of the weirdest things. I always knew you would be something, but if you freeze up like a clam when you meet old friends—it does not seem as if education has improved you. Can’t you stay and talk a minute?”

“I could stay,” said Pearl, “and I can still talk, but I have not been able to talk to you. You see I do not like to interrupt any one so much older than myself!”

When Pearl walked away, Mrs. Crocks looked after her with a look of uncertainty on her face. Pearl’s words rang in her ears!

“She’s smart, that kid—she’s smart—I’ll say that for her. There is not a man in town who dare look me in the eye and take a rise like that out of me, but she did it without a flicker. So I know I had her mad or she wouldn’t have said it, but wasn’t she smooth about it?”

Then her professional pride asserted itself, reminding her that a slight had been put upon her, and her mood changed.

“Of all the saucy little jades,” she said to herself—“with the air of a duchess, and the fine clothes of her! And to think that her mother washed for me not so long ago, and that girl came for the clothes and brought them back again! And now listen to her! You put your foot in it, Pearl my young lady, when you rubbed Jane Crocks the wrong way, for people cannot do that and get away with it! And remember I am telling you.”

When Pearl left Mrs. Crocks standing on the street she walked quickly to the station, but arriving there with the yellow blank in her hand, she found her intention of accepting a school in the North had grown weak and pale. She did not want to go to North, or any place. She suddenly wanted to stay. She would take a school some place near—and see what was going to happen; and besides—she suddenly thought of this—she must not decide on anything until she saw Mr. Donald, her old teacher, and got his advice. It would not be courteous to do anything until she saw him, and tomorrow was the day he wanted her to go to the school to speak to the children. Why, of course, she could not go—and so Pearl reasoned in that well-known human way of backing herself up in the thing she wanted to do! So she tore off a couple of blank forms and put them in her purse, and asked the agent if he knew how the train from the East was, and he gave her the assurance that it had left the city on time and was whoopin’ it along through the hills at Cardinal when last heard from—and stood a good chance of getting in before night.

All the way home, Pearl tried to solve the tangle of thoughts that presented themselves to her, but the unknown quantity, the “X” in this human equation, had given her so little to work on, that it seemed as though she must mark it “insufficient data” and let it go! But unfortunately for Pearl’s peace of mind it could not be dismissed in that way.

One thing was evident—it was some sudden happening or suggestion that had changed his attitude towards her, for there was no mistaking the tenderness in his messages over the phone the day before—and why did he remember the day at all, if it were only to tell her that she was too young to really know her own mind. The change—whatever it was—had taken place in the interval of his phoning, and her visit, and Mrs. Crocks had said that a committee had gone to see him and offer him the nomination! What difference would that make? The subtle suggestion of the senator’s daughter came back to her mind! Was it possible—that the Watson family were—what she had once read of in an English story—‘socially impossible.’ Pearl remembered the phrase. The thought struck her with such an impact that she pulled her horse up with a jerk, and stood on the road in deep abstraction.

She remembered the quarrel she had once had with a girl at school. It all came back in a flash of rage that lit up this forgotten corner of her memory! The cause of the quarrel did not appear in the record, but that the girl had flung it at her that her people were nothing and nobody—her mother a washerwoman and her father a section hand—now stood out in letters of flame! Pearl had not been angry at the time—and she remembered that her only reason for taking out the miserable little shrimp and washing her face in the snow was that she knew the girl had said this to be very mean, and with the pretty certain hope that it would cut deep! She was a sorrel-topped, anaemic, scrawny little thing, who ate slate-pencils and chewed paper, and she had gone crying to the teacher with the story of Pearl’s violence against her.

Mr. Donald had found out the cause, and had spoken so nicely to Pearl about it, that her heart was greatly lifted as a result, and the incident became a pleasant recollection, with only the delightful part remaining, until this moment. Mr. Donald had said that Pearl was surely a lucky girl, when the worst thing that could be said to her was that her two parents had been engaged in useful and honorable work—and he had made this the topic for a lesson that afternoon in showing how all work is necessary and all honorable. Out of the lesson had grown a game which they often played on Friday afternoons, when a familiar object was selected and all the pupils required to write down the names of all the workers who had been needed to bring it to perfection.

And the next day when lunch time came, Mr. Donald told them he had been thinking about the incident, and how all that we enjoy in life comes to us from our fellow-workers, and he was going to have a new grace, giving the thanks to where it belonged. He said God was not the kind of a Creator who wanted all the glory of the whole world—for he knew that every man and woman or boy or girl that worked, was entitled to praise, and he liked to see them thanked as they deserved.

A new grace was written on the board, and each day it was repeated by all the pupils. Pearl remembered that to her it had seemed very grand and stately and majestic, with the dignity and thrill of a pipe-organ:

“Give us to know, O God, that the blessings we are about to enjoy have come to us through the labors of others. Strengthen the ties of brotherhood and grant that each of us may do our share of the world’s work.”

But the aesthetic emotions which it sent through her young soul the first time she said it, did not in any way interfere with the sweet satisfaction she had in leaning across the aisle and wrinkling up her nose at her former adversary!

She began to wonder now if Mr. Donald had been right in his idealistic way of looking at life and labor. She had always thought so until this minute, and many a thrill of pride had she experienced in thinking of her parents and their days of struggling. They had been and were, the real Empire-builders who subdued the soil and made it serve human needs, enduring hardships and hunger and cold and bitter discouragements, always with heroism and patience. The farm on which they now lived, had been abandoned, deserted, given up for a bad job, and her people had redeemed it, and were making it one of the best in the country! Every farm in the community was made more valuable because of their efforts. It had seemed to Pearl a real source of proper pride—that her people had begun with nothing, and were now making a comfortable living, educating their children and making improvements each year in their way of living and in the farm itself! It seemed that she ought to be proud of them, and she was!

But since she had been away, she learned to her surprise that the world does not give its crowns to those who serve it best—but to those who can make the most people serve them, and she found that many people think of work as a disagreeable thing, which if patiently endured for a while may be evaded ever afterwards, and indeed her mother had often said that she was determined to give her children an education, so they would not need to work as hard as she and their father had. Education then seemed to be a way of escape.

Senator Keith, of Hampton, with his forty sections all rented out, did not work. Miss Keith, his daughter, did not work. They did not need to work—they had escaped!

It was quite a new thought to Pearl, and she pondered it deeply. The charge against her family—the slur which could be thrown on them was not that of dishonor, dishonesty, immorality or intemperance—none of these—but that they had worked at poorly paid, hard jobs, thereby giving evidence that they were not capable of getting easier ones. Hard work might not be in itself dishonorable—but it was a confession.

Something in Pearl’s heart cried out at the injustice of this. It was not fair! All at once she wanted to talk about it to—some one, to everybody. It was a mistaken way of looking at life, she thought; the world, as God made it, was a great, beautiful place, with enough of everything to go around. There is enough land—enough coal—enough oil. Enough pleasure and beauty, enough music and fun and good times! What had happened was that some had taken more than their share, and that was why others had to go short, and the strange part of it all was that the hoggish ones were the exalted ones, to whom many bowed, and they—some of them—were scornful of the people who were still working—though if every one stopped working, the world would soon be starving.

“It is a good world—just the same,” said Pearl, as she looked away to her left, where the Hampton Hills shoved one big blue shoulder into the sky-line. “People do not mean to be hard and cruel to each other—they do not understand, that’s all—they have not thought—they do not see.”

From the farm-houses set back in the snowy fields, came the cheerful Spring sounds of scolding hens and gabbling ducks, with the occasional bark of a dog. The sunshine had in it now no tang of cold or bitterness, for in Pearl’s heart there had come a new sense of power—an exaltation of spirit that almost choked her with happiness. Her eyes flashed—her hands tingled—her feet were light as air. Out of the crushing of her hopes, the falling of her house of dreams, had come this inexplicable intoxication, which swept her heart with its baptism of joy.

She threw back her head and looked with rapture into the limitless blue above her, with something of the vision which came to Elisha’s servant at Dothan when he saw the mountains were filled with the horses and the chariots of the Lord!

“It is a good world,” she whispered, “God made it, Christ lived in it—and when He went away, He left His Spirit. It can’t go wrong and stay wrong. The only thing that is wrong with it is in people’s hearts, and hearts can be changed by the Grace of God.”

A sudden feeling of haste came over her—a new sense of responsibility—there were so many things to be done. She roused the fat pony from his pleasant dream, to a quicker gait, and drove home with the strange glamour on her soul.