Mercy Philbrick's Choice Part 9

"Oh, yes," laughed Mercy, much pleased that the old man was willing she should pay the porters. "Oh, yes, I have my portemonnaie here," holding it up. "This is the cheapest clock ever sold, I think; and you are very good to let me pay the men."

The old man looked at her with a keen, suspicious glance.

"Good? eh! good? Why, ye didn't think I was goin' to give ye money, did ye? Oh, no, no, no! Not money. Never give money."

This was very true. It would probably have cost him a severer pang to give away fifty cents than to have parted with the entire contents of the storehouse. Mercy laughed aloud.

"Why, Mr. Wheeler," she said, "you have given me just the same as money.

Such a clock as this must have cost a good deal, I am sure."

"No, no, child! It's very different, different. Clock wasn't any use to me, wasn't wuth any thin'. Money's of use, use, use. Can't have enough on't. People get it all away from you. They're wolves, wolves, wolves,"

replied the old man, running along in advance of Mercy, and rapping one of the men who were carrying the clock, sharply on his shoulder.

"Keep your end up there! keep it up! I won't pay you, if you don't carry your half," he exclaimed.

It was a droll procession, and everybody turned to look at it: the two ragged men carrying the quaint-fas.h.i.+oned old clock, from which the dust shook off at every jolt, revealing the carved scrolls and figures upon it: following them, Mercy, with her expressive face full of mirth and excitement; and the old man, now ahead, now lagging behind, now talking in an eager and animated manner with Mercy, now breaking off to admonish or chastise the bearers of the clock. The eccentric old fellow used his cane as freely as if it had been a hand. There were few boys in town who had not felt its weight; and his more familiar acquaintances knew the touch of it far better than they knew the grip of his fingers. It "saved steps," he used to say; though of steps the old man seemed any thing but chary, as he was in the habit of taking them perpetually, without advancing or retreating, changing from one foot to the other, as uneasily as a goose does.

Stephen White happened to be looking out of the window, when this unique procession of the clock pa.s.sed his office. He could not believe what he saw. He threw up the window and leaned out, to a.s.sure himself that he was not mistaken. Mercy heard the sound, looked up, and met Stephen's eye. She colored violently, bowed, and involuntarily quickened her pace. Her companion halted, and looked up to see what had arrested her attention.

When he saw Stephen's face, he said,--

"Pshaw!" and turned again to look at Mercy. The bright color had not yet left her cheek. The old man gazed at her angrily for a moment, then stopped short, planted his cane on the ground, and said in a loud tone, all the while peering into her face as if he would read her very thoughts,--

"Don't you know that Steve White isn't good for any thin'? Poor stock, poor stock! Father before him poor stock, too. Don't you go to lettin' him handle your money, child. Mind now! I'll be a good friend to you, if you'll do 's I say; but, if Steve White gets hold on you, I'll have nothin' to do with you. Mind that, eh? eh?"

Mercy had a swift sense of angry resentment at these words; but she repelled it, as she would have resisted the impulse to be angry with a little child.

"Mr. Wheeler," she said with a gentle dignity of tone, which was not thrown away on the old man, "I do not know why you should speak so to me about Mr. White. He is almost an entire stranger to me as yet. We live in his house; but we do not know him or his mother yet, except in the most formal way. He seems to be a very agreeable man," she added with a little tinge of perversity.

"Hm! hm!" was all the old man's reply; and he did not speak again till they reached Mercy's gate. Here the clock-carriers were about to set their burden down. Mr. Wheeler ran towards them with his cane outstretched.

"Here! here! you lazy rascals! Into the house! into the house, else you don't get any quarter!

"Well I came along, child,--well I came along. They'd ha' left it right out doors here. Cheats! People are all cheats, cheats, cheats," he exclaimed.

Into the house, without a pause, without a knock, into poor bewildered Mrs. Carr's presence he strode, the men following fast on his steps, and Mercy unable to pa.s.s them.

"Where'll you have it? Where'll you have it, child? Bless my soul! where's that girl!" he exclaimed, looking back at Mercy, who stood on the front doorstep, vainly trying to hurry in to explain the strange scene to her mother. Mrs. Carr was, as usual, knitting. She rose up suddenly, confused at the strange apparitions before her, and let her knitting fall on the floor. The ball rolled swiftly towards Mr. Wheeler, and tangled the yarn around his feet. He jumped up and down, all the while brandis.h.i.+ng his cane, and muttering, "Pshaw! pshaw! d.a.m.n knitting! Always did hate the sight on't." But, kicking out to the right and the left vigorously, he soon snapped the yarn, and stood free.

"Mother! mother!" called Mercy from behind, "this is the gentleman I told you of,--Mr. Wheeler. He has very kindly given us this beautiful clock, almost exactly like ours."

The sound of Mercy's voice rea.s.sured the poor bewildered old woman, and, dropping her old-fas.h.i.+oned courtesy, she said timidly,--

"Pleased to see you, sir. Pray take a chair."

"Chair? chair? No, no! Never do sit down in houses,--never, never.

Where'll you have it, mum? Where'll you have it?

"Don't you dare put that down! Wait till you are told to, you lazy rascals!" he exclaimed, lifting his cane, and threatening the men who were on the point of setting the clock down, very naturally thinking they might be permitted at last to rest a moment.

"Oh, Mr. Wheeler!" said Mercy, "let them put it down anywhere, please, for the present. I never can tell at first where I want a thing to stand. I shall have to try it in different corners before I am sure," and Mercy took out her portemonnaie, and came forward to pay the bearers. As she opened it, the old man stepped nearer to her, and peered curiously into her hand. The money in the portemonnaie was neatly folded and a.s.sorted, each kind by itself, in a separate compartment. The old man nodded, and muttered to himself, "Fine young woman! fine young woman! Business, business!--Who taught you, child, to sort your money that way?" he suddenly asked.

"Why, no one taught me," replied Mercy. "I found that it saved time not to have to fumble all through a portemonnaie for a ten-cent piece. It looks neater, too, than to have it all in a crumpled ma.s.s," she added, smiling and looking up in the old man's face. "I don't like disorder. Such a place as your store-room would drive me crazy."

The old man was not listening. He was looking about the room with a dissatisfied expression of countenance. In a few moments, he said abruptly,--

"'S this all the furniture you've got?"

Mrs. Carr colored, and looked appealingly at Mercy; but Mercy laughed, and replied as she would have answered her own grandfather,--

"Oh, no, not all we have! We have five more rooms furnished. It is all we have for this room, however. These rooms are all larger than our rooms were at home, and so the things look scanty. But I shall get more by degrees."

"Hm! hm! Want any thing out o' my lumber-room? Have it's well's not.

Things no good to anybody."

"Oh, no, thank you, Mr. Wheeler. We have all we need. I could not think of taking any thing more from you. We are under great obligation to you now for the clock," said Mercy; and Mrs. Carr bewilderedly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "Oh, no, sir,--no, sir! There isn't any call for you to give us any thin'."

While they were speaking, the old man was rapidly going out of the house; with quick, short steps like a child, and tapping his cane on the floor at every step. In the doorway he halted a moment, and, without looking back, said, "Well, well, let me know, if you do want any thing. Have it's well's not," and he was gone.

"Oh, Mercy! he's crazy, sure's you're alive. You'll get took up for hevin'

this clock. Whatever made you take it, child?" exclaimed Mrs. Carr, walking round and round the clock, and dusting it here and there with a corner of her ap.r.o.n.

"Well, mother, I am sure I don't know. I couldn't seem to help it: he was so determined, and the clock was such a beauty. I don't think he is crazy.

I think he is simply very queer; and he is ever, ever so rich. The clock isn't really of any value to him; that is, he'd never do any thing with it. He has a huge room half as big as this house, just crammed with things, all sorts of things, that he took for debts; and this clock was among them. I think it gave the old man a real pleasure to have me take it; so that is one more reason for doing it."

"Well, you know best, Mercy," said Mrs. Carr, a little sadly; "but I can't quite see it's you do. It seems to me amazin' like a charity. I wish he hadn't never found you out."

"I don't, mother. I believe he is going to be my best crony here," said Mercy, laughing; "and I'm sure n.o.body can say any thing ill-natured about such a crony as he would be. He must be seventy years old, at least."

When Stephen came home that night, he received from his mother a most graphic account of the arrival of the clock. She had watched the procession from her window, and had heard the confused sounds of talking and moving of furniture in the house afterward. Marty also had supplied some details, she having been surrept.i.tiously overlooking the whole affair.

"I must say," remarked Mrs. White, "that it looks very queer. Where did she pick up Old Man Wheeler? Who ever heard of his being seen walking with a woman before? Even as a young man, he never would have any thing to do with them; and it was always a marvel how he got married. I used to know him very well."

"But, mother," urged Stephen, "for all we know, they may be relations or old friends of his. You forget that we know literally nothing about these people. So far from being queer, it may be the most natural thing in the world that he should be helping her fit up her house."

But in his heart Stephen thought, as his mother did, that it was very queer.

Chapter VI.

The beautiful white New England winter had set in. As far as the eye could reach, nothing but white could be seen. The boundary, lines of stone walls and fences were gone, or were indicated only by raised and rounded lines of the same soft white. On one side of these were faintly pencilled dark shadows in the morning and in the afternoon; but at high noon the fields were as unbroken a white as ever Arctic explorer saw, and the roads shone in the sun like white satin ribbons flung out in all directions. The groves of maple and hickory and beech were bare. Their delicate gray tints spread in ma.s.ses over the hillsides like a transparent, gray veil, through which every outline of the hills was clear, but softened. The ma.s.sive pines and spruces looked almost black against the white of the snow, and the whole landscape was at once s.h.i.+ning and sombre; an effect which is peculiar to the New England winter in the hill country, and is always either very depressing or very stimulating to the soul. Dreamy and inert and phlegmatic people s.h.i.+ver and huddle, see only the sombreness, and find the winter one long imprisonment in the dark. But to a joyous, brisk, sanguine soul, the clear, crisp, cold air is like wine; and the whiteness and sparkle and s.h.i.+ne of the snow are like martial music, a constant excitement and spell.

Mercy's soul thrilled within her with new delight and impulse each day.

The winter had always oppressed her before. On the seash.o.r.e, winter means raw cold, a pale, gray, angry ocean, fierce winds, and scanty wet snows.

This brilliant, frosty air, so still and dry that it never seemed cold, this luxuriance of snow piled soft and high as if it meant shelter and warmth,--as indeed it does,--were very wonderful to Mercy. She would have liked to be out of doors all day long: it seemed to her a fairer than summer-time. She followed the partially broken trails of the wood-cutters far into the depths of the forests, and found there on sunny days, in sheltered spots, where the feet of the men and horses and the runners of the heavy sledges had worn away the snow, green mosses and glossy ferns and s.h.i.+ning clumps of the hepatica. It was a startling sight on a December day, when the snow was lying many inches deep, to come suddenly on Mercy walking in the middle of the road, her hands filled with green ferns and mosses and vines. There were three different species of ground-pine in these woods, and hepatica and pyrola and wintergreen, and thickets of laurel. What wealth for a lover of wild, out-door things! Each day Mercy bore home new treasures, until the house was almost as green and fragrant as a summer wood. Day after day, Mrs. White, from her point of observation at her window, watched the lithe young figure coming down the road, bearing her sheaves of boughs and vines, sometimes on her shoulder, as lightly and gracefully as a peasant girl of Italy might bear her poised basket of grapes. Gradually a deep wonder took possession of the lonely old woman's soul.