Wheat and Huckleberries Part 24

It's all that's strong enough to last, and it's a long, long thing, giving your promise to marry."

And then that shrewd reflective note crept into his voice again as he added: "But if it kept coming to a body the way you speak of, to be thinking of somebody else all the time, and be sorry for them, and all that, I should be a little mite doubtful if there wasn't something after all besides pity at the bottom of it. A body wouldn't keep on so very long being sorry for one person, if he was right down in love with another. He'd forget about that one before he knew it. It's like Aaron's rod, you see. Some things get swallowed up terrible quick when the one that's bigger and more alive stretches itself out among 'em."

She did not ask any more questions. She kept her eyes on the stars for a long time after that. And her grandfather spoke to Dobbin presently in a tone of impatience. "Get up; get up; it's time we were home long ago."

It was certainly later than usual when they drew up at the door. Aunt Elsie opened it, looking out rather anxiously when the wheels of the carriage stopped. "I guess we've been a little longer than common on the way, we've had so much to talk about," said the old gentleman, cheerfully. Then, as he got down from the carriage, and left it in the hands of Tom, who stood ready with the lantern, he added, stretching himself, "I declare, I feel sort o' chilly and stiff in the joints.

Mebbe I'd better have a little sup of something warm before I get into bed."

Esther had thought that would be the last time of going to prayer-meeting with her grandfather, and so it proved, but not because she had taken her flight before the next Wednesday evening came. Perhaps it was a cold settling upon him with the raw gray weather which November ushered in, but he was feverish next morning, and kept the house, complaining of draughts which no one else felt, and a little querulous, as he was apt to be when anything ailed that outer man in whose general soundness he took such pride.

For three days he sat by the fire, swallowing boneset tea in quant.i.ties and of a degree of bitterness which filled the household, especially Esther, with admiration; but he sternly rejected Aunt Elsie's suggestion that he should send for a physician, being in practice disposed to the opinion that a man had no use for a doctor until he had reached the point where the chances were against a doctor or any one else being able to help him. He was in something of a strait, however, when Sunday came and he was clearly unable to attend church. To admit the gravity of his case by sending for a medical man was one thing, but to absent himself from the house of G.o.d, unless such state of gravity existed, was another; and between the two horns of the dilemma he tossed painfully all the morning. In the end Aunt Elsie settled it, and she was quite willing that he should take what grumbling comfort he could in representing himself as a martyr to feminine insistence when the doctor appeared.

Evidently the latter did not think he had been called too soon. He sent his patient promptly to bed, and now, having advertised himself as sick, the old gentleman obeyed orders with the meekness of a lamb. It would be only a few days, of course; but while it lasted he meant to make the most of his case, and take his full dues in the way of sympathy and attention.

That the minister would come promptly was certain, and there would be opportunity for testing the fidelity of his brother deacons to the duty of visiting the sick and afflicted. Undoubtedly there would be prayers sent up in his behalf from the pulpit and at the Wednesday evening prayer-meeting, and-let us not judge the good man too severely! his own gift in prayer was of no common order-he really hoped the pet.i.tions would be well expressed. As for his own family, it went without saying that they would wait upon him with unfailing attention, while he lay, as he plaintively expressed it, on his "bed of pain and languishment"; and feminine attentions were dear to the soul of Ruel Saxon.

He did not have to suggest to Esther that she should delay her departure for Boston. Indeed, it is possible that he forgot her plans altogether, and she remembered them herself only to say quietly to Aunt Elsie, "I shall stay, of course, till he is better. I couldn't think of leaving him now, and perhaps I can be some help to you in taking care of him."

Aunt Elsie was not an effusive woman, but the tone in which she said, "It'll be a real comfort to have you here," made the girl look happy.

She meant to slip across the fields later in the day and tell Aunt Katharine that her going had been postponed, but her grandfather grew restless as the day wore on, and seemed to feel neglected if some one were not constantly at his side.

"I really think Aunt Katharine ought to know it," she said at supper, and Tom, who was sitting at the table, responded promptly, "I'll go and tell her, if you want me to."

"Will you?" she said eagerly. "Thank you, Tom. Tell her I'll come down and see her myself as soon as grandfather gets a little better."

"And don't let her feel too much worried about him," cautioned his mother. "He isn't any worse than he was last week, only he's in bed, and that makes him seem worse."

"All right," said Tom, "I'll go as soon as I'm through milking."

Esther thanked him again, though in her heart she would rather he had proposed to spend an hour in his grandfather's room. It was several days since she had seen Aunt Katharine, and she would have liked a little chat in the pleasant living-room, where that big wood stove had been set up, and the windows were growing gay with old-fas.h.i.+oned chrysanthemums.

They were the only flowers she ever kept in her windows, and she excused her partiality for these on a whimsical plea of pity.

"They count on being taken in," she said one day, when Esther came upon her in the garden potting them for the winter. "They know they can't do half their blossoming outdoors at this time o' year, but that's the way they time it every season. Look at those buds, thick as spatter, and they won't half of 'em have a chance to show their color unless somebody goes to the trouble of taking 'em in and doing for 'em. I hate to see things go so far and then make a fizzle of it." And she had pressed the earth about their roots in the big stone jars with a carefulness of touch and a look of exasperated patience which the girl had enjoyed immensely.

The friends.h.i.+p which to others seemed so odd seemed to her now the most natural thing in the world, and more and more she valued it. Once, in the soreness of that clash with Kate, she had poured out her heart to her mother. Perhaps Kate had done so too in the days that followed her return; but the reply which Mrs. Northmore made had cleared the atmosphere for Esther, at least, and left the intimacy free and untroubled.

"My dear child," she wrote, "I am sure you will not believe that I share your sister's uneasiness over your friends.h.i.+p with Aunt Katharine. The questions over which she has brooded so long are real and vital, and I am not sorry that you should come to know them through knowing one who holds her views upon them with such deep and unselfish earnestness as your Aunt Katharine. A braver or truer heart than hers I have never known. But it must have occurred to you-if not, it surely will later-that she sees only one side of some of the great facts of our woman's life. The reformer who sees only one side of any question is needed, no doubt, to startle others into recognition of facts they would otherwise miss, but in the end the reform must depend on those who see both sides, and see them with steady fairness. If your life shall be as happy as I hope it may be, I cannot think you will permanently hold some of Aunt Katharine's opinions; but meanwhile I would not have you shut your heart to her or her word. Oh, believe me, my dear, there is no eye-opener in the world like love."

The old woman was drawing the shades behind the chrysanthemums in the windows when Tom came to her house in the dusk of that evening. He had expected to deliver his message at the door, but she insisted on his coming in and rendering it with careful detail. Certainly he did not err on the side against which his mother had cautioned him. Indeed, if the old gentleman had heard his grandson's statement of his case he would probably have felt a strong inclination to get out of bed and go to his sister's at once for the express purpose of telling her that he was much worse than the boy had represented.

Tom was not inclined to anxieties, and a certain inquisitorial att.i.tude which his grandfather had maintained during the past few days as to his own work at the barn, and the amount of care which Dobbin was receiving, had left the impression on his mind that his grandfather was not suffering as much as he might be.

He revealed this to some extent as he answered Aunt Katharine's questions, and she, after putting them sharply for a few minutes, settled back in her chair with an air of evident relief. She was not surprised to learn that Esther had put off her going to Boston. "I should know she'd do it," she said, nodding, and she added, with a peculiar smile, "I s'pose your grandfather hated dreadful bad to disappoint her."

Tom disclaimed any knowledge on this head, and then remarked acutely, "He'll keep her busy enough while she stays. He doesn't seem to want her out of his sight a minute."

"Hm," said Miss Saxon. "I'll warrant he'd keep 'em all busy if they were there." And then she remarked casually, "It must seem sort of quiet at your house compared with what 'twas this summer."

"Kate was the liveliest one," said Tom, and he said it with such a tone of regret that his aunt looked at him keenly.

"You liked her, did you?" she asked.

Perhaps his secret knowledge of that interview in which she had worsted Kate, and an impression that she had a special grudge against the girl, inclined him to the unusual emphasis with which he answered the question.

"I never saw a girl I liked so well in my life," he said. "She's made of the right sort of stuff, and she's game clear through."

"Hm," grunted Miss Saxon again, beginning to look very much interested.

"I understand you 'n' she did a sight of quarrelling. She generally got ahead of you, didn't she?"

"No marm, she didn't," said Tom, promptly. "I generally got ahead of her, only she'd never own it."

Aunt Katharine laughed. If anything could please her more than to have a girl get the best of a controversy it was to know that she had kept on after getting the worst. She had always approved the spirit of those old Britons, of whom Caesar complained that they never knew when they were beaten.

"What do you mean by saying she's made of the right sort of stuff?" she asked suddenly.

"Why, I mean," said Tom, hesitating a little,-he was not a.n.a.lytical in his turn of mind,-"I mean she's plucky, and she's out-and-out about everything. I'd trust her as quick as I would a boy."

"As quick as you would a boy!" repeated Aunt Katharine, bristling; "what do you mean by that, I'd like to know."

Tom had not come for a controversy with Aunt Katharine, and she really looked a little dangerous at that moment. But he remembered suddenly that word of Kate's, that the old woman's manner didn't "faze" her, after the first, and he determined, as far as in him lay, not to be fazed either.

"Why, I didn't mean anything bad," he said, drawing a little nearer the edge of his chair, "but there's a difference, you know. At least you would know if you were a boy. Most girls are sort of sly when they want to get anything out of you, and they do things they wouldn't think were fair for you to do. But she wasn't that way. She always let you know what she was up to, and when it came to fighting she struck right out from the shoulder. But I wasn't blaming the rest of 'em. I guess it's all right, being girls," he added, rising and beginning to move toward the door.

Aunt Katharine rose too, and brought her cane down on the floor with a sharp thud. "That's it!" she said, fiercely. "Boys 'n' men, you're all alike, and you've got the notion already. You act as if we women folks were weaker creatures than you are. You make us think we are; and then you look for all the tricks that weaker creatures use when they defend themselves. It serves you right if we _do_ use 'em. But it's a lie all the same, for both of us."

She drew her lips hard, then, as she saw his hand on the k.n.o.b of the door, she said, "Tell your grandfather I'll be up to see him to-morrow."

She did not keep the promise. The rain, which had been threatening for days, falling now and then in drizzling showers, then stopping again, as if, though still in sullen mood, some vacillating purpose held it, settled down at last for steady work. There was a week of leaden days, with the rain beating out all that was left of the color in the woods, and changing the world into one brown monotony which melancholy seemed to have marked for her own.

And through it all, at the old house, Ruel Saxon kept his bed, and as the days went on grew no better. There was not much pain: a little fever, a growing drowsiness, a failing appet.i.te, a little swelling of the limbs. Even the doctor seemed not to know what it was that had crept so suddenly upon the active frame, but he looked graver with every visit. Once, as he added another vial to the little row on the stand by the bed, he mentioned a name which the sick man, opening his eyes a little wider, repeated, adding, "That was what ailed my grandfather;"

and then he closed his eyes without sign of uneasiness. Perhaps he remembered how much stronger in all its seeming powers was this body of his than that worn-out form from which the spirit of the grandfather stole away at last.

But a change came over him in these days. He lost the querulous tone of inquiry about things at the barn. He seemed to have forgotten that suspicion of his that Tom was liable to let Dobbin's manger go empty.

Once he said to the boy instead, "It's a little hard on you and Mike to have it all to do, Tom. I wish I could help you with the husking."

At last there came a day when the rain ceased to fall. The sun shone out clear and bright, and the clouds went stately across the sky, to the measure of marches they had kept in October. Mists rose from the earth, not heavily, but with a lightness suggestive of warmth still in the breast of the earth, and Esther, standing on the doorstep of the old house, noted that there was even yet a little greenness among the limp stalks in the garden where a flock of birds were twittering over the seeds they had found for their breakfast. "I'm so glad the rain has gone," she said, drawing a long breath. "It's pleasant weather that grandfather needs."

And then she went softly into his room to tell him how the sun was s.h.i.+ning, and smiled as he murmured in reply, "Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun."

It was that day in the afternoon that Aunt Katharine came across the fields. The door of the kitchen was on the latch, and she lifted it and stepped in without knocking. Perhaps she expected to see him sitting by the fire, for she looked before her eagerly, but even Aunt Elsie was not in sight, and she pa.s.sed on without greeting to her brother's room. He looked quite bright as he lay with his face toward Esther, who had just been giving him a cup of broth.

"Why, Aunt Katharine!" exclaimed the girl, rising to her feet, and the old man, lifting his head, put out his hand with an eager welcome.

"So you hain't managed to get out of bed yet?" she said, taking the chair from which Esther had risen, and looking down at her brother with an affectionate smile. "Well, I'm sorry for you, Ruel." Then, a half whimsical expression creeping over her smile, she added: "'Pears to me you don't hold up so much better'n some of us that don't claim to be so stout. I've owned up to it for a good while that I ain't as young as I used to be, and there's no denying that I make a pretty fair showing with most old women when it comes to aches and pains, but they hain't brought me onto the flat of my back for the last ten years."

"I've been favored above most, Katharine," said the old man, mildly.

"I've had my strength and faculties spared to me beyond the common, and I can't complain of anything now. 'Shall we receive good at the hand of G.o.d and shall we not receive evil?' It is the Lord's will, let him do what seemeth him good."

She was evidently struck with his reply, and for a moment looked at him keenly. "I should have come up before this, if it hadn't rained all the time," she said, "and I took it for granted you was getting along. But I guess you hain't needed me any, with those that are here to wait on you."