The Miller Of Old Church Part 13

"She has known very little about it," Mr. Chamberlayne answered, while his jutting eyebrows twitched nervously as he turned away. "Your mother, my dear boy, is one of those particularly angelic characters from whose presence even the thought of evil is banished. You have only to look into her face to discern how pure and spotless she has kept her soul.

My old friend Jonathan was very devoted to her. She represented, indeed, the spiritual influence in his life, and there was no one on earth whose respect or affection he valued so highly. It was his consideration for her alone that prevented him from making a most unfortunate marriage."

"The girl died insane, didn't she?"

"It was a distressing--a most distressing case; but we must remember, in rendering our verdict, that if Janet Merryweather had upheld the principles of her s.e.x, it would never have happened."

"We'll rest it there, then--but what of her daughter? The child could hardly have been accessory before the fact, I suppose?"

An expression of suffering patience came into the old gentleman's face, and he averted his gaze as he had done before the looming countenance of Kesiah.

"Your uncle rarely spoke to me of her," he answered, "but I have reason to know that her existence was a constant source of distress to him. He was most anxious both to protect your mother and to provide generously for the future of Janet's daughter.

"Yet I understand that there was no mention of her in his will."

"This omission was entirely on your mother's account. The considerable property--representing a third of his entire estate--which was left in trust to me for a secret purpose, will go, of course, to the girl. In the last ten years this property has practically doubled in value, and Molly will take possession of the income from it when she reaches her twenty-first birthday. The one condition is that at Reuben's death she shall live with your aunt."

"Ah," said Jonathan, "I begin to see."

"At the time, of course, he believed that your mother would survive him only a few months, and his efforts to s.h.i.+eld her from any painful discoveries extended even after his death. His wish was that the girl should be well educated and prepared for any change in her circ.u.mstances--but unfortunately she has proved to be rather a wilful young person, and it has been impossible entirely to fulfil his intentions with regard to her. Ah, he wasn't wise always, poor Jonathan, but I never doubted that he meant well at bottom, however things may have appeared. His anxiety in the case of your mother was very beautiful, and if his plans seem to have miscarried, we must lay the blame after all, on the quality of his judgment, not of his heart."

"And the girl will be twenty-one next April, I am told?"

"Her birthday is the seventeenth, exactly ten years from the date of Jonathan's death."

CHAPTER VIII

SHOWS TWO SIDES OF A QUARREL

At dusk that evening the miller, who had spent the day in Applegate, stopped at Bottom's Ordinary on his way home, and received a garbled account of the quarrel from the farmers gathered about the hospitable hearth in the public room. The genius of personality had enabled Betsey Bottom to hold open doors to the traveller long after the wayside tavern in Virginia had pa.s.sed from the road and the one certain fact relating to the chance comer was that he never came. By combining a store with a public house, she managed still to defy the progress of time as well as the absence of guests. "Thank the Lord, I've never been one to give in to changes!" it was her habit to exclaim.

The room was full of tobacco smoke when Abel entered, and as he paused, in order to distinguish the row of silhouettes nodding against the ruddy square of the fireplace, Adam Doolittle's quavering voice floated to him from a seat in the warmest corner. The old man was now turning ninety, and he had had, on the whole, a fortunate life, though he would have indignantly repudiated the idea. He was a fair type of the rustic of the past generation--slow of movement, keen of wit, racy of speech.

"What's this here tale about Mr. Jonathan knockin' Archie down an'

settin' on him, Abel?" he inquired. "Ain't you got yo' hand in yet, seein' as you've been spilin' for a fight for the last fortnight?"

"I hadn't heard of it," replied Abel, his face flus.h.i.+ng. "What in h.e.l.l did he knock Archie down for?"

"Jest for shooting' a few birds that might as well have been flying about on yo' land as on his, if thar minds had been set over toward you."

"Do you mean Mr. Jonathan got into a quarrel with him for hunting on his land? Why, we shot over those fields for a hundred years before the first d.a.m.ned Gay ever came here."

"So we have--so we have, but it seems we ain't a-goin' to do so any longer if Mr. Jonathan can find a way to prevent it. Archie was down here jest a minute or two arter you went by this mornin', an' he was swearin' like thunder, with a busted lip an' a black eye."

A smarting sensation pa.s.sed over Abel, as though the change to the warm room after the cold outside were stinging his flesh.

"Well, I wish I had been there," he retorted, "somebody else would have been knocked down and sat on if that had happened."

"Ah, so I said--so I said," chuckled old Adam. "Thar ain't many men with sech a hearty stomach for trouble, I was jest sayin' to Solomon."

Bending over the fire, he lifted a live ember between two small sticks, and placing it in the callous palm of his hand, blew softly on it an instant before he lighted his pipe.

"What goes against my way of thinkin'," remarked Betsey Bottom, wiping a gla.s.s of cider on her checked ap.r.o.n before she handed it to Abel, "is that so peaceable lookin' a gentleman as Mr. Jonathan should begin to start a fuss jest as soon as he lands in the midst of us. Them plump, soft-eyed males is generally inclined to mildness whether they be men or cattle."

"'Taint nothin' on earth but those foreign whims he's brought back an'

is tryin' to set workin' down here," said Solomon Hatch. "If we don't get our backs up agin 'em in time, we'll find presently we don't even dare to walk straight along the turnpike when we see him a comin'. A few birds, indeed!--did anybody ever hear tell of sech doin's? 'Warn't them birds in the air?' I ax, 'an' don't the air belong to Archie the same as to him?'"

"It's because he's rich an' we're po', that he's got a right to lay claim to it," muttered William Ming, a weakly obstinate person, to whose character a gla.s.s of cider contributed the only strength.

"You'd better hold yo' tongue, suh," retorted his wife, "it ain't yo'

air anyway, is it?"

"I reckon it's as much mine as it's Mr. Jonathan's," rejoined William, who, having taken a double portion, had waxed argumentative. "An' what I reason is that birds as is in the air ain't anybody's except the man's that can bring 'em down with a gun."

"That's mo' than you could do," replied his wife, "an' be that whether or no, it's time you were thinkin' about beddin' the grey mule, an' she ain't in the air, anyhow. If I was you, Abel," she continued in a softer tone, "I wouldn't let 'em make me so riled about Mr. Jonathan till I'd looked deep in the matter. It may be that he ain't acquainted with the custom of the neighbourhood, an' was actin' arter some foolish foreign laws he was used to."

"I'll give him warning all the same," said Abel savagely, "that if I ever catch him on my land I'll serve him in the fas.h.i.+on that he served Archie."

"You don't lose nothin' by goin' slow," returned Solomon. "Old Adam there is a born fire eater, too, but he knows how to set back when thar's trouble brewin'."

"I ain't never set back mo' than was respectable in a man of ninety,"

croaked old Adam indignantly, while he prodded the ashes in his corncob pipe with his stubby forefinger. "'Tis my j'ints, not my sperits that have grown feeble."

"Oh, we all know that your were a gay dog an' a warnin' to the righteous when you were young," rejoined Solomon, in an apologetic manner, "an'

it must be a deal of satisfaction to be able to look back on a sinful past when you've grown old and repented. I've been a pious, G.o.d-fearing soul from my birth, as you all know, friends, but sad to relate, I ain't found the solid comfort in a life of virtue that I'd hoped for, an'

that's the truth."

"The trouble with it, Solomon," replied old Adam, pus.h.i.+ng a log back on the andirons with his rough, thick soled boot to which shreds of manure were clinging, "the trouble with it is that good or bad porridge, it all leaves the same taste in the mouth arter you've once swallowed it. I've had my pleasant trespa.s.ses in the past, but when I look backward on 'em now, to save my life, I can't remember anything about 'em but some small painful mishap that al'ays went along with 'em an' sp'iled the pleasure.

Thar was the evening I dressed up in my best clothes an' ran off to Applegate to take a yellow haired circus lady, in pink skirts, out to supper. It ought to have been a fine, glorious bit of wickedness to remember, but the truth was that I'd put on a new pair of boots, an' one of 'em pinched so in the toes that I couldn't think of another thing the whole blessed evening. 'Tis al'ays that way in my experience of life--when you glance back or glance befo' 'tis pleasant enough to the eye, but at the moment while you're linin' it thar's al'ays the d.a.m.n shoe that pinches."

"Ah, you're right, you're right, Mr. Doolittle," remarked William Ming, who had lingered in the doorway to follow the conversation.

"It's life, that's what it is," commented Solomon, heaving a sigh that burst a b.u.t.ton hole in his blue s.h.i.+rt. "An' what's mo' than life, it's marriage. When I see the way some men wear themselves out with wantin'

little specks of women, I say to myself over an' over agin, 'Ah, if they only knew that thar ain't nothin' in it except the wantin'.'"

"Not another thing--not another blessed mite of a thing," agreed William, who had imbibed secretly again behind the back of his wife.

"I've know a man to throw himself into the river from sheer love befo'

marriage," said Solomon, "an' two weeks arter the woman had taken him, to fall out with her because she'd put too much shortenin' in his pie-crust."

"It's all love befo' marriage an' all shortenin' arterwards," observed Betsey Bottom, with scorn. "I've al'ays noticed in this world that the less men folks have to say for themselves the better case they make of it. When they've spent all thar time sence Adam tryin' to throw dust in the eyes of women, it would be better manners if they'd stop twittin'

'em because they'd succeeded."

"True, true, you never spoke a truer word, ma'am, in my acquaintance with you," responded Solomon, with what hasty gallantry he could summon.

"I was thinkin' them very things to myself when you mentioned 'em. Not that anybody could throw dust in yo' eyes, even if he tried to."