The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems Part 20

"You have made me wonder, to-night, whether, at some period of your life, you have not loved some woman of your own race and color. You must have had some opportunities of knowing white women."

"Very few. An' my pride was agin seekin' what I knew was not for me; for the woman I fancied to myself was no common white woman. White Rose, I carried a young man's heart in my bosom until I was near sixty, _an'

then I lost it_." He put out a hand and touched one of hers, ever so lightly. "I need not tell you any more."

A silence that made their pulses seem audible followed this confession.

A heavy shadow descended upon both hearts, and a sudden dreary sense of an unutterable and unalterable sorrow burdened their spirits.

After a little, "Mr. Chillis! Mr. Chillis!" wailed the woman's pathetic voice; and "O, my lovely lady!" sighed the man's.

"What shall I do? what shall I do? I am so sorry. What shall I do?"

"Tell me to go. I knew it would have to end so. I knew that Rumway would drive me to say what I ought not to say; for he is not worthy of you--no man that I know of is. Ef I was as young as he, an' had his chance, I would _make_ myself worthy o' you, or die. But it is too late. Old Joe Chillis may starve his heart, as he has many a time starved his body in the desert. But I did love you so! O, my sweet White Rose, I did love you so! always, from the first time I saw you."

"What is that you say?" said Mrs. Smiley, in a shocked voice.

"Always, I said, from the first time I saw you. My love was true; it did not harm you. I said, '_There_ is such a woman as G.o.d designed for me.

But it is too late to have her now. I will jest wors.h.i.+p her humbly, a great ways off, an' say "G.o.d bless her!" when she pa.s.ses; an' think o'

her sweet ways when I am ridin' through the woods, or polin' my huntin'-boat up the sloughs, among the willows an' pond-lilies. She would hardly blame me, ef she knew I loved her that way.'

"But it grew harder afterwards, White Rose, when you were grateful to me, in your pretty, womanly way, an' treated me so kindly before all the world, an' let your little boy love me, an' loved me yourself--I knew it--in a gentle, friendly fas.h.i.+on. O, but it was sweet!--but not sweet enough, sometimes. Ef I have been crazed for the lack o' love in my younger days, I have been crazed with love since then. There have been days when I could neither work nor eat, nights when I could not sleep, for thinkin' o' what might have been, but never could be; times when I have been tempted to upset my boat in the bay, an' never try to right it. But when I had almost conquered my madness, that you might never know, then comes this Rumway, with his fine looks, an' his fine house, an' his fine professions, an' blots me out entirely; for what will old Joe be worth to Madame Rumway, or to Madame Rumway's fine husband?"

Mrs. Smiley sat thoughtful and silent a long time after this declaration of love, that gave all and required so little. She was sorry for it; but since it was so, and she must know it, she was glad that she had heard it that night. She could place it in the balance with that other declaration, and decide upon their relative value to her; for she saw, as he did, that the two were incompatible--one must be given up.

"It is late," she said, rising. "You will come up and take breakfast with Willie and me, before you go home? My strawberries are in their prime."

"I thought you would a-told me to go, an' never come back," he said, stepping out into the moonlight with the elastic tread of twenty-five.

He stopped and looked back at her, with a beaming countenance, like a boy's.

She was standing on the step above him, looking down at him with a pleasant but serious expression. "I am going to trust you never to repeat to me what you have said to-night. I know I can trust you."

"So be it, White Rose," he returned, with so rapid and involuntary a change of att.i.tude, voice, and expression, that the pang of his hurt pierced her heart also. "But I know I can trust you," she repeated, as if she had not seen that shrinking from the blow. "And I am going to try to make your life a little pleasanter, and more like other people's.

When you are dressed up, and ordered to behave properly, and made to look as handsome as you can, so that ladies shall take notice of you and flatter you with their eyes and tongues, and you come to have the same interest in the world that other men have--and why shouldn't you?--then your imagination will not be running away with you, or making angels out of common little persons like myself--how dreadfully prosy and commonplace you have no idea! And I forbid you to allow Willie to stick your hat full of flowers, when you go fis.h.i.+ng together; and order you to make that young impudence respectful to you on all occasions--a.s.serting your authority, if necessary. And, lastly, I prefer you should not call me Madame Rumway until I have a certified and legal claim to the t.i.tle.

Good-night."

He stood bareheaded, his face drooping and half-concealed, pulling the withered flowers out of his hat. Slowly he raised it, made a military salute, and placed it on his head. "It is for you to command and me to obey," he said.

"Breakfast at seven o'clock precisely," called out the tuneful voice of Mrs. Smiley after him, as he went down the garden-path with bent head, walking more like an old man than she had ever seen him. Then she went into the house, closed it carefully, after the manner of lone women, and went up to her room. But deliciously cool and fragrant as was the tiny chamber, Mrs. Smiley could not sleep that night. Nor did Chillis come to breakfast next morning.

A month pa.s.sed away. Work was suspended on Mr. Rumway's house, the doors and windows boarded up, and the gate locked. Everybody knew it could mean but one thing--that Mrs. Smiley had refused the owner. But the handsome captain put a serene face upon it, and kept about his business industriously and like a gentleman. The fact that he did not return to his wild courses was remarked upon as something hardly to be credited, but greatly to his honor; for it was universally conceded, that such a disappointment as his was enough to drive almost any man to drink who had indulged in it previously; such is the generally admitted frailty of man's moral const.i.tution.

Toward the last of August, Mrs. Smiley received a visit from Chillis. He was dressed with more than his customary regard to appearances, and looked a little paler and thinner than usual. Otherwise, he was just the same as ever; and, with no questions asked or answered on either side, their old relations were re-established, and Willie was rapturously excited with the prospect of more Sat.u.r.day excursions. Yet there was this difference in their manner toward each other--that he now seldom addressed her as "White Rose," and never as "my lovely lady;" while it was she who made graceful little compliments to him, and was always gay and bright in his company, and constantly watchful of his comfort or pleasure. She prevailed upon him, too, to make calls with her upon other ladies; and gave him frequent commissions that would bring him in contact with a variety of persons. But she could not help seeing, that it was only in obedience to her wishes that he made calls, or mingled with the town-people; and when, one evening, returning together from a visit where he had been very much patronized, he had remarked, with a shrug and smile of self-contempt, "It is no use, Mrs. Smiley--oil an'

water won't mix," she had given it up, and never more interfered with his old habits.

So the summer pa.s.sed, and winter came again, with its long rains, dark days, and sad a.s.sociations. Although Mrs. Smiley was not at all a "weakly woman," constant effort and care, and the absence of anything very flattering in her future, or inspiring in her present, wore upon her, exhausting her vitality too rapidly for perfect health, as the constantly increasing delicacy of her appearance testified. In truth, when the spring opened, she found herself so languid and depressed as to be hardly able to teach, in addition to her house-work. Then it was that the gossips took up her case once more, and declared, with considerable unanimity, that Mrs. Smiley was pining for the handsome Captain, after all, and, if ever she had refused him, was sorry for it--thus revenging themselves upon a woman audacious enough to refuse a man many others would have thought "good enough for them," and "too good for" so unappreciative a person.

With the first bright and warm weather, Willie went to spend a week with his friend, and Mrs. Smiley felt forced to take a vacation. A yachting-party were going over to the cape, and Captain Rumway was to take them out over the bar. Rumway himself sent an invitation to Mrs.

Smiley--this being the first offer of amity he had felt able to make since the previous July. She laughed a little, to herself, when the note came (for she was not ignorant of the town-tattle--what school-teacher ever is?) and sent an acceptance. If Captain Rumway were half as courageous as she, the chatterers would be confounded, she promised herself, as she made her toilet for the occasion--not too nice for sea-water, but bright and pretty, and becoming, as her toilets always were.

So she sailed over to the cape with the "young folks," and, as widows can--particularly widows who have gossip to avenge--was more charming than any girl of them all, to others beside Captain Rumway. The officers of the garrison vied with each other in showing her attentions; and the light-house keeper, in exhibiting the wonders and beauties of the place, always, if unconsciously, appealed to Mrs. Smiley for admiration and appreciation. Yet she wore her honors modestly, contriving to share this homage with some other, and never accepting it as all meant for herself.

And toward Captain Rumway her manner was as absolutely free from either coquetry or awkwardness as that of the most indifferent acquaintance.

n.o.body, seeing her perfectly frank yet quiet and cool deportment with her former suitor, could say, without falsehood, that she in any way concerned herself about him; and if he had heard that she was pining for him, he was probably undeceived during that excursion. Thus she came home feeling that she had vindicated herself, and with a pretty color in her face that made her look as girlish as any young lady of them all.

But, if Captain Rumway had reopened an acquaintance with Mrs. Smiley out of compa.s.sion for any woes she might be suffering on his account, or out of a design to show how completely he was master of himself, or, in short, for any motive whatever, he was taken in his own devices, and compelled to surrender unconditionally. Like the man in Scripture, out of whom the devils were cast only to return, his last estate was worse than the first, as he was soon compelled to acknowledge; and one of the first signs of this relapse into fatuity was the resumption of work on the unfinished house, and the ornamentation of the neglected grounds.

"I will make it such a place as she cannot refuse," he said to himself, more or less hopefully. "She will have to accept the house and grounds, with me thrown in. And whatever she is pining for, she _is_ pining, _that_ I can see. It may be for outdoor air and recreation, and the care which a husband only can give her. If it be that she can take them along with me."

Thus it was, that when Chillis brought Willie home from his long visit to the woods and streams, he saw the workmen busy on the Captain's house. He heard, too, about the excursion to the cape, and the inevitable comments upon Rumway's proceedings. But he said nothing about it to Mrs. Smiley, though he spent the evening in the snug little parlor, and they talked together of many things personally interesting to both; especially about Willie's education and profession in life.

"He ought to go to college," said his mother. "I wish him to be a scholarly man, whatever profession he decides upon afterward. I could not bear that he should not have a liberal education."

"Yes, Willie must be a gentleman," said Chillis; "for his mother's sake he must be that."

"But how to provide the means to furnish such an education as he ought to have, is what puzzles me," continued Mrs. Smiley, pausing in her needle-work to study that problem more closely, and gazing absently at the face of her guest. "Will ten years more of school-teaching do it, I wonder?"

"Ten years o' school-teachin', an' house-work, an' sewin'!" cried he.

"Yes, long before that you will be under the sod o' the grave-yard!

_You_ cannot send the boy to college."

"Who, then?"--smiling at his vehemence.

"_I_ will."

"You, Mr. Chillis? I thought...." She checked herself, fearing to hurt his pride.

"You thought I was poor, an' so I am, for I never tried to make money.

_I_ don't want money. But there is land belongin' to me out in the valley--five or six hundred acres--an' land is growin' more valuable every year. Ten years from now I reckon mine would pay a boy's schoolin'. So you needn't work yourself to death for that, Mrs. Smiley."

The tears sprang to the gray eyes which were turned upon him with such eloquent looks. "It is like you," she said, in a broken voice, "and I have nothing to say."

"You are welcome to my land, White Rose, an' there is nothin' _to_ be said."

Then she bent her head over her sewing, feeling, indeed, that there was little use for words.

"Do you know," he asked, breaking a protracted silence, "that you have got to give up teachin'?"

"And do what? I might take to gardening. That would be better, perhaps; I have thought about it."

"Let me see your hands. They look like gardenin': two rose-leaves! Don't it make me wish to be back in my prime? Work for you! Wouldn't I love to work for you?"

"And do you not, in every way you can? Am I to have no pride about accepting so much service? What a poor creature you must take me for, Mr. Chillis."

"There is nothin' else in the world that I think of; nothin' else that I live for; an' after all it is so little, that I cannot save you from spoilin' your pretty looks with care. An' you have troubled yourself about me, too; don't think I haven't seen it. You fret your lovely soul about the old man's trouble, when you can't help it--you, nor n.o.body.

An', after all, what does it matter about _me_? _I_ am nothin', and you are everything. I want you to remember that, and do everything for your own happiness without wastin' a thought on me. I am content to keep my distance, ef I only see you happy and well off. Do you understand me?"

Mrs. Smiley looked up with a suffused face. "Mr. Chillis," she answered, "you make me ashamed of myself and my selfishness. Let us never refer to this subject again. Work don't hurt me; and since you have offered to provide for Willie's education, you have lifted half my burden. Why should you stand at a distance to see me happier than I am, when I am so happy as to have such a friend as you? How am I to be happier by your being at a distance, who have been the kindest of friends? You are out of spirits this evening, and you talk just a little--nonsense." And she smiled at him in a sweetly apologetic fas.h.i.+on for the word.

"That is like enough," he returned gravely; "but I want you to remember my words, foolish or not. Don't let me stand in your light--not for one minute; and don't forgit this: that Joe Chillis is happy when he sees the White Rose bloomin' and bright."