CHAPTER XVI
THE CHURCH AT SAMOSET
The road to Samoset was up hill and down hill, and altogether uneven; but it lay through a lovely country, just now colored with those soft hues autumn wears before her gorgeous gala dress is ready. Beside the way the squirrels leaped and chattered in the Sunday stillness as our friends drove to church. Flossy had proposed that they call for Ease Apthorpe; and her cousin, who had been secretly wishing her to make this suggestion, assented with alacrity. Ease yielded to the temptation of a ride on so beautiful an afternoon, and abandoned her own for the Unitarian service at Samoset. In spite of Mrs. Sanford's reflections upon the narrowness of modern buggies, the seat of their carriage proved wide enough for the three, perhaps because Ease, like Flossy, was rather small.
Halfway between Montfield and Samoset the country-road crossed a large brook, which was known as Wilk's Run. It was deep and swift, being fed by springs among the hills; and it foamed along its channel, fretting at every bowlder, with a sense of its own importance, little more reasonable than if it had been gifted with human intelligence. The banks of the stream were rough, and broken with miniature coves and shallows, cliffs and caves, where the schoolchildren, picnicking or playing truant, frolicked joyously.
"Do you remember, Will," Ease said, as our friends halted upon the bridge to look up and down the Run, "do you remember the May Day when we hid Sol Shankland's pea-shooter in the hole in the rock?"
"I think I do," he returned, laughing. "He pelted Selina Brown until she threatened to drown herself; and Emily Purdy inquired if we supposed Mrs. Brown would get to the funeral in time to be called with the mourners."
"I wonder if the thing is there now," continued Ease. "That was – why, it was seven years ago: think of it!"
"We might see," Will suggested. "We are early enough."
"It would be such fun!"
"You don't mind staying with the horse, do you, Floss?" Will asked.
"Oh, no! I shall drive on if I do. I know the road to Samoset perfectly."
"Come on, then, Ease: we'll investigate."
Off the pair went, laughing and chatting like two children. Flossy waited until they had clambered down the rocky path to the water below the bridge, and then shouted to them.
"What is it?" her cousin asked.
"I'll call when I come from church," she screamed in reply.
Then she deliberately drove off.
"By George!" Will exclaimed. "That's just like Floss: I might have known."
"What shall we do?" asked his companion in dismay.
"Do? Make ourselves comfortable. Meeting won't be more than an hour, and we can endure that. It is a great deal pleasanter here than in church."
"Yes," she assented doubtfully.
"And, as we can't help ourselves, it is no use to fret."
They found a cosey nook, and a log for a seat, which Will, with a praiseworthy care for Ease's Sunday raiment, covered with a newspaper he chanced to have in his pocket. They fell to chatting of old times, the theatricals, Will's college-scrapes, and the thousand things which give to life its varied savors. Will in a quiet fashion had been fond of his companion from childhood, but had never thought it necessary to tell her so: indeed, he had never in any serious way considered the fact himself, but, being fond of her companionship, had sought and accepted it as a matter of course. This placid afternoon, with the water at their feet, the trees rustling in the faintest whispers overhead, and the air about them mellow and fragrant, a sensuous, "lotus-fed content" stole over them, and the moments went by unheeded. They were too much at ease for lovers, but they were the best of friends.
Meanwhile, Flossy Plant, filled with a wicked glee, drove onward to Samoset, found an old man to fasten her horse, and walked into church as demurely as the most saintly maiden of them all. The party had set out for the Unitarian church; but Flossy, having taken matters into her own hands, drove to quite another sanctuary. She had often heard her cousins laugh about the quaintness of a church of Scotch Presbyterians which had been established in the earlier days of Samoset, and which still retained much of its antique simplicity.
She had seen the building in driving with Will, and now the whim had seized her to attend the service. She was a little late, and an icy breath of stern theology seemed to meet her when she entered. She slipped into a seat near the door, and half held her breath, lest a precentor should start up from some unsuspected corner, and pounce upon her for disturbing the awful solemnity of the assembly.
The building was plain to ugliness, – a square box, high and bare, with stiff pews, whose uncushioned angles precluded the possibility of any sacred drowsiness. The windows were devoid of shutters, the floor was carpetless, the pulpit as guiltless of cushions as the pews. The congregation had a blue, pinched look, as if their religion were too difficult of digestion to be nourishing, and a moral dyspepsia had been the result of swallowing large portions of it.
The preacher, however, was a noble-looking man, with snowy hair and beard. He was reading and expounding the twenty-second Psalm when Flossy entered; and she could not but be struck with the force of his unaffected diction and the nobility of his thought, colored though it necessarily was by his narrow theology.
But all solemn meditations were suddenly interrupted, when, the exposition ended, the congregation sang the psalm which had been read. No wicked hymns, the invention of men, are allowed in the conservative precincts of orthodox Presbyterianism, but only the old metrical versions of the Psalms of David. The old custom of having the precentor sit in a box before the pulpit was not followed in the church at Samoset, nor were the lines deaconed out; these two concessions having been grudgingly made to the progressive spirit of the age. The precentor sat in the front pew; and, suddenly stepping out before the people, he began in a cracked, nasal tenor to sing the psalm read. The congregation generously allowed him half a line the start, and then one after the other attempted the hopeless task of overtaking him before he completed the stanza. He had a great advantage from the fact that he probably knew what tune he intended to sing; and by skilfully introducing sundry original quavers, runs, and quirks, he succeeded in throwing his pursuers so completely off the scent, that, although at least a dozen different airs were tried by various members of the chorus, no one seemed really to have hit the right one until the precentor had triumphantly completed two stanzas, and got well into the third.
The effect was indescribable. Flossy was at first too amazed to understand what was the matter; and then it required all her energies to keep from laughing aloud. How any human beings could stand up and give vent to such unearthly sounds, and still preserve their gravity, was beyond her comprehension. The volume of noise constantly increased as one after another of the singers, having tried hastily half a dozen or more tunes in various keys, came proudly into the right one, pouring forth a torrent of sound to let the precentor know, that, after all, he was conquered, and his secret wrested from him. That individual, finding himself defeated in his endeavors to conceal the tune under new and more elaborate variations, sulkily abandoned the contest, and tried to sing it correctly, thereby coming so far from the original, that once more the congregation were puzzled, and, concluding him to have changed the air, struck anew into a wild variety of experiments more discordant than before.
The singing was so astonishing, that the words did not at first impress Flossy; but they were sufficiently remarkable when once her attention was fixed on them.
"Like water I'm poured out, my bones
all out of joynt do part.
Amidst my bowels, as the wax,
so melted is my heart.
"My strength is like a pot-sheard dry'd,
my tongue it cleaveth fast
Unto my jaws; and to the dust
of death thou brought me hast."
And so on through innumerable stanzas.
For the remainder of the service Flossy gave her attention chiefly to the book of psalms, and very entertaining she found it. She had a very funny time all alone in the corner of the great bare pew, her golden hair fluffed about her face, and her cheeks flushed with her efforts to restrain her laughter. She grew more and more absorbed until at the lines, —
"Like as the hart for water-brooks
in thirst doth pant and bray,"
she forgot herself entirely, and a little golden trill of laughter rippled through the solemn old church. Then poor Flossy felt, rather than saw, the looks of horror and indignation which were cast in her direction, and her cheeks burned like fire. She relieved her mind by pulling to pieces a ragged psalmody; and, as she grew calmer, the printed paper used in the binding caught her eye. Upon it she read the following notice: —
"Dec. 25, by the Rev. Edward French, William Sanford of Montfield, to Linda, youngest daughter of Ezekiel Thaxter, Esq."
"Grandmother Sanford's wedding," Flossy said to herself, and dreamed over the notice until the service ended.
"Mercy!" she remarked to the horse, looking at her watch as she drove out of Samoset: "how late it is! Do get along faster. What will Ease and Will think has become of me? Get up! Mercy, who's that?"
It was the stalwart form of Burleigh Blood she saw, walking along the grassy edge of the road. He turned his head as she approached, lifting his hat, and blushing diffidently.
"How do you do?" she said, drawing rein beside him. "Will you ride?"
"Thank you," he answered confusedly, "I – I think not."
"Very well," she returned, "get in then."
He laughed and obeyed her, as if he had given the acceptance her words assumed.
"Where have you been?" Flossy asked as they drove on. "How in the world do you happen to be straying about so on Sunday? Have you been to church?"
"Yes: I rode over this morning, and staid all day."
"But you didn't eat your horse for dinner, I hope."
"Oh, no! I had dinner at aunt Phelena's. I lent the horse. Joe Brown and his wife came over to see their cousin. Her husband has disappeared, and nobody knows what has become of him."
"Disappeared?"
"Yes. He went out to his office, and never came back."
"How disgusting for a man to act so!" exclaimed Flossy. "Why, the friends can't tell whether to have a funeral, or be chirky. It must be dreadfully aggravating. It keeps them all at home, and yet they don't know what to expect."
"It is usually safe to expect the worst."
"But that isn't pleasant. One doesn't like to be in the dumps without being obliged to be. And it's not only the immediate family, but other folks, – sort of cousins, and the like. I should be awfully cross if I were a cousin. They can't even have the comfort of the services, or of wearing black, no matter how becoming it is to them. For my part, I think it would be a great deal less selfish to leave word whether there's a funeral or not."
"I don't think people who disappear can always help it," he said, laughing. "But I suppose you'll leave a note saying, 'Farewell – farewell forever;' or something like that."
"Yes, I'll say 'Funeral at such a time, and I'll be ready.' How shockingly I talk! So saying, she folded her lips, and sank into silence. Will you drive, please?"
"This cousin of the Browns," Burleigh remarked, "just went off, or was carried off, or something else: at least, he is gone. The Browns were going home in the mail-team at nine o'clock this morning, but Mrs. Brown didn't get ready until about one this afternoon."
"And you lent them your horse. That was very good of you."
"Oh, no! It was only casting bread upon the waters. I shall want a good turn of him some time, likely enough."
"I never supposed," Flossy returned critically, "that bread cast upon the waters could be worth much when it came back after many days. It most likely would be mouldy, and so water-soaked it wouldn't be fit to eat."
"I don't like to joke about Scripture," he said gravely, flushing at his own boldness. "Of course," he added, "I don't think you meant any harm."
"Of course not. It is a trick I have caught from father: it is part of my inheritance, like dyspepsia and a liver. Though why," she added, "it should be called a liver, I can't see. I think dier would be more appropriate."
At that moment Wilk's Run came in sight.
"Dear me!" Flossy exclaimed. "I entirely forgot them, but this man put them all out of my head."
Her companion answered only by a puzzled stare.
"This one that disappeared, you know," she explained lucidly. "And they went to find a popgun, or something, and the service was so very long, you know."
Burleigh, vainly endeavoring to catch some clew to her meaning, said nothing. In another moment they reached the bridge. No person was to be seen.
"I wish you'd shout," Flossy said. "They can't be far off."
"What shall I shout?"
"I don't believe you know a word I've been saying," she remarked, looking into his face. "I want you to call them."
Burleigh was not without a sense of humor, and his bashfulness had yielded in a great degree to the pleasure which Miss Plant's presence gave him. He accepted the command literally, and roared, "Them! them!" so lustily that the rocky banks of the brook re-echoed.
"Mercy!" cried his companion. "You've lungs like organ-bellows. I'll get out and look for them before I'm stone-deaf."
"If 'them' means Will and Ease Apthorpe," Burleigh said, "there they come now."
CHAPTER XVII
A CONFIDENCE
The shores of Wilk's Run were as varied as the caprices of a coquette. Here the rocks rose up bold and steep, with broken faces over which trailed green and graceful ferns, and in whose clefts and niches bloomed in spring clusters of the pale-red columbines. Again the groves of birch and poplar, or the copses of walnut-trees, grew quite down to the water's edge, their golden or silver trunks gleaming out of the half-luminous dusk of their leaves. Occasionally a tiny meadow would be planted upon the brook's bank, fringed with rushes and moisture-loving plants; while at another spot the turf, level and verdant, formed a greensward fit for the foot of a princess or a fairy. It was to a nook shut in by a wall of rocks, and carpeted with the softest grass, that Will and Ease came after rambling about for a time. A large golden birch stood near the middle of the open space, its leaves forever quivering, aspen-like, and mingling their murmur with the ripple of the brook, until only the "talking-bird" seemed needed to complete the trio of the garden of the Princess Parizade. Knots of golden-rod, and the purple tassels of the asters, fringed the foot of the rocky wall half enclosing the place; and there, too, the nightshade trailed its rich clusters of claret-hued berries. The leaves of the woodbine, which had climbed up the rocks on one side, contesting every foothold with a wild grape-vine now hanging heavy with purple clusters, had begun to turn crimson with ripeness, and furnished a mass of high color.
The schoolgirls of Montfield, like schoolgirls in general, more sentimental than original, had named this place "Lovers' Retreat;" not, indeed, that tradition or history recorded that any lovers ever did, might, could, would, or should retreat thither, but because the spot and the name had both a gentle fascination for their maiden bosoms.
The popgun for which Will and Ease came to look was not to be found, having, doubtless, long since mouldered into dust. The search for it, however, called up a thousand reminiscences, over which they chatted and laughed like children.
"This is a vast deal better than going to church," Will said, stretching himself comfortably at the feet of his companion, who sat leaning against the trunk of the birch-tree. "I am glad Floss left us. What a queer little thing she is!"
"Do you remember the time we went nutting," said Ease, "and Emily Purdy ran away with the horse, so that we had to walk home?"
"I guess I do! That was the time you turned your ankle, and your aunt Tabitha accused me of having lamed you for life."
"Yes. And Mrs. Brown got along with her infallible lotion the day after I first walked out. She was so astonished when she met me!"
"That's precisely the way she did when Sol Shankland was hit in the eye with 'old Thunderbust.' You remember the ball we called 'old Thunderbust,' don't you?"
Very good companions had these two always been, but without a thought of love between them. They were too frank, too calmly happy together, for love. The old days, the old memories, cast a soft glow over all their relations with each other, – a light not love, but the rosy hues of a dawn that was yet to be, the luminous foretelling of the sun of passion before the day. They often alluded lightly to the persons they meant to marry, – ideals which unconsciously they made somehow like each other, even when intended most to be different.
"It seems to me," Will remarked this afternoon, in a dispassionate tone, "that Frank Breck goes to see you often enough."
"Doesn't he! I wish he wouldn't. Were ever two brothers more unlike than he and Hazard?"
"They are different. Hazard is a royal fellow, but the less said of Frank the better."
"Yes: only" —
"Only what?"
The temptation of an appreciative listener has elicited many a secret which sharpest tortures could not have wrung from its possessor. Ease had no intention of disclosing to her friend the troubles which buzzed gnat-like about her ears at home; but the time, the place, and, more than all, his interested face and his often-proved sympathy won the tale from her.
"It all came about," she said, "before I understood any thing of it; and now I don't know the whole story. There is something about a will that I've no clew to."
"Really, this is an impressive beginning," Sanford said. "You don't mind if I smoke?"
"No. I noticed that aunt Tabitha acted queerly when Frank Breck's name was mentioned, or rather I remember it now; but it has always seemed as if every thing that happened at Mullen House was strange some way. I've always seemed to be somebody else, and not myself, ever since I came here to live."
"It is strange," Will assented. "It is a sort of ogre's castle, and your aunt, 'savin' yer presince,' is the ogress."
"Aunt Tabitha has always been a puzzle to me," Ease said, "and I never attempt to understand her ways."
"Who does?" he asked.
"Frank kept coming and coming," continued she, "and getting more and more bothersome, and" —
"More what?"
"Bothersome, acting foolish, you know, about me, as if he were – well you understand, of course, what I mean. I don't think I'm vain; but he did act as if he was – why, as if he liked me."
"Made love to you, you mean?"
"Yes: I suppose so."
"The puppy!"
"Why, that wasn't any harm, was it?" she asked naïvely. "Only, of course, I hate to have him about all the time, and I never liked him very well."
"I should hope not," the young man interpolated with emphasis.
"Not that he ever troubled me much, for of course I didn't let him; but he wanted to."
"Look here," Will exclaimed, sitting up. "I've always been like a brother to you, Ease, and now you are in a place where you need a brother more than ever. I think I'd better hint gently to that young donkey that he'd find it safer to let you alone."
"Oh, no, no!" she replied. "You mustn't let anybody know that you know this. Aunt Tabitha told me not to say a word to anybody, and particularly to you. I'm not sure I didn't promise not to tell, but I must talk to somebody. There is something or other they don't tell me about a will; and aunt Tabitha says we shall both be paupers, if I don't do as she wishes."
"Do as she wishes? What does she want you to do?"
"She has promised him that I shall marry him," Ease said earnestly, with cheeks like the petals of a damask rose.
"The devil she has!"
"Hush! You mustn't talk so. Of course she wouldn't make me; but, if she did, what could I do?"
"Do!" he exclaimed hotly. Then suddenly he changed his tone to one of cool impartiality. "If she makes you marry him, of course you'll have to do it."
"But you wouldn't like to be made to marry him," she said, half crying.
"No," he replied with an air of great candor. "I don't fancy I should. Frank Breck," he added vehemently, "is his father over again. I wonder if Putnam knows what he's about."
"Oh, he couldn't!" Ease returned. "I don't understand it myself; only you mustn't let any one know I've told you any thing."
"Look here, Ease," her companion said, flinging his cigar halfway across Wilk's Run, and taking her hand in his. "I want you to make me a promise – yes, two of them."
"What are they?"
"Will you promise?"
"If I can."
"Of course you can. The first is, that, if you get into any trouble where I can help you, you'll let me know. Do you promise that?"
"Yes, I promise that; and I thank you for being such a dear good brother."
"The second is, that, whatever happens, you won't marry Frank Breck."
"But, Will" —
"No: no buts. Either promise, or don't promise; but don't put in ifs and buts."
"But I must. There is aunt Tabitha."
"Aunt Tabitha be hanged! I beg your pardon; but she has always used you shamefully, bossing you round, and" —
"We agreed long ago," she interrupted, "not to discuss her."
"Very well. Only I wish you'd promise me."
"How can I, when I might not be able to keep my promise?"
"Good heavens, Ease!" he exclaimed, springing up, and pacing excitedly to and fro on the greensward. "It is enough to make a man go mad to hear you talk in that cold-blooded way about marrying Frank Breck. You can't marry him; and, what's more, you sha'n't marry him!"
"Hark!" she said.
They heard the sound of wheels, stopping immediately after upon the bridge, and then the voice of Burleigh Blood.
"It isn't Flossy," Will said.
"It must be," Ease answered. "There, don't you hear her call?"
"What of it? Let her go home. When she finds we are not there, they'll send back for us. I want to talk to you."
"Oh, no, no!" Ease said, hurrying along towards the bridge. "Aunt Tabitha didn't want me to come, anyway, and she'd be wild if she knew we hadn't been to church."
"I should think you were old enough to decide something for yourself," he growled, giving her his hand to help her over the stones.
The buggy would hardly accommodate four: so Burleigh was forced to complete his journey on foot, the others driving merrily away with bantering good-bys. They had driven only a short distance when they encountered a buggy driven violently.
"Why, isn't that Tom Putnam?" exclaimed Will. "What on earth's got him?"
"And this horrid, bold-looking woman with him," Flossy remarked reflectively.