Mr. Elbury seemed to have taken a new lease of youthful hope and ardor. He was busy in the parish and very popular, particularly among his women-parishioners. Miss Peck urged him on with his good works, and it seemed as if they expressed their interest in each other by their friendliness to the parish in general. Mr. Elbury had joined a ministers’ club in the large town already spoken of, and spent a day there now and then, besides his regular Monday-night attendance on the club-meeting. He was preparing a series of sermons on the history of the Jews, and was glad to avail himself of a good free-library, the lack of which he frequently lamented in his own village. Once he said, eagerly, that he had no idea of ending his days here, and this gave Miss Peck a sharp pang. She could not bear to think of leaving her old home, and the tears filled her eyes. When she had reached the shelter of the kitchen, she retorted to the too-easily ruffled element of her character that there was no need of crossing that bridge till she came to it; and, after an appealing glance at the academy-steeple above the maple-trees, she returned to the study to finish dusting. She saw, without apprehension, that the minister quickly pushed something under the leaves of his blotting-paper and frowned a little. It was not his usual time for writing—she had a new proof of her admiring certainty that Mr. Elbury wrote for the papers at times under an assumed name.
One Monday evening he had not returned from the ministers’ meeting until later than usual, and she began to be slightly anxious. The baby had not been very well all day, and she particularly wished to have an errand done before night, but did not dare to leave the child alone, while, for a wonder, nobody had been in. Mr. Elbury had shown a great deal of feeling before he went away in the morning, and as she was admiringly looking at his well-fitting clothes and neat clerical attire, a thrill of pride and affection had made her eyes shine unwontedly. She was really beginning to like him very much. For the first and last time in his life the minister stepped quickly forward and kissed her on the forehead. “My good, kind friend!” he exclaimed, in that deep tone which the whole parish loved; then he hurried away. Miss Peck felt a strange dismay, and stood by the breakfast-table like a statue. She even touched her forehead with trembling fingers. Somehow she inwardly rebelled, but kissing meant more to her than to some people. She never had been used to it, except with little Tom—though the last brotherly kiss his father gave her before he went to the war had been one of the treasures of her memory. All that day she was often reminded of the responsible and darker side, the inspected and criticized side, of the high position of minister’s wife. It was clearly time for proper rebuke when evening came; and as she sat by the light, mending Mr. Elbury’s stockings, she said over and over again that she had walked into this with her eyes wide open, and if the experience of forty years hadn’t put any sense into her it was too late to help it now.
Suddenly she heard the noise of wheels in the side yard. Could anything have happened to Mr. Elbury? were they bringing him home hurt, or dead even? He never drove up from the station unless it were bad weather. She rushed to the door with a flaring light, and was bewildered at the sight of trunks and, most of all, at the approach of Mr. Elbury, for he wore a most sentimental expression, and led a young person by the hand.
“Dear friend,” he said, in that mellow tone of his, “I hope you, too, will love my little wife.”
Almost any other woman would have dropped the kerosene lamp on the doorstep, but not Miss Eliza Peck. Luckily a gust of autumn wind blew it out, and the bride had to fumble her way into her new home. Miss Peck quickly procured one of her own crinkly lamplighters, and bent toward the open fire to kindle a new light.
“You’ve taken me by surprise,” she managed to say, in her usual tone of voice, though she felt herself shaking with excitement.
At that moment the ailing step-daughter gave a forlorn little wail from the wide sofa, where she had been put to sleep with difficulty. Miss Peck’s kind heart felt the pathos of the situation; she lifted the little child and stilled it, then she held out a kindly hand to the minister’s new wife, while Mr. Elbury stood beaming by.
“I wish you may be very happy here, as I have been,” said the good woman, earnestly. “But Mr. Elbury, you ought to have let me know. I could have kept a secret”—and satisfaction filled Eliza Peck’s heart that she never, to use her own expression, had made a fool of herself before the First Parish. She had kept her own secret, and in this earthquake of a moment was clearly conscious that she was hero enough to behave as if there had never been any secret to keep. And indignation with the Reverend Mr. Elbury, who had so imprudently kept his own counsel, threw down the sham temple of Cupid which a faithless god called Propinquity had succeeded in rearing.
Miss Peck made a feast, and for the last time played the part of hostess at the minister’s table. She had remorselessly inspected the conspicuous bad taste of the new Mrs. Elbury’s dress, the waving, cheap-looking feather of her hat, the make-believe richness of her clothes, and saw, with dire compassion, how unused she was to young children. The brave Eliza tried to make the best of things—but one moment she found herself thinking how uncomfortable Mr. Elbury’s home would be henceforth with this poor reed to lean upon, a townish, empty-faced, tiresomely pretty girl; the next moment she pitied the girl herself,.who would have the hard task before her of being the wife of an indolent preacher in a country town. Miss Peck had generously allowed her farm to supplement the limited salary of the First Parish; in fact, she had been a silent partner in the parsonage establishment rather than a dependent. Would the First Parish laugh at her now? It was a stinging thought; but she honestly believed that the minister himself would be most commiserated when the parish opinion had found time to simmer down.
The next day our heroine, whose face was singularly free from disappointment, told the minister that she would like to leave at once, for she was belated about many things, not having had notice in season of his change of plan.
“I’ve been telling your wife all about the house and parish interests the best I can, and it’s likely she wants to take everything into her own hands right away,” added the uncommon housekeeper, with a spice of malice; but Mr. Elbury flushed, and looked down at the short, capable Eliza appealingly. He knew her virtues so well that this announcement gave him a crushing blow.
“Why, I thought of course you would continue here as usual,” he said, in a strange, harsh voice that would have been perfectly surprising in the pulpit. “Mrs. Elbury has never known any care. We count upon your remaining.”
Whereupon Miss Peck looked him disdainfully in the face, and, for a moment, mistook him for that self so often reproved and now sunk into depths of ignominy.
“If you thought that, you ought to have known better,” she said. “You can’t expect a woman who has property and relations of her own to give up her interests for yours altogether. I got a letter this morning from my brother’s boy, little Tom, and he’s got leave from his mother and her husband to come and stop with me a good while—he says all winter. He’s been sick, and they’ve had to take him out o’ school. I never supposed that such stived-up air would agree with him,” concluded Miss Peck, triumphantly. She was full of joy and hope at this new turn of affairs, and the minister was correspondingly hopeless. “I’ll take the baby home for a while, if ’t would be a convenience for you,” she added, more leniently. “That is, after I get my house well warmed, and there’s something in it to eat. I wish you could have spoken to me a fortnight ago; but I saw Joe Farley to-day—that boy that lived with me quite a while—he’s glad to come back. He only engaged to stop till after cider time where he’s been this summer, and he’s promised to look about for a good cow for me. I always thought well of Joe.”
The minister turned away ruefully, and Miss Peck went about her work. She meant to leave the house in the best of order; but the whole congregation came trooping in that day and the next, and she hardly had time to build a fire in her own kitchen before Joe Farley followed her from the station with the beloved
little Tom. He looked tall and thin and pale, and largely freckled under his topknot of red hair. Bless his heart! how his lonely aunt hugged him and kissed him, and how thankful he was to get back to her, though she never would have suspected it if she had not known him so well. A shy boy-fashion of reserve and stolidity had replaced his early demonstrations, but he promptly went to the shelf of books to find the familiar old “Robinson Crusoe.” Miss Peck’s heart leaped for joy as she remembered how much more she could teach the child about books. She felt a great wave of gratitude fill her cheerful soul as she remembered the pleasure and gain of those evenings when she and Mr. Elbury had read together.
There was a great deal of eager discussion in the village; and much amused scrutiny of Eliza’s countenance, as she walked up the side aisle that first Sunday after the minister was married. She led little Tom by the hand, but he opened the pew-door and ushered her in handsomely, and she looked smilingly at her neighbors and nodded her head sideways at the boy in a way that made them suspect that she was much more in love with him, freckles and all, than she had ever been with Mr. Elbury. A few minutes later she frowned at Tom sternly for greeting his old acquaintances over the pew-rail in a way that did not fit the day or place. There was no chance to laugh at her disappointment; for nobody could help understanding that her experience at the parsonage had been merely incidental in her life, and that she had returned willingly to her old associations. The dream of being a minister’s wife had been only a dream, and she was surprised to find herself waking from it with such resignation to her lot.
“I’d just like to know what sort of a breakfast they had,” she said to herself, as the bride’s topknot went went waving and bobbing up to the parsonage pew. “If ever there was a man who was fussy about his cup o’ coffee, ’t is Reverend Wilbur Elbury! There now, Elizy Peck, don’t you wish ’t was you a-setting there up front and feeling the eyes of the whole parish sticking in your back? You could have had him, you know, if you’d set right about it. I never did think you had proper ideas of what gettin’ promoted is; but if you ain’t discovered a new world for yourself like C’lumbus, I miss my guess. If you’d stayed on the farm all alone last year you’d had no thoughts but hens and rutabagys, and as ’t is you’ve been livin’ amon’st books. There’s nothin’ to regret if you did just miss makin’ a fool o’ yourself.”
At this moment Mr. Elbury’s voice gently sounded from the pulpit, and Miss Peck sprang to her feet with the agility of a jack-in-the-box—she had forgotten her surroundings in the vividness of her revery. She hardly knew what the minister said in that first prayer; for many reasons this was an exciting day.
A little later our heroine accepted the invitation of her second cousin, Mrs. Corbell, to spend the hour or two between morning and afternoon services. They had agreed that it seemed like old times, and took pleasure in renewing this custom of the Sunday visit. Little Tom was commented upon as to health and growth and freckles and family resemblance; and when he strayed out-of-doors, after such an early dinner as only a growing boy can make vanish with the enchanter’s wand of his appetite, the two women indulged in a good talk.
“I don’t know how you viewed it, this morning,” began Cousin Corbell; “but, to my eyes, the minister looked as if he felt cheap as a broom. There, I never was one o’ his worshippers, you well know. To speak plain, Elizy, I was really concerned at one time for fear you would be overpersuaded. I never said one word to warp your judgment, but I did feel as if ’t would be a shame. I—”
But Miss Peck was not ready yet to join the opposition, and she interrupted at once in an amiable but decided tone. “We’ll let by-gones be by-gones; it’s just as well, and a good deal better. Mr. Elbury always treated me the best he knew how; and I knew he wa’n’t perfect, but ’t was full as much his misfortune as his fault. I declare I don’t know what else there was he could ha’ done if he hadn’t taken to preaching; and he has very kind feelings, specially if any one’s in trouble. Talk of ‘leading about captive silly women,’ thee are some cases where we’ve got to turn round and say it right the other way—’t is the silly women that do the leadin’ themselves. And I tell you,” concluded Miss Peck, with apparent irrelevancy, “I was glad last night to have a good honest look at a yellow sunset. If ever I do go and set my mind on a minister, I’m going to hunt for one that’s well settled in a hill parish. I used to feel as if I was shut right in, there at the parsonage; it’s a good house enough, if it only stood where you could see anything out of the windows. I can’t carry out my plans o’ life in any such situation.”
“I expect to hear that you’ve blown right off the top o’ your hill some o’ these windy days,” said Mrs. Corbell, without resentment, though she was very dependent, herself, upon seeing the passing.
The church bell began to ring, and our friends rose to put on their bonnets and answer its summons. Miss Peck’s practical mind revolved the possibility of there having been a decent noonday meal at the parsonage. “Maria Corbell!” she said, with dramatic intensity, “mark what I’m goin’ to say—it ain’t I that’s goin’ to reap the whirlwind; it’s your pastor, the Reverend Mr. Elbury, of the First Parish!”
The Courting of Sister Wisby
ALL THE MORNING there had been an increasing temptation to take an out-door holiday, and early in the afternoon the temptation outgrew my power of resistance. A far-away pasture on the long southwestern slope of a high hill was persistently present to my mind, yet there seemed to be no particular reason why I should think of it. I was not sure that I wanted anything from the pasture, and there was no sign, except the temptation, that the pasture wanted anything of me. But I was on the farther side of as many as three fences before I stopped to think again where I was going, and why.
There is no use in trying to tell another person about that afternoon unless he distinctly remembers weather exactly like it. No number of details concerning an Arctic ice-blockade will give a single shiver to a child of the tropics. This was one of those perfect New England days in late summer, when the spirit of autumn takes a first stealthy flight, like a spy, through the ripening country-side, and, with feigned sympathy for those who droop with August heat, puts her cool cloak of bracing air about leaf and flower and human shoulders. Every living thing grows suddenly cheerful and strong; it is only when you catch sight of a horror-stricken little maple in swampy soil,—a little maple that has second sight and foreknowledge of coming disaster to her race,—only then does a distrust of autumn’s friendliness dim your joyful satisfaction.
In midwinter there is always a day when one has the first foretaste of spring; in late August there is a morning when the air is for the first time autumn like. Perhaps it is a hint to the squirrels to get in their first supplies for the winter hoards, or a reminder that summer will soon end, and everybody had better make the most of it. We are always looking forward to the passing and ending of winter, but when summer is here it seems as if summer must always last. As I went across the fields that day, I found myself half lamenting that the world must fade again, even that the best of her budding and bloom was only a preparation for another spring-time, for an awakening beyond the coming winter’s sleep.
The sun was slightly veiled; there was a chattering group of birds, which had gathered for a conference about their early migration. Yet, oddly enough, I heard the voice of a belated bobolink, and presently saw him rise from the grass and hover leisurely, while he sang a brief tune. He was much behind time if he were still a housekeeper; but as for the other birds, who listened, they cared only for their own notes. An old crow went sagging by, and gave a croak at his despised neighbor, just as a black reviewer croaked at Keats: so hard it is to be just to one’s contemporaries. The bobolink was indeed singing out of season, and it was impossible to say whether he really belonged most to this summer or to the next. He might have been delayed on his northward journey; at any rate, he had a light heart now, to judge from his song, and I wished that I could ask him a few questions,—how h
e liked being the last man among the bobolinks, and where he had taken singing lessons in the South.
A White Heron and Other Stories Page 7