Chapter 5

Fownes entered the kitchen one morning in November while Janice and Sukey were deep in the making of some grape jelly, carrying an armful of wood; for the bond-servant for once had willingly assumed a task that had hitherto been Tom's. Putting the logs down in the wood-box, he stood with back to the fire, studying Miss Meredith, as, well covered with a big apron, with rolled up sleeves, flyaway locks, and flushed cheeks, she pounded away in a mortar, reducing loaf sugar to usable shape.

"Now youse clar right out of yar," said Sukey, who, though the one servant who was fond of Charles, like all good cooks, was subject to much ferment of mind when preserving was to the fore. "We uns doan want no men folks clutterin' de fire."

"Ah, Sukey," besought Charles, appealingly, "there 's a white frost this morning, and 't is bitter outside. Let me just warm my fingers?"

Sukey promptly relented, but the chill in Fownes' fingers was clearly not unendurable, for in a moment he came to the table, and putting his hand over that of Janice, which held the pestle, he said:--

"Let me do the crushing. 'T is too hard work for you."

"I wish you would," Miss Meredith somewhat breathlessly replied. "My arms are almost ready to drop off."

"'T would set the quidnuncs discussing to which of the Greek goddesses they belonged," remarked Fownes. Then he was sorry he had said it, for Miss Meredith promptly unrolled her sleeves; not because in her secret heart she did not like the speech, but because of a consciousness that Charles was noticing what the Greek goddesses generally lack. A low-cut frock was almost the unvarying dress of the ladies, there was nothing wrong in the display of an ankle, and elbow sleeves were very much the vogue, but to bare the arms any higher was an immodesty not permitted to those who were then commonly termed the "bon ton."

This addition to the working staff promptly produced an order from Sukey for Janice to assume the duty of stirring a pot just placed over the fire, "while I 'se goes down cellar an' cars a shelf for them jellies to set on. Keep a stirrin', honey, so 's it won't burn," was her parting injunction.

No sooner was the cook out of hearing than Charles spoke: "For two days," he said in a low voice, "I have tried to get word with you. Won't you come to the stable when I am there?"

"Are you going to crush that sugar?" asked Miss Meredith.

"Art going to come to the stable?" calmly questioned Charles.

"Give me the pestle!" said Janice, severely.

"Because if you won't," continued the groom, "I shall have to say what I want now."

"I prefer not to hear it," Janice announced, moving from the fire.

"You must keep on stirring, or 't will burn, Miss Janice," the man reminded her, taking a mean advantage of the situation.

Janice came back and resumed her task, but she said, "I don't choose to listen."

'T is for thy father's sake I ask it."

"How?" demanded the girl, looking up with sudden interest.

"I went to the village t' other night," replied the man, "to drill--" Then he checked himself in evident disconcertion.

"Drill?" asked Janice. "What drill?"

"Let us call it quadrille, since that is not the material part," said Charles. "What is to the point is that after--after doing what took me, I stayed to help in Guy Fawkes' fun on the green."

"Well?" questioned the girl, encouragingly.

"The frolickers had some empty tar barrels and an effigy of the Pope, and they gave him and a copy of the Boston Port Bill each a coat of tar and leaves, and then burned them."

"What fun!" cried Janice, ceasing to stir in her interest. "I wish mommy would let me go. She says 't is unbecoming in the gentility, but I don't see why being well born should be a reason for not having as good a time as--"

"As servants?" interrupted Fownes, hotly, as if her words stung him.

"I'm afraid, Charles," reproved Janice, assuming again a severe manner, "that you have a very bad temper."

Perhaps the man might have retorted, but instead he let the anger die from his face, as he fixed his eyes on the floor. "I have, Miss Janice," he acknowledged sadly, after a moment's pause, "and 't is the curse of my life."

"You should discipline it," advised Miss Meredith, sagely. "When I lose my temper, I always read a chapter in the Bible," she added, with a decidedly "holier than thou" in her manner.

"How many times hast thou read the good book through, Miss Janice?" asked Fownes, smiling, and Miss Meredith's virtuous pose became suddenly an uncomfortable one to the young lady.

"You were to tell me something about Mr. Meredith," she said stiffly.

"After burning the Pope and the bill, 't was suggested by some to empty the pot of tar on the fire. But objection was made, because

"Because?" questioned Janice.

"Someone said 't would be needed shortly to properly season green wood, and therefore must not be wasted."

"You don't think they--?" cried Janice, in alarm.

The servant nodded his head. "The feeling against the squire is far deeper than you suspect. 'T will find vent in some violence, I fear, unless he yield to public sentiment."

"He'll never truckle to the country licks and clouted shoons of Brunswick," asserted Janice, proudly.

"'T will fare the worse for him. 'T is as sensible to run counter to public opinion as 't is to cut roads over mountains."

"'T is worse still to be a coward," cried Janice, contemptuously. "I fear, Charles, you are very mean-spirited."

Fownes shrugged his shoulders. "As a servant should be," he muttered bitterly.

"Even a servant can do what is right," answered the girl.

"'T is not a question of right, 't is one of expediency," replied the bondsman. "A year at court, Miss Janice, would teach you that in this world 't is of monstrous importance to know when to bow."

"What do you know of court?" exclaimed Janice.

"Very little," confessed the man. "But I know it teaches one good lesson in life,--that of submission,--and an important thing 't is to learn."

"I only bow to those whom I know to be my superiors," said Janice, with her head held very erect.

"'T is an easy way for you to avoid bowing," asserted the groom, smiling.

Again Janice sought a change of subject by saying, "Think you that is why we are being spied upon?"

"Spied?" questioned the bondsman.

"Last week dadda thought he saw a face one evening at the parlour window, and two nights ago I looked up suddenly and saw--Well, mommy said 't was only vapours, but I know I saw something."

The servant turned his face away from Janice, and coughed. Then he replied, "Perhaps 't was some one watching you. Didst make no attempt to find him?"

"Dadda went to the window both times, but could see nothing."

"He probably had time to hide behind the shrubs," surmised Charles. "I shall set myself to watching, and I'll warrant to catch the villain at it if he tries it again." From the savageness with which he spoke, one would have inferred that he was bitterly enraged at any one spying through the parlour window on Miss Meredith's evening hours.

"I wish you would," solicited Janice. "For if it happened again, I don't know what I should do. Mommy insisted it was n't a ghost, and scolded me for screaming; but all the same, it gave me a dreadful turn. I did n't go to sleep for hours."

"I am sorry it frightened you," said the servant, and then after a moment's hesitation he continued, "'T was I, and if I had thought for a moment to scare you--"

"You!" cried Janice. "What were you doing there?"

The man looked her in the eyes while he replied in a low voice, "Looking at paradise, Miss Janice."

"Janice Meredith," said her mother's voice, sternly, "thou good-for-nothing! Thou'st let the syrup burn, and the smell is all over the house. Charles, what dost thou mean by loafing indoors at this hour of the day? Go about thy work."

And paradise dissolved into a pot of burnt syrup.

IX PARADISE AND ELSEWHERE

While Charles was within hearing, Mrs. Meredith continued to scold Janice about the burnt syrup, but this subject was ended with his exit. "I'm ashamed that a daughter of mine should allow a servant to be so familiar," Mrs. Meredith began anew. "'T is a shame on us all, Janice. Hast thou no idea of what is decent and befitting to a girl of thy station?"

"He was n't familiar," cried Janice, angrily and proudly, "and you should know that if he had been I--he was telling me--"

"Yes," cried her mother, "tell me what he was saying about paradise? Dost think me a nizey, child, not to know what men mean when they talk about paradise?"

Janice's cheeks reddened, and she replied hotly, "If men talked to you about paradise, why should n't they talk to me? I'm sure 't is a pleasant change after the parson's everlasting and eternal talk of an everlasting and eternal--"

"Don't thee dare say it!" interrupted Mrs. Meredith. "Thou fallen, sin-eaten child! Go to thy room and stay there for the rest of the day. 'T is all of a piece that thou shouldst disgrace us by unseemly conduct with a stable-boy. Fine talk 't will make for the tavern."

The injustice and yet possible truth in this speech was too much for Janice to hear, and without an attempt at reply, she burst into a storm of tears and fled to her room.

Deprived of a listener, Mrs. Meredith sought the squire, and very much astonished him by a prediction that, "Thy daughter, Mr. Meredith, is going to bring disgrace on the family."

"What's to do now?" cried the parent.

"A pretty to do, indeed," his wife assured him. "Dost want her running off some fine night with thy groom?"

"Tush, Matilda!" responded Mr. Meredith. "'T is impossible."

"Just what my parents said when thou camest a-courting."

"I was no redemptioner."

"'T was none the less a step-down for me," replied Mrs. Meredith, calmly. "And I had far less levity than--"

"Nay, Matilda, she often reminds me very--"

"Lambert, I never was light! Or at least never after I sat under Dr. Edwards and had a call. The quicker we marry Janice to Mr. McClave, the better 't will be for her."

"Now, pox me!" cried the squire, "if I'll give my lass to be made the drudge of another woman's children."

"'T is the very discipline she needs," retorted the wife. "But for my checking her a moment ago I believe she'd have spoken disrespectfully of hell!"

"Small wonder!" muttered her husband. "Is 't not enough to ye Presbyterians to doom one to everlasting torment in the future life without making this life as bad?"

"'T is the way to be saved," replied Mrs. Meredith. "As Mr. McClave said to Janice shortly since, 'Be assured that doing the unpleasant thing is the surest road to salvation, for tho' it should not find grace in the eyes of a righteously angry God, yet having been done from no carnal and sinful craving of the flesh, it cannot increase his anger towards you.' Ah, Lambert, that man has the true gift."

"Since he's so damned set on being uncarnal," snapped the squire, "let him go without Janice."

"And have her running off with an indentured servant, as Anne Loughton did?"

"She'll do nothing of the kind. If ye want a husband for the lass, let her take Phil."

"A bankrupt."

"Tush! There are acres enough to pay the old squire's debts three times over. She'd bring Phil enough ready money to clear it all, and 't is rich mellow land that will double in value, give it time."

"I tell thee her head 's full of this bond-servant. The two were in the kitchen just now, talking about paradise, and I know not what other foolishness."

"That" said Mr. Meredith, with a grin of enjoyment, "sounds like true Presbyterian doctrine. The Westminster Assembly seem to have left paradise out of the creation."

"Such flippancy is shameful in one of thy years, Mr. Meredith," said his wife, sternly, "and canst have but one ending."

"That is all any of us can have, Patty," replied the squire, genially.

Mrs. Meredith went to the door, but before leaving the room, she said, still with a stern, set face, though with a break in her voice, "Is 't not enough that my four babies are enduring everlasting torment, but my husband and daughter must go the same way?"

"There, there, Matilda!" cried the husband. "'T was said in jest only and was nothing more than lip music. Come back--" the speech ended there as a door at a distance banged. "Now she'll have a cry all by herself," groaned the squire. "'T is a strange thing she took it so bravely when the road was rough, yet now, when 't is easy pulling, she lets it fret and gall her."

Then Mr. Meredith looked into his fire, and saw another young girl, a little more serious than Janice, perhaps, but still gay-hearted and loved by many. He saw her making a stolen match with himself; passed in review the long years of alienation from her family, the struggle with poverty, and, saddest of all, the row of little gravestones which told of the burial of the best of her youth. He saw the day finally when, a worn, saddened woman, she at last was in the possession of wealth, to find in it no pleasure, yet to turn eagerly, and apparently with comfort, to the teachings of that strange combination of fire and logic, Jonathan Edwards. He recalled the two sermons during Edwards's brief term as president of Nassau Hall, which moved him so little, yet which had convinced Mrs. Meredith that her dead babies had been doomed to eternal punishment and had made her the stern, unyielding woman she was. The squire was too hearty an animal, and lived too much in the open air, to be given to introspective thought, but he shook his head. "A strange warp and woof we weave of the skein," he sighed, "that sorrow for the dead should harden us to the living." Mr. Meredith rose, went upstairs, and rapped at a door. Getting no reply, after a repetition of the knock, he went in.

A glance revealed what at first sight looked like a crumpled heap of clothes upon the bed, but after more careful scrutiny the mass was found to have a head, very much buried between two pillows, and the due quantity of arms and legs. Walking to the bed, the squire put his hand on the bundle.

"There, lass," he said, "'t is nought to make such a pother about."

"Oh, dadda," moaned Janice, "I am the most unhappy girl that ever lived."

It is needless to say after this remark that Miss Meredith's knowledge of the world was not of the largest, and the squire, with no very great range of experience, smiled a little as he said--

"Then 't will not make you more miserable to wed the parson?"

"Dadda!" exclaimed the girl, rolling over quickly, to get a sight of his countenance. When she found him smiling, the anxious look on the still red and tear-stained face melted away, and she laughed merrily. "Think of the life I'd give the good man! How I would wherrit him! He 'd have to give up his church to have time enough to preach to me." Apparently the deep woe alluded to the moment before was forgotten.

"I've no manner of doubt he'd enjoy the task," declared the father, with evident pride. "Ah, Jan, many a man would enter the ministry, if he might be ordained parson of ye."

"The only parson I want is a father confessor," said Janice, sitting up and giving him a kiss.

"Then what 's this maggot your mother has got in her head about ye and Charles and paradise?" laughed her father.

"Indeed, dadda," protested the girl, eagerly, "mommy was most unjust. I was to stir some syrup, and Charles came into the kitchen and would talk to me, and as I could n't leave the pot, I had to listen, and then--well

"I thought as much!" cried the squire, heartily, when Janice paused. "Where the syrup is, there'll find ye the flies. But we'll have no horse-fly buzzing about ye. My fine gentleman shall be taught where he belongs, if it takes the whip to do it."

"No, dadda," exclaimed Janice. "He spoke but to warn me of danger to you. He says there 's preparation to tar and feather you unless you--you do something."

"Foo!" sniffed the squire. "Let them snarl. I'll show them I'm not a man to be driven by tag, long tail, and bobby."

"But Charles--" began the girl.

"Ay, Charles," interrupted Mr. Meredith. "I've no doubt he's one of 'em. 'T is always the latest importations take the hottest part against the gentry."

"Nay, dadda, I think he--"

"Mark me, that's what takes the tyke to the village so often."

"He said 't was to drill he went."

"To drill?" questioned the squire. "What meant he by that?"

"I asked him, and he said 't was quadrille. Dost think he meant dancing or cards?"

"'T is in keeping that he should be a dancing master or a card-sharper," asserted Mr. Meredith. "No wonder 't is a disordered land when 't is used as a catchall for every man not wanted in England. We'll soon put a finish to his night-walking."

"I don't think he's a villain, dadda, and he certainly meant kindly in warning us."

"To make favour by tale-bearing, no doubt."

"I'm sure he'd not a thought of it," declared Janice, with an unconscious eagerness which made the squire knit his brows.

"Ye speak warmly, child," he said. "I trust your mother be not justified in her suspicion."

The girl, who meanwhile had sprung off the bed, drew herself up proudly. "Mommy is altogether wrong," she replied. "I'd never descend so low."

"I said as much," responded the squire, gleefully.

"A likely idea, indeed!" exclaimed Janice. "As if I'd have aught to do with a groom! No, I never could shame the family by that."

"Wilt give me your word to that, Jan?" asked the squire.

"Yes," cried the girl, and then roguishly added, "Why, dadda, I'd as soon, yes, sooner, marry old Belza, who at least is a prince in his own country, than see a Byllynge marry a bond-servant."

X A COLONIAL CHRISTMAS

For some weeks following the pledge of Janice, the life at Greenwood became as healthily monotonous as of yore. Both Mr. and Mrs. Meredith spoke so sharply to both Sukey and Charles of his loitering about the kitchen that his visits, save at meal times, entirely ceased. The squire went further and ordered him to put an end to his trips to the village, but the man took this command in sullen silence, and was often absent.

One circumstance, however, very materially lessened the possible encounters between the bond-servant and the maiden. This was no less than the setting in of the winter snows, which put a termination to all the girl's outdoor life, excepting the attendance at the double church services on Sundays, which Mrs. Meredith never permitted to be neglected. From the window Janice sometimes saw the groom playing in the drifts with Clarion, but that was almost the extent of her knowledge of his doings. It is to be confessed that she eagerly longed to join them or, at least, to have a like sport with the dog. Eighteenth-century etiquette, however, neither countenanced such conduct in the quality, nor, in fact, clothed them for it.

A point worth noting at this time was connected with one window of the parlour. Each afternoon as night shut down, it was Peg's duty to close all the blinds, for colonial windows not being of the tightest, every additional barricade to Boreas was welcome, and this the servant did with exemplary care. But every evening after tea, Janice always walked to a particular window and, opening the shutter, looked out for a moment, as if to see what the night promised, before she took her seat at her tambour frame or sewing. Sometimes one of her parents called attention to the fact that she had not quite closed the shutters again, and she always remedied the oversight at once. Otherwise she never looked at the window during the whole evening, glance where she might. Presumably she still remembered the fright her putative ghost had occasioned her, and chose not to run the chance of another sight of him. Almost invariably, however, in the morning she blew on the frost upon the window of her own room and having rubbed clear a spot, looked below, much as if she suspected ghosts could leave tracks in the snow. In her behalf it is only fair to say that the girls of that generation were so shut in as far as regarded society or knowledge of men that they let their imaginations question and wander in a manner difficult now to conceive. At certain ages the two sexes are very much interested in each other, and if this interest is not satisfied objectively, it will be subjectively.

Snow, if a jailer, was likewise a defence, and apparently cooled for a time the heat of the little community against the squire. Even the Rev. Mr. McClave's flame of love and love of flame were modified by the depth of the drifts he must struggle through, in order to discourse on eternal torment while gazing at earthly paradise. Janice became convinced that the powers of darkness no longer had singled her out as their particular prey, and in the peaceful isolation of the winter her woes, when she thought of them, underwent a change of grammatical tense which suggested that they had become things of the past.

One of her tormenting factors was not to be so treated. Philemon alone made nothing of the change of season, riding the nine miles between his home and Greenwood by daylight or by moonlight, as if his feeling for the girl not merely warmed but lighted the devious path between the drifts. Yet it was not to make love he came; for he sat a silent, awkward figure when once within doors, speaking readily enough in response to the elders, but practically inarticulate whenever called upon to reply to Janice. Her bland unconsciousness was a barrier far worse than the snow; and never dreaming that he was momentarily declaring his love for her in a manner far stronger than words, he believed her wholly ignorant of what he felt, and stayed for hours at a time, longing helplessly for a turn of events which should make it possible for him to speak.

Philemon was thus engaged or disengaged one December morning when Peg entered the parlour where the family were sitting as close to the fire as the intense glow of the hickory embers would allow, and handing Janice a letter with an air of some importance, remarked, "Charles he ask me give you dat." Then, colonial servants being prone to familiarity, and negro slaves doubly so, Peg rested her weight on one foot, and waited to learn what this unusual event might portend. All present instantly fixed their eyes upon Janice, but had they not done so it is probable that she would have coloured much as she did, for the girl was enough interested and enough frightened to be quite unconscious of the eyes upon her.

"A letter for thee, lass!" exclaimed the squire. "Let 's have the bowels of it."

The necessity for that very thing was what made the occurrence so alarming to Janice, for her woman's intuition had at once suggested, the moment she had seen the bold hand-writing of the superscription, that it could be from none other than Evatt, and she had as quickly surmised that her father and mother would insist upon sight of the missive. Unaware of what it might contain, she sat with red cheeks, not daring to break the seal.

"Hast got the jingle brains, child?" asked her mother, sharply, "that thou dost nothing but stare at it?"

Janice laid the letter in her lap, saying, "'T will wait till I finish this row." It was certainly a hard fate which forced her to delay the opening of the first letter she had ever received.

"'T will nothing of the sort," said her mother, reaching out for the paper. "Art minded to read it on the sly, miss? There shall be no letters read by stealth. Give it me."

"Oh, mommy," begged the girl, desperately, "I'll show it to you, but--oh--let me read it first, oh, please!"

"I think 't is best not," replied her mother. "Thy anxiety has an ill look to it, Janice."

The girl handed the letter dutifully, and with an anxious attention watched her mother break it open, all pleasure in the novelty of the occurrence quite overtopped by dread of what was to come.

"What nonsense is this?" was Mrs. Meredith's anything but encouraging exclamation. Then she read out--