Part 5

There was in the village an ancient maiden lady who had lived in Boston in her youth, and had learned to play several tunes on the harpsichord. These, for a small stipend, she imparted to Persis. They were simple and artless melodies, and Persis had a ready ear. In a short time she had learned all the maiden lady knew. She could sing three old songs, innocently imitating her teacher’s quaver with her sweet young voice, and she could finger out quite correctly one battle piece and two jigs. The two jigs she played very slowly, according to her teacher’s instructions. Persis herself did not know why, but this elderly maiden was astute. She did not wish Ichabod Buckley and his family to be tormented with scruples themselves, neither did she wish to be called to account for teaching light and worldly tunes.

“Play these very slowly, my dear,” she said. She shook the two bunches of gray curls which bobbed outside her cap over her thin red cheeks; her old blue eyes winked with a light which Persis did not understand.

“Be they psalm tunes?” she inquired, innocently.

“’Tis according to the way you play them,” replied her teacher, evasively.

And Persis never knew, nor any of her family, that she played jigs. However, one worldly amusement, which was accounted distinctly sinful, was Persis taught with the direct connivance of her parents.

This old maiden lady, although she was constant in the meeting-house on the Sabbath day, and was not seen to move a muscle of dissent when the parson proclaimed the endless doom of the wicked, had Unitarian traditions, and her life in her youth had been more gayly and broadly ordered than that of those about her. It had always been whispered that she had played cards, and had even danced, in days gone by. To the most rigidly sanctified nostrils there was always perceptible a faint spiritual odor of past frivolity when she came into the meeting-house, although she seemed to subscribe faithfully to all the orthodox tenets. The parson often felt it his duty to call upon her, and enter into wordy expounding of the truth, and tempt her with argument. She never questioned his precepts, and never argued, yet a suspicion as to her inmost heresy was always abroad. Had it not been so, Sarah Buckley would never have dared make one proposition to her with regard to her daughter’s accomplishments.

One day the shutters in the Buckley front room were carefully closed, as if some one lay dead therein; the candles were lighted, and this ancient maiden lady, holding with both hands her petticoats above her thin ankles in their black silk hose, taught Persis Buckley some dancing steps. That, nobody in the village ever knew. All the parties concerned would have been brought before the church had that secret been disclosed. The Buckleys scarcely dared mention it to one another.

This old teacher of Persis Buckley had still some relatives left in Boston, and now and then she went to them on a visit. On one of these occasions Sarah Buckley commissioned her to purchase some books for Persis. All the literature in the Buckley house consisted of the Bible, Watts’s Hymns, and Doddridge’s _Rise and Progress_, and Sarah fancied that another book or two of possibly an ornamental and decorative tendency might be of use in her daughter’s education.

When Mistress Tabitha Hopkins returned from Boston she brought with her a volume of Young’s _Night Thoughts_ and one of Richardson’s _Clarissa Harlowe_. The first she presented with confidence, the second with some excuses.

“I know well that the poetry is of a nature that will elevate her soul and tend to form her mind,” said she, “and I have myself no doubt as to the other. If it be a tale, ’tis one she can read to her profit, and the pleasure she may take in it may lead her to peruse it more closely. ’Tis well sometimes to season hard doctrines with sugar if you would have them gulped down at all.” Mistress Hopkins made a wry face, as if the said doctrines were even then like bitter pills in her mouth, and Sarah Buckley glanced at her suspiciously. However, she took the books, and paid for them a goodly sum, and Persis was henceforth made acquainted with the lofty admonitions to Lorenzo and the woes of the unfortunate and virtuous Clarissa.

It might well have been that Tabitha Hopkins’s recommendation of the story of poor Clarissa Harlowe and her desperate experience at the hands of a faithless lover had its object. Mistress Tabitha Hopkins’s single life had not predisposed her to implicit reliance upon the good faith or the motives of gay gallants who, in the course of some little trip out of their world, chanced to notice a beautiful rustic maiden. Everybody in the village knew now the reason for Ichabod Buckley’s and his wife’s strange treatment of their daughter Persis. They knew that the grand gentleman who had come to town with the coach and four had seen Persis, and cried out at her beauty, and made her father give his promise that she should be kept for him until she was grown up, when he would come over seas from England and marry her.

Ichabod had vainly tried to keep this secret, but he had told it before a week had passed to old Thomas Knapp, who was helping him to set Widow Nye’s gravestone.

Then the sun had not set before the news was widely spread. Marvellous tales were told of this gentleman and his lady mother, who had come in the coach with him. Persis, when she was wedded, would dwell in marble halls, wear satin and velvet of a week-day, and eat off gold and silver dishes. No wonder that Ichabod Buckley and his wife Sarah were doing their poor best to fit their daughter for such a high estate! No wonder that they kept her all day in the best room embroidering and reading poetry and playing music! No wonder that they never let her walk abroad without morocco shoes and a veil over her face!

“It ain’t likely,” said old man Knapp, “that she’ll ever have any call to so much as dye a hank of yarn or dip a candle arter she’s married.”

Still, although people acquiesced in the wisdom of fitting Persis for this grand station, if there were any prospect of her reaching it, they were mostly incredulous or envious.

The incredulous said quite openly that Ichabod Buckley always did hear things five times as big as they were, and they doubted much if the grand gentleman ever really meant to or said he would come back for Persis. The envious declared that if he did come they mistrusted that it would not be for any good and honest purpose, for he would never think Persis Buckley his equal, in spite of all her fine accomplishments and her gaudy attire. And her face might by that time be no more beautiful than some others, after all.

The incredulous moved the parson to preach many a discourse upon the folly of worldly ambition and trust in the vain promises of princes. The envious instigated sermons upon the sin of any other ornament or accomplishment than a meek and quiet spirit for the daughters of Zion.

Poor little Persis, in her silken attire, lifting her wonderful face to the parson, never dreamed that the discourse was directed at her and her parents, but Ichabod and Sarah knew, and sat up with bristling stiffness. After that they withdrew themselves largely from intercourse with their neighbors. They felt as if the spiritual watch-dog had been set upon them, and they were justly indignant. Sarah Buckley had always been given to staying at home and minding the affairs of her own household; now she kept herself more close than ever. Ichabod was by nature sociable, and liked to fraternize with his kind; but now almost his only dealing with people outside his own family lay in his work upon their gravestones.

The Buckleys lived by themselves in their little house on the windy land past the graveyard, following out their own end in life, and all the time were under a subtle spiritual bombardment of doubt and envy and disapproval from their neighbors in the village.

People talked much about Submit’s patient drudgery, and felt for her the resentment which she did not feel for herself. “It is a shame the way they make that poor girl do all the work to keep her sister in idleness!” said they. They began to call Persis in derision “The Buckley Lady.”

Poor Persis Buckley, shut out of the free air and away from all the mates of her youth, was leading the life of a forlorn princess in a fairy tale. She would have given all the money which her brother Ichabod brought her for his privilege of a cruise over the wild seas. Year after year she waited in her prison, cast about and bound, body and spirit, by the will and ambition of her parents, like steel cobwebs, for the prince who never came.

At first the romance of it all had appealed to her childish imagination. When the high destiny which awaited her had been disclosed, her heart leaped. She had been amused and pleased. She liked to watch out for that grand coach and four. When she remembered the gay blue flash of that grand gentleman’s eyes she blushed, and laughed to herself.

But after a while all that failed. She did not grow incredulous, for she had a simple and long-suffering faith in her parents, but quietly and secretly frightened at the prospect before her. Poor Persis Buckley sometimes felt herself turn fairly cold with dread at the thought of entering that splendid coach and driving away forever out of her old life at that strange gentleman’s side. He became to her as cold and formless as a moving column of mist on the marsh, and even the dreams which sprang of themselves in her girlish heart could not invest him with love and life again.

She did not dare confide her fears to her mother. Sometimes her mother filled her with a vague alarm. Sarah Buckley in ten years grew old, and the eagerness in her face waxed so bright and sharp that one shrank before it involuntarily, as before some blinding on-coming headlight of spirit.

All those years she waited and watched and listened for that grand coach and four which would bring her fortune in her daughter’s. All the ambition of her earthly life, largely balked for herself, had centred in this. Her lot in the world had been to tread out a ceaseless round of sordid toil in her poor little home on the stormy coast, but her beautiful daughter could take a flight above it, and something of herself could follow her.

She never gave up, although year after year she watched and listened in vain; but finally her body failed under this long strain of the spirit. When Persis was twenty-three her mother died, after a short illness. Then Persis found her father as keen a guardian as her mother had been. Sarah had given him her farewell charges, and during her lifetime had imbued his nervous receptive nature with a goodly portion of her own spirit.

He wrought for his dead wife a fine tall stone, and set thereon a verse of his own composition. Ichabod Buckley was somewhat of a poet, publishing himself his effusions upon his gloomy stone pages. Then he fulfilled his own and her part towards their daughter Persis.

* * * * *

Sarah Buckley had been dead two years, and the Buckley Lady was twenty-five years old, sitting at her window in the front room, watching for the prince who never came.

“The fine gentleman will find an old maid waiting for him if he does not come before long,” people said, with sniffs.

But Persis had really grown more and more beautiful. Her complexion, although she had lived so much within-doors, was not sickly, but pale and fine as a white lily. Her eyes were like dark stars, and her hair was a braided cap of gold, with light curls falling from it around her face and her sweet neck. Of late Persis had rebelled upon one minor point: she never, even of a morning, would sit at the window with her hair rolled up in curl-papers. She argued with her father, with a duplicity which was unlike her, that should the gentleman arrive suddenly, she would have no time to take them down before he saw her. But that was not the reason. Ichabod never suspected, neither did the stupid Submit, padding faithfully in her household tracks; the son, Ichabod, was away at sea. Nobody knew how the Buckley Lady, sitting in her window watching, had seen Darius Hopkins pass by, with never a coach and four, but striding bravely along on his own stalwart young legs, and how her heart had gone out to him and followed him, whether she would or not.

Darius Hopkins was Mistress Tabitha Hopkins’s nephew, and he had come from Boston to pay his aunt a visit. People whispered that he had expectations, and had come with a purpose. Mistress Tabitha had received within two years a legacy, nobody knew how large, by the death of a relative. However that may have been, the young man treated his aunt with exceeding deference and tenderness. Her pride and delight were great. She held her head high, and swung out her slim foot with almost the motion of her old dancing steps when she went up the meeting-house aisle on a Sabbath day, leaning on her nephew’s arm. Darius was finely dressed, and he was also a personable young man of whom she might well be proud. She kept glancing at him almost with the shy delight of a sweetheart. Darius had a glossy dark head and a dark complexion, but his eyes were blue and light, and somewhat, as she fondly thought, like her own.

Darius had arrived on a Thursday, and it was on that day Persis Buckley had seen him, and he had seen her at her window. Tabitha Hopkins’s house was past the Buckleys’, fairly out at sea, on the point, across the marshy meadows.

The young man glanced up carelessly at the Buckley house as he passed; then he started, and fairly stopped, and his heart leaped almost with fear, for it actually seemed to him that he saw the face of an angel in the window.

“Who was the maid in the window of the house back yonder?” he said to his aunt as soon as he had greeted her. He waved his hand carelessly backward, and tried to speak as carelessly, but his aunt gave him a sharp look.

“It must have been Persis Buckley,” said she.

“There is not another face like that in the whole country,” said the young man, and in spite of himself his tongue betrayed him.

“Yes, it is generally considered that she has a fair face,” said Tabitha, dryly. “She has accomplishments also. She can play music, and she has a pretty voice for a song. She can dance, though that’s not to be spoke of in this godly town, and she is well versed in polite literature. Persis Buckley is fitted to adorn any high estate to which she may be called.”

There was a mysterious tone in Tabitha’s voice, and her nephew looked at her with eager inquiry.

“What mean you, aunt?” he said.

“What I have said,” replied she, aggravatingly, and would tell him no more. She was secretly a little jealous that her nephew had shortened his greeting to her to inquire about Persis. Old single woman though she was, her feminine birthright of jealousy of the love of men, be they lovers or sons or nephews, still survived in her heart.

The young man dared not ask her any more questions, but the next day he passed the Buckley house many a time with sidelong glances at the window where Persis sat. He would not stare too boldly at that fair vision. And in the evening he stole out and strolled slowly over the meadows, and came to the Buckley house again. She was not at the window then, but the sweet tinkle of her piano came out to him from the candle-lit room, and he listened in rapture to her tender little voice trilling and quavering. Then peeping cautiously, he saw her graceful head thrown back, and her white throat swelling with her song like a bird’s.

When he returned, his aunt looked at him sharply, but she did not ask where he had been. When he took his candle to retire for the night, her old blue eyes twinkled at him suddenly.

“How did the little bird sing to-night?” she said.

The young man stared at her a second, then he blushed and laughed. “Bravely, aunt, bravely,” he replied.

“’Tis a bird in the bush, nephew,” said she, and her voice was mocking, yet shrewdly tender.

Darius’s face fell. “What do you mean, aunt?” he said.

“’Tis a bird that will always sing in the bush, and never in hand.”

Darius made as if he would question his aunt further, but he did not. He bade her good-night in a downcast and confused manner, and was out of the room like a shy girl.

Mistress Tabitha chuckled to herself, then she looked grave, and sat in her rocking-chair for a long time thinking.

Darius Hopkins marvelled much what his aunt could mean by her warning, and was uneasy over it. But the next day also he had many an errand across the meadows, down the forest road, to the village, and always he saw, without seeming to see, Persis at the window, and always she saw, without seeming to see, him.

On the Sabbath day, when he and his aunt went by the Buckley house on their way to meeting, Persis was not at the window. His aunt surprised his sly glances. “They go to meeting early,” said she, demurely. Darius laughed in a shamefaced fashion.

After he and his aunt were seated in the meeting-house, he scarcely dared look up for a while, for he feared, should he see Persis suddenly and near at hand, his face might alter in spite of himself. And, in truth, when he did look up, and saw Persis close before him in a pew at the side of the pulpit, a tremor ran over him, his lips twitched, and all the color left his face. His aunt pressed her bottle of salts into his hand, and he pressed it back almost sharply, and turned red as a girl to the roots of his black hair. Then he sat up straight and looked over almost defiantly at Persis. Her face in her blue satin bonnet, with its drooping blue plume and lace veil thrown to one side, was fair enough to stir the heart of any mortal man who looked at her.

There were, indeed, in that meeting-house, certain godly men who kept their eyes sternly turned away, and would not look upon her, thinking it a sin, although it was a sin to their own hearts alone.

But many a young man besides Darius Hopkins, although he had seen her in that selfsame place Sabbath after Sabbath, still regarded her furtively with looks of almost startled adoration. Not one of them had ever spoken to her or heard her speak, or seen her except in the meeting-house, or at her window, or thickly veiled on the village street.

Persis to-day kept her eyes fixed upon the parson, exhorting under his echoing sounding-board. She never looked around, although she knew that Darius was sitting beside his aunt in her pew. She also was afraid, and she never recovered courage, like Darius. Her father, Ichabod, fiercely intent upon the discourse, his nervous face screwed to a very point of attention, sat on one side; her sister Submit, her back bowed like an old woman’s, on the other.

When meeting was over, Ichabod shot down the aisle, with his daughters following, as was his wont, and reached the door before many that sat farther back.

When Darius and his aunt came out of the meeting-house, the Buckleys were quite out of sight. When they emerged from the road past the graveyard through the woods, Persis was already at the window, with her bonnet off, but she kept her head turned far to one side, as if intent upon something in the room, and only the pink curve of one cheek was visible.

Darius had grown bold in the meeting-house; this time he looked, and forgot himself in looking.

“She is a pretty maid, but she is not for you, nor for any other young man unless he come for her with a coach and four, with a black gentleman a-driving,” said his aunt’s voice half mockingly at his side.

Then the young man turned and questioned her quite boldly. “I beg of you to tell me what you mean, aunt,” he said.

Then Mistress Tabitha Hopkins, holding her Sabbath gown high above her hooped satin petticoat as she stepped along, unfolded to her nephew Darius Hopkins the strange romance of Persis Buckley’s life.

“’Tis a shame!” cried the young man, indignantly, when she had finished--“a shame, to keep her a prisoner in this fashion!”

“’Tis only a prince with a coach and four can set her free. A prince from over seas, with a black gentleman a-driving,” said his aunt.

Darius turned, and stared back across the flat meadow-land at Ichabod Buckley’s house. It was late August now, and the meadow had great rosy patches of marsh-rosemary flung upon it like silken cloaks of cavaliers, and far-seen purple plumes of blazing-star. Darius studied slowly the low gray walls and long slant of gray roofs in the distance.

“A strong right arm and a willing heart might free her, were he prince or not!” said he. And he flung out his own right arm as if it were the one to do it.

“Were the maid willing to be freed,” said Mistress Tabitha, softly.

Darius colored. “That is true, aunt,” he said, with a downcast and humbled air, and he turned and went on soberly.

Mistress Tabitha looked at her nephew’s handsome face, and thought to herself, with loving but jealous pride, that no maid could refuse him as a deliverer. But she would not tell him so, for her heart was still sore at his preference of Persis to herself.

Darius Hopkins had an uneasy visit at his aunt Tabitha’s. He did not speak again of Persis Buckley, but he thought the more. Useless, as he told himself, as either hopes or fears were, they sprang up in his heart like persistent flames, and could not be trodden out.

He told himself that it was not sensible to think that the grand Englishman would ever come for Persis after all these years, and that it was nothing to him if he did. Yet he often trembled when he came in sight of her house lest he see a coach and four standing before it, and see her carried away before his very eyes.

And sometimes he would look at his own comely face in the glass, and look into his own heart, and feel as if the love therein must compel her even against her will; for she was not an angel or a goddess, after all, beautiful as she was, but only a mortal woman. “She cannot love this man whom she has not seen since she was a child, and he must be an old man now,” reasoned Darius, viewing his own gallant young face in the glass. And he smiled with hope, although he knew that he could not reasonably expect to have more of Persis than the sight of her face in the meeting-house or at the window were he to stay in the village a year.

For a long time Darius was not sure that Persis even noticed him when he passed by, but there came a day when he had that at least for his comfort. That day he had not passed her house until late; on the day before her face had been so far turned from the window that his heart had sunk. He had said to himself that he would be such a love-cracked fool no longer; he would not pass her house again unless of a necessity. So all that day he had sat moodily with his aunt, but just before dusk his resolution had failed him. He had strolled slowly across the meadow, while his aunt watched him from her window, smiling shrewdly.

He had not meant to glance even when he passed the Buckley house, but in spite of himself his eyes turned. And there was Persis at the window, leaning towards him, with her face all radiant with joy. It was only a second, and she was gone. Darius had no time for anything but that one look, but that was enough. He felt as if he had already routed the gallant with the coach and four. He meditated all sorts of audacious schemes as he went home. What could he not do, if Persis would only smile upon him? He felt like marching straight upon her house, like a soldier upon a castle, and demanding her of her father, who was her jailer.