Chapter 12

Tiverton Hollow had occasionally an evening meeting; this came about naturally whenever religious zeal burned high, or when the congregation felt, with some uneasiness, that it had remained too long aloof from spiritual things. To-night, the schoolhouse had been designated for an assembling place, and the neighborhood trooped thither, animated by an excited importance, and doing justice to the greatness of the occasion by "dressing up." Farmers had laid aside their ordinary mood, with overalls and jumpers, and donned an uncomfortable solemnity, an enforced attitude of theological reflection, with their stocks. Wives had urged their patient fingers into cotton gloves, and in cashmere shawls, and bonnets retrimmed with reference to this year's style, pressed into the uncomfortable chairs, and folded their hands upon the desks before them in a sweet seriousness not unmingled with the desire of thriftily completing a duty no less exigent than pickle-making, or the work of spring and fall. Last came the boys, clattering with awkward haste over the dusty floor which had known the touch of their bare feet on other days. They looked about the room with some awe and a puzzled acceptance of its being the same, yet not the same. It was their own. There were the maps of North and South America; the yellowed evergreens, relic of "Last Day," still festooned the windows, and an intricate "sum," there explained to the uncomprehending admiration of the village fathers, still adorned the blackboard. Yet the room had strangely transformed itself into an alien temple, invaded by theology and the breath of an unknown world. But though sobered, they were not cast down; for the occasion was enlivened, in their case, by a heaven-defying profligacy of intent. Every one of them knew that Sammy Forbes had in his pocket a pack of cards, which he meant to drop, by wicked but careless design, just when Deacon Pitts led in prayer, and that Tom Drake was master of a concealed pea-shooter, which he had sworn, with all the asseverations held sacred by boys, to use at some dramatic moment. All the band were aware that neither of these daring deeds would be done. The prospective actors themselves knew it; but it was a darling joy to contemplate the remote possibility thereof.

Deacon Pitts opened, the meeting, reminding his neighbors how precious a privilege it is for two or three to be gathered together. His companion had not been able to come. (The entire neighborhood knew that Mrs. Pitts had been laid low by an attack of erysipelas, and that she was, at the moment, in a dark bedroom at home, helpless under elderblow.)

"She lays there on a bed of pain," said the deacon. "But she says to me, 'You go. Better the house o' mournin' than the house o' feastin',' she says. Oh, my friends! what can be more blessed than the counsel of an aged and feeble companion?"

The deacon sat down, and Tom Drake, his finger on the pea-shooter, assured himself, in acute mental triumph, that he had almost done it that time.

Then followed certain incidents eminently pleasing to the boys. To their unbounded relief, Sarah Frances Giles rose to speak, weeping as she began. She always wept at prayer meeting, though at the very moment of asserting her joy that she cherished a hope, and her gratitude that she was so nearly at an end of this earthly pilgrimage and ready to take her stand on the sea of glass mingled with fire. The boys reveled in her testimony. They were in a state of bitter uneasiness before she rose, and gnawed with a consuming impatience until she began to cry. Then they wondered if she could possibly leave out the sea of glass; and when it duly came, they gave a sigh of satiated bliss and sank into acquiescence in whatever might happen. This was a rich occasion to their souls, for Silas Marden, who was seldom moved by the spirit, fell upon his knees to pray; but at the same unlucky instant, his sister-in-law, for whom he cherished an unbounded scorn, rose (being "nigh-eyed" and ignorant of his priority) and began to speak. For a moment, the two held on together, "neck and neck," as the happy boys afterward remembered, and then Silas got up, dusted his knees, and sat down, not to rise again at any spiritual call. "An' a madder man you never see," cried all the Hollow next day, in shocked but gleeful memory.

Taking it all in all, the meeting had thus far mirrored others of its class. If the droning experiences were devoid of all human passion, it was chiefly because they had to be expressed in the phrases of strict theological usage. There was an unspoken agreement that feelings of this sort should be described in a certain way. They were not the affairs of the hearth and market; they were matters pertaining to that awful entity called the soul, and must be dressed in the fine linen which she had herself elected to wear.

Suddenly, in a wearisome pause, when minds had begun to stray toward the hayfield and tomorrow's churning, the door was pushed open, and the Widow Prime walked in. She was quite unused to seeking her kind, and the little assembly at once awoke, under the stimulus of surprise. They knew quite well where she had been walking: to Sudleigh Jail, to visit her only son, lying there for the third time, not, as usual, for drunkenness, but for house-breaking. She was a wiry woman, a mass of muscles animated by an eager energy. Her very hands seemed knotted with clenching themselves in nervous spasms. Her eyes were black, seeking, and passionate, and her face had been scored by fine wrinkles, the marks of anxiety and grief. Her chocolate calico was very clean, and her palm-leaf shawl and black bonnet were decent in their poverty. The vague excitement created by her coming continued in a rustling like that of leaves. The troubles of Hannah Prime's life had been very bitter--so bitter that she had, as Deacon Pitts once said, after undertaking her conversion, turned from "me and the house of God." A quickening thought sprang up now in the little assembly that she was "under conviction," and that it had become the present duty of every professor to lead her to the throne of grace. This was an exigency for which none were prepared. At so strenuous a challenge, the old conventional ways of speech fell down and collapsed before them, like creatures filled with air. Who should minister to one set outside their own comfortable lives by bitter sorrow and wounded pride? What could they offer a woman who had, in one way or another, sworn to curse God and die? It was Deacon Pitts who spoke, but in a tone hushed to the key of the unexpected.

"Has any one an experience to offer? Will any brother or sister lead in prayer?"

The silence was growing into a thing to be recognized and conquered, when, to the wonder of her neighbors, Hannah Prime herself rose, She looked slowly about the room, gazing into every face as if to challenge an honest understanding. Then she began speaking in a low voice thrilled by an emotion not yet explained. Unused to expressing herself in public, she seemed to be feeling her way. The silence, pride, endurance, which had been her armor for many years, were no longer apparent; she had thrown down all her defenses with a grave composure, as if life suddenly summoned her to higher issues.

"I dunno's I've got an experience to offer," she said. "I dunno's it's religion. I dunno what 'tis. Mebbe you'd say it don't belong to a meetin'. But when I come by an' see you all settin' here, it come over me I'd like to tell somebody. Two weeks ago I was most crazy"--She paused of necessity, for something broke in her voice.

"That's the afternoon Jim was took," whispered a woman to her neighbor. Hannah Prime went on.

"I jest as soon tell it now. I can tell ye all together what I couldn't say to one on ye alone; an' if anybody speaks to me about it afterwards, they'll wish they hadn't. I was all by myself in the house. I set down in my clock-room, about three in the arternoon, an' there I set. I didn't git no supper. I couldn't. I set there an' heard the clock tick. Byme-by it struck seven, an' that waked me up. I thought I'd gone crazy. The figgers on the wall-paper provoked me most to death; an' that red-an'-white tidy I made, the winter I was laid up, seemed to be talkin' out loud. I got up an' run outdoor jest as fast as I could go. I run out behind the house an' down the cart-path to that pile o' rocks that overlooks the lake; an' there I got out o' breath an' dropped down on a big rock. An' there I set, jest as still as I'd been settin' when I was in the house."

Here a little girl stirred in her seat, and her mother leaned forward and shook her, with alarming energy. "I never was so hard with Mary L. afore," she explained the next day, "but I was as nervous as a witch. I thought, if I heard a pin drop, I should scream."

"I dunno how long I set there," went on Hannah Prime, "but byme-by it begun to come over me how still the lake was. 'Twas like glass; an' way over where it runs in 'tween them islands, it burnt like fire. Then I looked up a little further, to see what kind of a sky there was. 'T was light green, with clouds in it, all fire, an' it begun to seem to me as if it was a kind o' land an' water up there--like our'n, on'y not solid. I set there an' looked at it; an' I picked out islands, an' ma'sh-land, an' p'ints running out into the yeller-green sea. An' everything grew stiller an' stiller. The loons struck up, down on the lake, with that kind of a lonesome whinner; but that on'y made the rest of it seem quieter. An' it begun to grow dark all 'round me. I dunno 's I ever noticed before jest how the dark comes. It sifted down like snow, on'y you couldn't see it. Well, I set there, an' I tried to keep stiller an' stiller, like everything else. Seemed as if I must. An' pretty soon I knew suthin' was walkin' towards me over the lot. I kep' my eyes on the sky; for I knew 't would break suthin' if I turned my head, an' I felt as if I couldn't bear to. An' It come walkin', walkin', without takin' any steps or makin' any noise, till It come right up 'side o' me an' stood still. I didn't turn round. I knew I mustn't. I dunno whether It touched me; I dunno whether It said anything--but I know It made me a new creatur'. I knew then I shouldn't be afraid o' things no more--nor sorry. I found out 't was all right. 'I'm glad I'm alive,' I said. 'I'm thankful!' Seemed to me I'd been dead for the last twenty year. I'd come alive.

"An' so I set there an' held my breath, for fear 'twould go. I dunno how long, but the moon riz up over my left shoulder, an' the sky begun to fade. An' then it come over me 't was goin'. I knew 't was terrible tender of me, an' sorry, an' lovin', an' so I says, 'Don't you mind; I won't forgit!' An' then It went. But that broke suthin', an' I turned an' see my own shadder on the grass; an' I thought I see another, 'side of it. Somehow that scairt me, an' I jumped up an' whipped it home without lookin' behind me. Now that's my experience," said Hannah Prime, looking her neighbors again in the face, with dauntless eyes. "I dunno what 't was, but it's goin' to last. I ain't afraid no more, an' I ain't goin' to be. There ain't nuthin' to worry about. Everything's bigger'n we think." She folded her shawl more closely about her and moved toward the door. There she again turned to her neighbors.

"Good-night!" she said, and was gone.

They sat quite still until the tread of her feet had ceased its beating on the dusty road. Then, by one consent, they rose and moved slowly out. There was no prayer that night, and "Lord dismiss us" was not sung.

HONEY AND MYRRH

The neighborhood, the township, and the world had been snowed in. Snow drifted the road in hills and hollows, and hung in little eddying wreaths, where the wind took it, on the pasture slopes. It made solid banks in the dooryards, and buried the stone walls out of sight. The lacework of its fantasy became daintily apparent in the conceits with which it broidered over all the common objects familiar in homely lives. The pump, in yards where that had supplanted the old-fashioned curb, wore a heavy mob-cap. The vane on the barn was delicately sifted over, and the top of every picket in the high front-yard fence had a fluffy peak. But it was chiefly in the woods that the rapture and flavor of the time ran riot in making beauty. There every fir branch swayed under a tuft of white, and the brown refuse of the year was all hidden away.

That morning, no one in Tiverton Hollow had gone out of the house, save to shovel paths, and do the necessary chores. The road lay untouched until ten o'clock, when a selectman gave notice that it was an occasion for "breakin' out," by starting with his team, and gathering oxen by the way until a conquering procession ground through the drifts, the men shoveling at intervals where the snow lay deepest, the oxen walking swayingly, head to the earth, and the faint wreath of their breath ascending and cooling on the air. It was "high times" in Tiverton Hollow when a road needed opening; some idea of the old primitive way of battling with the untouched forces of nature roused the people to an exhilaration dashed by no uncertainty of victory.

By afternoon, the excitement had quieted. The men had come in, reddened by cold, and eaten their noon dinner in high spirits, retailing to the less fortunate women-folk the stories swapped on the march. Then, as one man, they succumbed to the drowsiness induced by a morning of wind in the face, and sat by the stove under some pretense of reading the county paper, but really to nod and doze, waking only to put another stick of wood on the fire. So passed all the day before Christmas, and in the evening the shining lamps were lighted (each with a strip of red flannel in the oil, to give color), and the neighborhood rested in the tranquil certainty that something had really come to pass, and that their communication with the world was reëstablished.

Susan Peavey sat by the fire, knitting on a red mitten, and the young schoolmaster presided over the other hearth corner, reading very hard, at intervals, and again sinking into a drowsy study of the flames. There was an impression abroad in Tiverton that the schoolmaster was going to be somebody, some time. He wrote for the papers. He was always receiving through the mail envelopes marked "author's proofs," which, the postmistress said, indicated that he was an author, whatever proofs might be. She had an idea they might have something to do with photographs; perhaps his picture was going into a book. It was very well understood that teaching school at the Hollow, at seven dollars a week, was an interlude in the life of one who would some day write a spelling-book, or exercise senatorial rights at Washington. He was a long-legged, pleasant looking youth, with a pale cheek, dark eyes, and thick black hair, one lock of which, hanging low over his forehead, he twisted while he read. He kept glancing up at Miss Susan and smiling at her, whenever he could look away from his book and the fire, and she smiled back. At last, after many such wordless messages, he spoke.

"What lots of red mittens you do knit! Do you send them all away to that society?"

Miss Susan's needles clicked.

"Every one," said she.

She was a tall, large woman, well-knit, with no superfluous flesh. Her head was finely set, and she carried it with a simple unconsciousness better than dignity. Everybody in Tiverton thought it had been a great cross to Susan Peavey to be so overgrown. They conceded that it was a mystery she had not turned out "gormin'." But that was because Susan had left her vanity behind with early youth, in the days when, all legs and arms, she had given up the idea of beauty. Her face was strong-featured, overspread by a healthy color, and her eyes looked frankly out, as if assured of finding a very pleasant world. The sick always delighted in Susan's nearness; her magnificent health and presence were like a supporting tide, and she seemed to carry outdoor air in her very garments. The schoolmaster still watched her. She rested and fascinated him at once by her strength and homely charm.

"I shall call you the Orphans' Friend," said he.

She laid down her work.

"Don't you say one word," she answered, with an air of abject confession. "It don't interest me a mite! I give because it's my bounden duty, but I'll be whipped if I want to knit warm mittens all my life, an' fill poor barrels. Sometimes I wisht I could git a chance to provide folks with what they don't need ruther'n what they do."

"I don't see what you mean," said the schoolmaster. "Tell me."

Miss Susan was looking at the hearth. A warmer flush than that of firelight alone lay on her cheek. She bent forward and threw on a pine knot. It blazed richly. Then she drew the cricket more securely under her feet, and settled herself to gossip.

"Anybody'd think I'd most talked myself out sence you come here to board," said she, "but you're the beatemest for tolin' anybody on. I never knew I had so much to say. But there! I guess we all have, if there's anybody 't wants to listen. I never've said this to a livin' soul, an' I guess it's sort o' heathenish to think, but I'm tired to death o' fightin' ag'inst poverty, poverty! I s'pose it's there, fast enough, though we're all so well on 't we don't realize it; an' I'm goin' to do my part, an' be glad to, while I'm above ground. But I guess heaven'll be a spot where we don't give folks what they need, but what they don't."

"There is something in your Bible," began the schoolmaster hesitatingly, "about a box of precious ointment." He always said "your Bible," as if church members held a proprietary right.

"That's it!" replied Miss Susan, brightening. "That's what I al'ays thought. Spill it all out, I say, an' make the world smell as sweet as honey. My! but I do have great projicks settin' here by the fire alone! Great projicks!"

"Tell me some!

"Well, I dunno's I can, all of a piece, so to speak; but when it gits along towards eight o'clock, an' the room's all simmerin', an' the moon lays out on the snow, it does seem as if we made a pretty poor spec' out o' life. We don't seem to have no color in it. Why, don't you remember 'Solomon in all his glory'? I guess 't wouldn't ha' been put in jest that way if there wa'n't somethin' in it. I s'pose he had crowns an' rings an' purple velvet coats an' brocade satin weskits, an' all manner o' things. Sometimes seems as I could see him walkin' straight in through that door there." She was running a knitting needle back and forth through her ball of yarn as she spoke, without noticing that some one had been stamping the snow from his feet on the doorstone outside. The door, after making some bluster of refusal, was pushed open, and on the heels of her speech a man walked in.

"My land!" cried Miss Susan, aghast. Then she and the schoolmaster, by one accord, began to laugh.

But the man did not look at them until he had scrupulously wiped his feet on the husk mat, and stamped them anew. Then he turned down the legs of his trousers, and carefully examined the lank green carpet-bag he had been carrying.

"I guess I trailed it through some o' the drifts," he remarked. "The road's pretty narrer, this season o' the year."

"You give us a real start," said Susan. "We thought be sure 'twas Solomon, an' mebbe the Queen o' Sheba follerin' arter. Why, Solon Slade, you ain't walked way over to Tiverton Street!"

"Yes, I have," asserted Solon. He was a slender, sad-colored man, possibly of her own age, and he spoke in a very soft voice. He was Susan's widowed brother-in-law, and the neighbors said he was clever, but hadn't no more spunk 'n a wet rag.

Susan had risen and laid down her knitting. She approached the table and rested one hand on it, a hawk-like brightness in her eyes.

"What you got in that bag?" asked she.

Solon was enjoying his certainty that he held the key to the situation.

"I got a mite o' cheese," he answered, approaching the fire and spreading his hands to the blaze.

"You got anything else? Now, Solon, don't you keep me here on tenter-hooks! You got a letter?"

"Well," said Solon, "I thought I might as well look into the post-office an' see."

"You thought so! You went a-purpose! An' you walked because you al'ays was half shackled about takin' horses out in bad goin'. You hand me over that letter!"

Solon approached the table, a furtive twinkle in his blue eyes. He lifted the bag and opened it slowly. First, he took out a wedge-shaped package.

"That's the cheese," said he. "Herb."

"My land!" ejaculated Miss Susan, while the schoolmaster looked on and smiled. "You better ha' come to me for cheese. I've got a plenty, tansy an' sage, an' you know it. I see it! There! you gi' me holt on 't!" It was a fugitive white gleam in the bottom of the bag; she pounced upon it and brought up a letter. Midway in the act of tearing it open, she paused and looked at Solon with droll entreaty. "It's your letter, by rights!" she added tentatively.

"Law!" said he, "I dunno who it's directed to, but I guess it's as much your'n as anybody's."

Miss Susan spread open the sheets with an air of breathless delight. She bent nearer the lamp. "'Dear father and auntie,'" she began.

"There!" remarked Solon, in quiet satisfaction, still warming his hands at the blaze. "There! you see _'tis_ to both."

"My! how she does run the words together! Here!" Miss Susan passed it to the schoolmaster. "You read it. It's from Jenny. You know she's away to school, an' we didn't think best for her to come home Christmas. I knew she'd write for Christmas. Solon, I told you so!"

The schoolmaster took the letter, and read it aloud. It was a simple little message, full of contentment and love and a girl's new delight in life. When he had finished, the two older people busied themselves a moment without speaking, Solon in picking up a chip from the hearth, and Susan in mechanically smoothing the mammoth roses on the side of the carpetbag.

"Well, I 'most wish we'd had her come home," said he at last, clearing his throat.

"No, you don't either," answered Miss Susan promptly. "Not with this snow, an' comin' out of a house where it's het up, into cold beds an' all. Now I'm goin' to git you a mite o' pie an' some hot tea."

She set forth a prodigal supper on a leaf of the table, and Solon silently worked his will upon it, the schoolmaster eating a bit for company. Then Solon took his way home to the house across the yard, and she watched at the window till she saw the light blaze up through his panes. That accomplished, she turned back with a long breath and began clearing up.

"I'm worried to death to have him over there all by himself," said she. "S'pose he should be sick in the night!"

"You'd got over," answered the schoolmaster easily.

"Well, s'pose he couldn't git me no word?"

"Oh, you'd know it! You 're that sort."

Miss Susan laughed softly, and so seemed to put away her recurrent anxiety. She came back to her knitting.

"How long has his wife been dead?" asked the schoolmaster.

"Two year. He an' Jenny got along real well together, but sence September, when she went away, I guess he's found it pretty dull pickin'. I do all I can, but land! 't ain't like havin' a woman in the house from sunrise to set."

"There's nothing like that," agreed the wise young schoolmaster. "Now let's play some more. Let's plan what we'd like to do to-morrow for all the folks we know, and let's not give them a thing they need, but just the ones they'd like."

Miss Susan put down her knitting again. She never could talk to the schoolmaster and keep at work. It made her dreamy, exactly as it did to sit in the hot summer sunshine, with the droning of bees in the air.