If I do not die in harness, if, as I often dream of doing, I turn my practice over to some younger man--perhaps to Robin, who shows some signs of following in his father"s steps--I shall write the story of my native town; not in the old way, embellished, as b.u.t.ters would have termed it, with family photographs of the leading citizens and their houses and cow-sheds, and their wooden churches, and their corner stores with the clerks and pumpkins in array before them--not in that old, time-honored, country manner, but in the way it comes to me as I look backward and think of the heroes and heroines and the clowns and villains I have known. I shall need something to keep me from "jawing and meddling around the town"; why not white paper and a good stub pen, while I smoke and muse of my former usefulness. I suppose I shall never write the chronicle; Johnny Keats could, if he would; and I would, if I could--thus the matter rests, while the town and its tales and I myself grow old together. Even Johnny Keats, who was a boy when Let.i.tia taught in the red brick school-house, has a thin spot in his hair.
Had Dove but lived--it is idle, I know, to say what might have been, had our Gra.s.sy Fordshire been the same sweet place it was, before she went like other white birds--"southward," she said, "but only for a winter, Bertram--surely spring comes again."
This I do know: that I should have had far less to tell of Let.i.tia Primrose, who might have gone on mooning of a better world had Dove not gone to one, leaving no theories but a son and husband to Let.i.tia"s care. It was not to the oracle that she intrusted us, but to the woman--not to the new Let.i.tia but to the old, who had come back to us in those vigils at my wife"s bedside.
"This is not sin, Let.i.tia," Dove said to her.
"Oh, my dear!" replied Let.i.tia. "You must not dream that I could call it so."
"Still," Dove answered, "if I had your mind, perhaps--"
"Hush, dear love," Let.i.tia whispered. "My sweet, my sweet--oh, if I had your soul!"
From such chastening moments Let.i.tia Primrose was the mother she might have been. A tenderer, humbler heart, save only Dove"s, I never knew, nor a gentler voice, nor a stronger hand, than those she gave us, man and boy bereft--not only in those first blank days, but through the years that followed. So easily that I marvelled did the school-mistress become the home-keeper, nor can I look upon a spinster now, however whimsical, that I do not think of her as the elder sister of that wife and mother in her soul.
A new dream possessed Let.i.tia: it was to be like Dove. She could never be youthful save in spirit; she could never be lovely with that subtle poise and grace which cannot be feigned or purchased at any price, neither with gold nor patience nor purest prayer nor any precious thing whatever, but comes only as a gift to the true young mother at her cradle-side. She could not be one-half so perfect, she confessed humbly to herself, but she could keep the fire blazing on a lonely hearth, where a man sat silent with his child.
My girl"s housewifeliness had seemed a simple matter when Let.i.tia"s mind was on her school and sky; it was now a marvel as she learned what Dove had done--those thousand little things, and all so easily, so placidly, that at the day"s f.a.g-end Let.i.tia, weary with unaccustomed cares, wondered what secret system of philosophy Dove"s had been. What were the rules and their exceptions? What were the formulae? Here were sums to do, old as the hills, but strange, new answers! There must be a grammar for all that fluency, that daily smoothness in every clause and phrase--a kind of eloquence, as Let.i.tia saw it now, marvelling at it as Dove had marvelled at her own. When she had solved it, as she thought, the steak went wrong, or the pudding failed her, or the laundry came home torn or incomplete, moths perhaps got into closets, ants stormed the pantry, or a pipe got stopped; and then, discomfited, she would have Dove"s magic and good-humored mastery to seek again.
She had kept house once herself, it is true, but years ago, for her simple father, and not in Dove"s larger way. The Primrose household as she saw it now had been a meagre one, for here in the years of Dove"s gentle rule, a wondrous domestic ritual had been established, which it was now her duty to perform. That she did it faithfully, so that the windows shone and the curtains hung like snowy veils behind them, so that the searching light of day disclosed no film upon the walnut, who could doubt, knowing that conscience and its history? She kept our linen neatly st.i.tched; she set the table as Dove had set it; she poured out tea for us more primly, to be sure, but cheerfully as Dove had poured it, smiling upon us from Dove"s chair.
Robin grew straight of limb and wholesome of soul as Dove had dreamed.
Let.i.tia helped him with his lessons, told him the legends of King Arthur"s court, and read with him those _Tales of a Grandfather_, which I had loved as just such another romping boy--though not so handsome and debonair as Dove"s son was, for he had her eyes and her milder, her more poetic face, and was more patrician in his bearing; he is like his mother to this day. His temper, which is not maternal, I confess--those sudden gusts when, as I before him, he chafed in bonds and cried out bitter things, rose hotly sometimes at Let.i.tia"s discipline, though he loved her doubly now.
"You are not my mother!" he would shout, clinching his fists. "You are not my mother!"
Then her heart would fail her, for she loved him fondly, even in his rage, and her penalty would be mild indeed. Often she blamed herself for his petty waywardness, and feeling her slackening hand he would take the bit between his teeth, coltlike; but he was a good lad, Robin was, and, like his mother, tender-hearted, for all his spirit, and as quick to be sorry as to be wrong. When they had made it up, crying in each other"s arms, Let.i.tia would say to him:
"I"m not your mother, but I love you, and I"ve got no other little boy."
It was thus Let.i.tia kept our home for us, tranquil and spotless as of old; and if at first I chose more often than was kind to sit rather among my bottles and my books and instruments, leaving her Robin and the evening-lamp, it was through no fault or negligence of hers I did it, for, however bright my hearth might glow, however tended by her gentle hands, its flame was but the ruddy symbol to me of a past whose spirit never could return.
"Who _is_ Miss Primrose?" strangers in Gra.s.sy Ford would ask.
"She"s a sort of relative," the reply would be, "and the doctor"s house-keeper."
For the woman who keeps still sacred and beautiful another woman"s home, in all the language, in all our wordiness, there is no other name.
II
JOHNNY KEATS
The one we call Johnny Keats is well enough known as Karl St. John. He was a Gra.s.sy Fordshire boy and Let.i.tia"s pupil, as I have said, till he left us, only to like us better, as he once told me, by seeing the world beyond our hills. He went gladly, I should say, judged by the shining in his eyes. He was a homely, slender, quiet lad, except when roused, when he was vehement and obstinate enough, and somewhat given, I am told, to rhapsody and moonshine. He read much rather than studied as a school-boy, and was seen a good deal on Sun Dial and along Troublesome where he never was known to fish, but wandered aimlessly, wasting, it was said, a deal of precious time which might have been bettered in his father"s shop. Let.i.tia liked him for a certain brightness in his face when she talked of books, or of other things outside the lessons; otherwise he was not what is termed in Gra.s.sy Ford a remarkable boy. We have lads who "speak pieces" and "accept," as we say it, "lucrative"
positions in our stores.
Karl drifted off when barely twenty, and as time went by was half forgotten by the town, when suddenly the news came home to us that he had written, and what is sometimes considered more, had published, and with his own name on the t.i.tle-page, a novel!--_Sleepington Fair_, the thing was called. There are those who say Sleepington Fair means Gra.s.sy Ford, and that the river which the hero loved, and where he rescued a maid named Hilda from an April flood, is really our own little winding Troublesome, widened and deepened to permit the wellnigh tragic ending of the tale. You can wade Troublesome; Hilda went in neck-deep. They say also that the man McBride, who talks so much, is our old friend Colonel Shears; the fanciful McBride is tall in fact, and the actual Shears is tall in fancy. Be that as it may, the book was excellent, considering that it was written by a Gra.s.sy Fordshire boy, and it set at least two others of our lads, and a lady, I believe, to scribbling--further deponent sayeth not.
_Sleepington Fair_ was read by the ladies of the Longfellow Circle, our leading literary club. Our Mrs. Buhl, acknowledged by all but envious persons to be the most cultured woman in Gra.s.sy Ford, p.r.o.nounced it safely "one of the most pleasing and promising novels of the past decade," and, in concluding her critical review before the club, she said, smilingly: "From Mr. St. John--_our_ Mr. St. John, for let me call him so, since surely he is ours to claim--from our Mr. St. John we may expect much, and I feel that I am only voicing the sentiments of the Longfellow Circle when I wish for him every blessing of happiness and health, that his facile pen may through the years to come trace only what is pure and n.o.ble, and that when, as they will, the shadows lengthen, and his sun descends in the glowing west, he may say with the poet--"
What the poet said I have forgotten, but the words of Mrs. Buhl brought tears to the eyes of many of her auditors, who, at the meeting"s close, pressed about her with out-stretched hands, a.s.suring her that she had quite outdone herself and that never in their lives had they heard anything more scholarly, anything more thoughtfully thought or more touchingly said. Would she not publish it, she was asked, pleadingly?
No? It was declared a pity. It was a shame, they said, that she had never written a book herself, she who could write so charmingly of another"s.
"Ladies! Ladies!" murmured Mrs. Buhl, much affected by this ovation, but her modest protest was drowned utterly in a chorus of--
"Yes, indeed!"
_Sleepington Fair_ aroused much speculation as to its author"s rise in the outer world, chiefly with reference to the money he must be making, the sum being variously estimated at from five to twenty-five thousand a year.
"Too low," said Shears. "Suppose he makes half a dollar on every book, and suppose he sells--well, say he sells one hundred thousand--"
"One hundred thousand!" cried Caleb Kane. "Go wan!"
"Why, darn your skin," said Colonel Shears, "why not? _The Old Red Barn_ sold _five_ hundred thousand, and only out two years. Saw it myself in the paper, the other day."
"No!"
"I say _yes_! Five hundred thousand, by cracky!"
"Oh, well," said Caleb, "that thing was written by a different cuss."
When it was learned one morning that Karl had returned under cover of night for a visit to Gra.s.sy Ford, those who had known the boy looked curiously to see what manner of man he had become. And, lo! he was scarcely a man at all, but a beardless youth, no laurel upon his head, no tragic shadow on his brow!--a shy figure flitting down the long main street, darting into stores and out again, and nodding quickly, and hurrying home again as fast as his legs would take him--to dodge a caller even there and wander, thankful for escape, on the banks of Troublesome.
"Well, you "ain"t changed much," said Colonel Shears, when he met the author.
"No," said Karl.
"Look just as peaked as ever," was the cheerful greeting of Caleb Kane.
"Yes," said Karl.
"Don"t seem a day older," said Grandma Smith.
"No?" said Karl.
"Why, Karl," said Shears, "I thought you"d change; thought you"d look different, somehow! Yes, sir, I thought you"d look different--but, I swan, you don"t!"
"No," said Karl, and there was such honest chagrin in the faces of those old-time friends, he was discomfited. What had they expected, he asked at home?
"Why," said his mother, "don"t you know? Can"t you guess, my dear? They looked at least for a Prince-Albert and a stove-pipe hat."
"Silk hat! Prince-Albert!"
"Why, yes," said his father. "The outward and visible sign of the soul within."