"No." replied Reuben, feebly. He, too, was prostrated like Ike by the fearful blow, and looked years older within the hour. "No: Draxy knows what"s best for her. She"s spoke to me once through the door. She hasn"t fainted."
"When the doctor came, Reuben called to Draxy,--
"Daughter, the doctor"s come."
The door opened instantly, but closed as soon as the doctor had entered.
In a few moments it opened again, and the doctor handed a slip of paper to Reuben. He unfolded it and read it aloud:--
"Father dear, please thank all the people for me, and ask them to go home now. There is nothing they can do. Tell them it grieves me to hear them cry, and Mr. Kinney would not wish it."
Slowly and reluctantly the people went, and a silence sadder than the sobs and grieving voices settled down on the house. Reuben sat on the stairs, his head leaning against the study-door. Presently he heard a light step coming down. It was young Mrs. Plummer, the mother of Benjy. She whispered, "I"ve found Reuby. He"s asleep on the garret floor. He"d thrown himself down on some old carpet, way out in the darkest corner, under the eaves. I"ve covered him up, an" I"m goin" to sit by him till he wakes up. The longer he sleeps the better. You tell her where he is."
Reuben nodded; his dulled senses hardly heard the words. When the study-door next opened, Draxy herself came out, walking with a slow, measured step which transformed her whole bearing. Her face was perfectly calm, but colorless as white stone. At sight of her father her lips quivered, and she stretched out both hands to him; but she only said, "Where is Reuby?" And as soon as she heard she went quickly up the stairs, adding, "Do not follow me, father dear; you cannot help me."
Mrs. Plummer sat in the dark garret, leaning her head against the dusty rafters, as near as she could get to poor little Reuby. Her eyes were shut, and tears stood on her cheeks. Suddenly she was startled by Draxy"s low voice, saying,--
"Thank you very much, Mrs. Plummer; it was very kind in you to stay here and not wake him up. I will sit by him now."
Mrs. Plummer poured forth incoherent words of sympathy and sorrow, but Draxy hardly seemed to hear her. She stood quietly, making no reply, waiting for her to go.
"O Mis" Kinney, Mis" Kinney, do cry a little, can"t ye?" exclaimed the warm-hearted woman; "it scares us to death to see ye this way."
Draxy smiled. "No, my dear friend. I cannot cry now. I suppose I shall sometimes, because I am very selfish, and I shall be so lonely; but just now I am only thinking how happy he is in these first hours in heaven."
The tears stood in her eyes, but her look was as of one who gazed rapturously inside the pearly gates. Mrs. Plummer stole softly away, overawed and afraid. As she went out of the house, she said to Reuben: "Mis" Kinney ain"t no mortal woman. She hain"t shed a tear yet, and she jest looks as glorified as the Elder can this minute in sight o" G.o.d"s very throne itself. O Mr. Miller, I"m afraid she"ll break down. This kind o" grief is what kills folks."
"No," said Reuben, "you don"t know Draxy. She won"t break down. She"ll take care on us all jest the same, but ye won"t never see again the same face you used to see. Oh, I can"t be reconciled, I can"t!" And Reuben groaned aloud.
The next morning, when Draxy came out of the study, her hair was white as snow. As her father first caught sight of her, he stared wildly for a moment as at some stranger; then crying out, "O Draxy! O my little girl!"
he tottered and would have fallen if she had not caught him and led him to a chair.
"O father dear," she exclaimed, "don"t feel so! I wouldn"t call him back this minute if I could," and she smiled piteously.
"O Draxy--"tain"t that," gasped Reuben. "O daughter! you"re dyin" and never lettin" us know it. Your hair"s as white"s mine." Draxy gave a startled glance at the mirror, and said, in a much more natural tone than she had hitherto spoken in: "I don"t think that"s strange. It"s happened before to people in great trouble. I"ve read of it: you"ll get used to it very soon, father dear. I"m glad of it; I"ll be all in white now," she added in a lower tone, speaking dreamily, as if to herself,--"they walk in white; they walk in white."
Then Reuben noticed that she was dressed in white. He touched her gown, and looked inquiringly. "Yes, father dear," she said, "always."
On the day of the funeral, when Draxy entered the church leading little Reuby by the hand, a visible shudder ran through the congregation. The news had run like wildfire through the parish, on the morning after the Elder"s death, that Mrs. Kinney"s hair had all turned gray in the night.
But n.o.body was in the least prepared for the effect. It was not gray--it was silver-white; and as it retained all the silken gloss which had made it so beautiful the shining of it was marvelous. It kindled her beauty into something superhuman. The color had left her cheeks also, but in its place was a clear soft tint which had no pallor in it. She was dressed in pure white, so also was little Reuby; but for this the parish were prepared. Very well they knew Draxy"s deep-rooted belief that to a.s.sociate gloom with the memory of the dead was disloyal alike to them and to Christ; and so warmly had she imbued most of the people with her sentiment, that the dismal black garb of so-called mourning was rarely seen in the village.
Bareheaded, Draxy and her little son walked from the church to the grave; their faces the calmest, their steps the steadiest there. Reuben and Jane walked behind them, bent over and sobbing, and half the congregation were weeping uncontrollably; but the widowed woman and the fatherless boy walked with uplifted glances, as if they saw angel-forms in the air by their side.
"Tain"t nateral; "tain"t noways nateral; thet woman hain"t got any nateral feelin" in her," said Eben Hill, leaning against a grave-stone, and idly chewing a spray of golden-rod. George Thayer turned upon him like a blazing sword.
"Hev ye got any nateral feelin" yourself, Eben Hill, to say that, standin"
here an" lookin" at that woman"s white hair an" cheeks, "n" only last Sunday she was "s handsome a pictur"s ye ever see, her hair a twinklin" in the sun like a brown beech-tree, an" her cheeks jest like roses? Nateral feelin"s! It"s enough to make the Elder rise up afore ye, to hear ye say sech a thing, Eben Hill; "n" ef "twan"t jest the funeral that "tis, I b"leeve I"d thrash ye right an" left, here"n sight o" yer own mother"s tombstone, ye miserable, sneakin" fool. Ef there was ever a woman that was carryin" a hull town straight into the Lord"s heaven on her own shoulders, it"s Mis" Kinney, an" that blessed boy o" her"n "s goin" to be jest like her. Look at him now, a workin" his poor little mouth an" lookin" up to her and tryin" not to cry."
Poor little Reuby! when the first shovelful of earth fell on the coffin, his child"s heart gave way, and he broke into loud crying, which made the roughest men there hide their eyes. Draxy caught him up in her arms and whispered something which quieted him instantly. Then she set him down, and he stood till the end, looking away from the grave with almost a smile on his face. He told some one, the next day, that he kept saying over to himself all that time: "Beautiful gates of precious stones and angels with harps."--"That"s the city, you know, where my papa has gone. It"s not half so far off as we think; and papa is so happy there, he don"t even miss us, though he can see us every minute. And mamma and I are going there pretty soon; next summer perhaps."
Part II.
For the first few days after the funeral, Draxy seemed to sink; the void was too terrible; only little Reuby"s voice roused her from the apathetic silence in which she would sit by the hour gazing out of the east bay-window on the road down which she had last seen her husband walk. She knew just the spot where he had paused and turned and thrown kisses back to Reuby watching him from the window.
But her nature was too healthy, too full of energy, and her soul too full of love to remain in this frame long. She reproached herself bitterly for the sin of having indulged in it even for a short time.
"I don"t believe my darling can be quite happy even in heaven, while he sees me living this way," she said sternly to herself one morning. Then she put on her bonnet, and went down into the village to carry out a resolution she had been meditating for some days. Very great was the astonishment of house after house that morning, as Draxy walked quietly in, as had been her wont. She proposed to the mothers to send their younger children to her, to be taught half of every day.
"I can teach Reuby better if I have other children too," she said. "I think no child ought to be sent into the district school under ten. The confinement is too much for them. Let me have all the boys and girls between six and eight, and I"ll carry them along with Reuby for the next two or three years at any rate," she said.
The parents were delighted and grateful; but their wonder almost swallowed up all other emotions.
"To think o" her!" they said. "The Elder not three weeks buried, an" she a goin" round, jest as calm "n" sweet"s a baby, a gettin" up a school!"
"She"s too good for this earth, that"s what she is," said Angy Plummer. "I should jest like to know if anybody"d know this village, since she came into "t. Why we ain"t one of us the same we used to be. I know I ain"t. I reckon myself"s jest about eight years old, if I have got three boys. That makes me born the summer before her Reuby, "an that"s jest the time I was born, when my Benjy was seven months old!"
"You"re jest crazy about Mis" Kinney, Angy Plummer," said her mother. "I b"lieve ye"d go through fire for her quicker "n ye would for any yer own flesh an" blood."
Angy went to her mother and kissed the fretful old face very kindly.
"Mother, you can"t say I hain"t been a better daughter to you sence I"ve knowed Mis" Kinney."
"No, I can"t," grumbled the old woman, "that"s a fact; but she"s got a heap o" new fangled notions I don"t believe in."
The school was a triumphant success. From nine until twelve o"clock every forenoon, twelve happy little children had a sort of frolic of learning lessons in the Elder"s sacred study, which was now Draxy"s sitting-room.
Old Ike, who since the Elder"s death had never seemed quite clear of brain, had asked so piteously to come and sit in the room, that Draxy let him do so. He sat in a big chair by the fire-place, and carved whistles and ships and fantastic toys for the children, listening all the time intently to every word which fell from Draxy"s lips. He had transferred to her all the pathetic love he had felt for the Elder; he often followed her at a distance when she went out, and little Reuby he rarely lost sight of, from morning till night. He was too feeble now to do much work, but his presence was a great comfort to Draxy. He seemed a very close link between her and her husband. Hannah, too, sometimes came into the school at recess, to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of the children. She was particularly fond of looking at the blackboard, when there were chalk-marks on it.
"Make a mark on me with your white pencil," she would say, offering her dark cheek to Reuby, who would scrawl hieroglyphics all over it from hair to chin.
Then she would invite the whole troop out into the kitchen to a feast of doughnuts or cookies; very long the recesses sometimes were when the school was watching Hannah fry the fantastic shapes of sweet dough, or taking each a turn at the jagged wheel with which she cut them out.
Reuben also came often to the school-room, and Jane sometimes sat there with her knitting. A strange content had settled on their lives, in spite of the sorrow. They saw Draxy calm; she smiled on them as constantly as ever; and they were very old people, and believed too easily that she was at peace.
But the Lord had more work still for this sweet woman"s hand. This, too, was suddenly set before her. Late one Sat.u.r.day afternoon, as she was returning, surrounded by her escort of laughing children, from the woods, where they had been for May-flowers, old Deacon Plummer overtook her.
"Mis" Kinney, Mis" Kinney," he began several times, but could get no further. He was evidently in great perplexity how to say the thing he wished.
"Mis" Kinney, would you hev--
"Mis" Kinney, me and Deacon Swift"s been a sayin"--
"Mis" Kinney, ain"t you got--"
Draxy smiled outright. She often smiled now, with cordial good cheer, when things pleased her.
"What is it, Deacon? out with it. I can"t possibly tell unless you make it plainer."
Thus encouraged, good Deacon Plummer went on: "Well, Mis" Kinney, it"s jest this: Elder Williams has jest sent word he can"t come an" preach to-morrer, and there ain"t n.o.body anywhere"s round thet we can get; and De"n Swift "n me, we was a thinkin" whether you wouldn"t be willin" some of us should read one o" the Elder"s old sermons. O Mis" Kinney, ye don"t know how we all hanker to hear some o" his blessed words agin."