"He hasn"t eaten any supper," thought she; and she listened intently to hear him come in again. The clock struck ten, he had not returned! Draxy went to bed, but she could not sleep. The little house was still; the warm white moonlight lay like summer snow all over it; Draxy looked out of her window; the Elder was slowly coming up the hill; Draxy knelt down like a little child and said, "G.o.d bless him," and crept back to bed. When she heard him shut his bedroom door she went to sleep.
The next day Draxy"s eyes did not look as they had looked the day before.
When Elder Kinney first saw her, she was coming down stairs. He was standing at the foot of the staircase and waited to say "Good morning."
As he looked up at her, he started back and exclaimed: "Why, Draxy, what"s the matter?"
"Nothing is the matter, sir," said Draxy, as she stepped from the last stair, and standing close in front of him, lifted the new, sweet, softened eyes up to his. Draxy was as simple and sincere in this as in all other emotions and acts of her life. She had no coquetry in her nature. She had no distinct thought either of a new relation between herself and the Elder. She simply felt a new oneness with him; and she could not have understood the suggestion of concealment. If Elder Kinney had been a man of the world, he would have folded Draxy to his heart that instant. If he had been even a shade less humble and self-disrustful, he would have done it, as it was. But he never dreamed that he might. He folded his empty arms very tight over his faithful, aching, foolish heart, and tried to say calmly and naturally, "Are you sure? Seems to me you don"t look quite well."
But after that morning he never felt wholly without hope. He could not tell precisely why. Draxy did not seek him, did not avoid him. She was perhaps a little less merry; said fewer words; but she looked glad, and more than glad. "I think it"s the eyes," he said to himself again and again, as he tried to a.n.a.lyze the new look on Draxy"s face which gave him hope. These were sweet days. There are subtle joys for lovers who dwell side by side in one house, together and yet apart. The very air is loaded with significance to them--the door, the window, the stairway. Always there is hope of meeting; always there is consciousness of presence; everywhere a mysterious sense that the loved one has pa.s.sed by. More than once Seth Kinney knelt and laid his cheek on the stairs which Draxy"s feet had just ascended! Often sweet, guileless Draxy thought, as she went up and down, "Ah, the dear feet that go over these stairs." One day the Elder, as he pa.s.sed by the wall of the room where he knew Draxy was sitting, brushed his great hand and arm against it so heavily that she started, thinking he had stumbled. But as the firm step went on, without pausing, she smiled, she hardly knew why. The next time he did it she laid down her work, locked and unlocked her hands, and looking toward the door, whispered under her breath, "Dear hands!" Finally this became almost a habit of his; he did not at first think Draxy would hear it; but he felt, as he afterwards told her, "like a great affectionate dog going by her door, and that was all he could do. He would have liked to lie down on the rug."
These were very sweet days; spite of his misgivings, Elder Kinney was happy; and Draxy, in spite of her unconsciousness, seemed to herself to be living in a blissful dream. But a sweeter day came.
One Sat.u.r.day evening Reuben said to Draxy,--
"Daughter, I"ve done somethin" I"m afraid"ll trouble you. I"ve told th"
Elder about your verses, an" showed him the hymn you wrote when you was tryin" to give it all up about the land."
"Oh, father, how could you," gasped Draxy; and she looked as if she would cry.
Reuben could not tell just how it happened. It seemed to have come out before he knew it, and after it had, he could not help showing the hymn.
Draxy was very seriously disturbed; but she tried to conceal it from her father, and the subject was dropped.
The next morning Elder Kinney preached--it seemed to his people--as he never preached before. His subject was self-renunciation, and he spoke as one who saw the waving palms of the martyrs and heard their shouts of joy.
There were few dry eyes in the little meeting-house. Tears rolled down Draxy"s face. But she looked up suddenly, on hearing Elder Kinney say, in an unsteady voice,--
"My bretherin, I"m goin" to read to you now a hymn which comes nigher to expressin" my idea of the kind of resignation G.o.d likes than any hymn that"s ever been written or printed in any hymn-book;" and then he began:--
"I cannot think but G.o.d must know," etc.
Draxy"s first feeling was one of resentment; but it was a very short-lived one. The earnest tone, the solemn stillness of the wondering people, the peaceful summer air floating in at the open windows,--all lifted her out of herself, and made her glad to hear her own hymn read by the man she loved, for the worship of G.o.d. But her surprise was still greater when the choir began to sing the lines to a quaint old Methodist tune. They had been provided with written copies of the hymn, and had practiced it so faithfully that they sang it well. Draxy broke down and sobbed for a few moments, so that Elder Kinney was on the point of forgetting everything, and springing to her side. He had not supposed that anything in the world could so overthrow Draxy"s composure. He did not know how much less strong her nerves were now than they had been two months before.
After church, Draxy walked home alone very rapidly. She did not wish to see any one. She was glad that her father and mother had not been there.
She could not understand the tumult of her feelings.
At twilight, she stole out of the back door of the house, and walked down to a little brook which ran near by. As she stood leaning against a young maple tree she heard steps, and without looking up, knew that the Elder was coming. She did not move nor speak. He waited some minutes in silence.
Then he said "Oh, Draxy! I never once thought o" painin" you! I thought you"d like it. Hymns are made to be sung, dear; and that one o" yours is so beautiful!" He spoke as gently as her father might, and in a voice she hardly knew. Draxy made no reply. The Elder had never seen her like this.
Her lips quivered, and he saw tears in her eyes.
"Oh, Draxy, do look up at me--just once! You don"t know how hard it is for a man to think he"s hurt anybody--like you!" stammered the poor Elder, ending his sentence quite differently from what he had intended.
Draxy smiled through her tears, and looking up, said: "But I am not hurt, Mr. Kinney; I don"t know what I am crying for, sir;" and her eyes fell again.
The Elder looked down upon her in silence. Moments pa.s.sed. "Oh, if I could make her look up at me again!" he thought. His unspoken wish stirred her veins; slowly she lifted her eyes; they were calm now, and unutterably loving. They were more than the Elder could bear."
"Oh, Draxy, Draxy!" exclaimed he, stretching out both his arms towards her.
"My heart grows weaker and more weak With looking on the thing so dear Which lies so far, and yet so near!"
Slowly, very slowly, like a little child learning to walk, with her eyes full of tears, but her mouth smiling, Draxy moved towards the Elder. He did not stir, partly because he could not, but partly because he would not lose one instant of the deliciousness of seeing her, feeling her come.
When they went back to the house, Reuben was sitting in the porch. The Elder took his hand and said:
"Mr. Miller, I meant to have asked you first; but G.o.d didn"t give me time."
Reuben smiled.
"You"ve"s good"s asked me a good while back, Elder; an" I take it you haint ever had much doubt what my answer"d be." Then, as Draxy knelt down by his chair and laid her head on his shoulder, he added more solemnly,--
"But I"d jest like once to say to ye, Elder, that if ever I get to heaven, I wouldn"t ask anythin" more o" the Lord than to let me see Draxy "n" you a comin" in together, an" lookin" as you looked jest now when ye come in"t that gate!"
The Elder"s Wife.
Sequel to "Draxy Miller"s Dowry."
Part I.
Draxy and the Elder were married in the little village church, on the first Sunday in September.
"O Draxy! let it be on a communion Sunday," the Elder had said, with an expression on his face which Draxy could not quite fathom; "I can"t tell you what it "ud be to me to promise myself over again to the blessed Saviour, the same hour I promise to you, darling, I"m so afraid of loving Him less. I don"t see how I can remember anything about heaven, after I"ve got you, Draxy," and tears stood in the Elder"s eyes.
Draxy looked at him wonderingly and with a little pain in her face. To her serene nature, heaven and earth, this life and all the others which may follow it, had so long seemed one--love and happiness and duty had become so blended in one sweet atmosphere of living in daily nearness to G.o.d, that she could not comprehend the Elder"s words.
"Why, Mr. Kinney, it"s all Christ," she said, slowly and hesitatingly, slipping her hand into his, and looking up at him so lovingly that his face flushed, and he threw his arms around her, and only felt a thousand times more that heaven had come to mean but one thing to him.
"Darling," he whispered, "would you feel so if I were to die and leave you alone?"
"Yes, I think so," said Draxy, still more slowly, and turning very pale.
"You never can really leave me, and no human being can be really alone; it would still be all Christ, and it would be living His life and G.o.d"s still;" but tears rolled down her cheeks, and she began to sob.
"Oh, forgive me, Draxy," exclaimed the Elder, wrung to the heart by the sight of her grief. "I"m nothing but a great brute to say that to you just now; but, Draxy, you don"t know much about a man"s heart yet; you"re such a saint yourself, you can"t understand how it makes a man feel as if this earth was enough, and he didn"t want any heaven, when he loves a woman as I love you," and the Elder threw himself on the ground at Draxy"s feet, and laid his face down reverently on the hem of her gown. There were fiery depths in this man"s nature of which he had never dreamed, until this fair, sweet, strong womanhood crossed his path. His love of Draxy kindled and transformed his whole consciousness of himself and of life; it was no wonder that he felt terrors; that he asked himself many times a day what had become of the simple-minded, earnest, contented worker he used to be.
He was full of vague and restless yearnings; he longed to do, to be, to become, he knew not what, but something that should be more of kin to this beautiful nature he worshipped--something that should give her great joy--something in which she could feel great pride.
"It ain"t right, I know it ain"t right, to feel so about any mortal," he would say to himself; "that"s the way I used to feel about Jesus. I wanted to do all for Him, and now I want to do all for Draxy," and the great, tender, perplexed heart was sorely afraid of its new bliss.
They were sitting in the maple grove behind the house. In the tree under which they sat was a yellow-hammer"s nest. The two birds had been fluttering back and forth in the branches for some time. Suddenly they both spread their wings and flew swiftly away in opposite directions.
Draxy looked up, smiling through her tears, and, pointing to the fast fading specks in the distant air, said,--
"It would be like that. They are both sent on errands. They won"t see each other again till the errands are done."
The Elder looked into her illumined face, and, sighing, said: "I can"t help prayin" that the Lord"ll have errands for us that we can do together as long"s we live, Draxy."
"Yes, dear," said Draxy, "I pray for that too," and then they were silent for some minutes. Draxy spoke first. "But Mr. Kinney, I never heard of anybody"s being married on Sunday--did you?"