"Why, Ike, do you really want so much to live with us?"
Ike"s first answer was a look. Then he said, very simply,--
"I"ve laid awake all night, ma"am, tryin" to get bold enough to come and ask ye."
Draxy looked at her husband, and said in a low voice, "You know what I told you just now, Mr. Kinney?"
The Elder saw that Draxy was on Ike"s side.
"Well, well, Ike," he said, "you shall certainly come and try it. Perhaps you won"t like it as well as you think. But don"t say anything about it to any one else till you hear from us. You shall come very soon."
Ike turned to go, but lingered, and finally stammered: "I hope, sir, ye don"t take it that I"m askin" a charity; I make bold to believe I could be worth to ye"s much"s my keepin"; I"m considerable handy "bout a good many things, an" I can do a day"s mowin" yet with any man in the parish, I don"t care who he is. It"s only because--because"--Ike"s voice broke, and it was very nearly with a sob that he added, "because I love ye, sir," and he hurried away. Draxy sprang after him.
"I know that very well, Ike, and so does Mr. Kinney, and you will be a great help to us. You are making us the most valuable wedding present we"ve had yet, Ike," and Draxy held out her hand.
Ike looked at the hand, but he did not touch it.
"Maybe G.o.d"ll let me thank ye yet, ma"am," he said, and was gone.
As he went through the kitchen a sudden misgiving seized him of terror of Hannah.
"Supposin" she sh"d take into her head to be agin me," thought he. "They say the Elder himself"s "fraid on her. I don"t s"pose she"d dare to try to pizen me outright, an" anyhow there"s allers eggs an" potatoes. But I"ll bring her round fust or last;" and, made wary by love, Ike began on the spot to conciliate her, by offering to bring a pail of water from the well.
This small attention went farther than he could have dreamed. When Draxy first told Hannah that Ike was to come and live with them, she said judiciously,--
"It will make your work much easier in many ways, Hannah."
Hannah answered:--
"Yes, missus. He"ll bring all the water I spose, an that alone"s wuth any man"s keep--not that I"ve ever found any fault with the well"s bein" so far off. It"s "s good water"s there is in the world, but it"s powerful heavy."
The arrival of the two cows crowned Hannah"s liking of the plan. If she had a pa.s.sion in life it was for cream and for b.u.t.ter-making, and it had been a sore trial to her in her life as the Elder"s housekeeper, that she must use stinted measures of milk, bought from neighbors. So when poor Ike came in, trembling and nervous, to his first night"s lodging under the Elder"s roof, he found in the kitchen, to his utter surprise, instead of a frowning and dangerous enemy, a warm ally, as friendly in manner and mien as Indian blood would permit.
Thus the little household settled down for the winter: Draxy and the Elder happy, serene, exalted more than they knew, by their perfect love for each other, and their childlike love of G.o.d, blending in one earnest purpose of work for souls; Hannah and Ike anything but serene, and yet happy after their own odd fashions, and held together much more closely than they knew by the common bond of their devotion to the Elder and his wife.
In the other side of the house were also two very thankful and contented hearts. Reuben and Jane were old people now: Reuben"s hair was snowy white, and Jane was sadly bent; but the comfort and peace which had come so late into their lives had still come early enough to make the sunset a bright one. It was a sight to do all hearts good to see the two sitting together on the piazza of the house, in the warm afternoons, and gazing in delight at the eastern mountain ranges turning rose-pink, and then fading through shades of purple to dark gray.
"It"s a good deal like our life, ma," Reuben said sometimes; "our sun"s pretty low--most down, I reckon; it"s all rosy-light, just these days; but we shall have to lie down in the shadow presently; but it"s all beautiful, beautiful."
Jane did not understand him. She never did. But she loved the sound of his voice best when he said the things which were too subtle for her.
The two households lived separately as before. The Elder had proposed their making one family, and Reuben had wistfully seconded it. But Draxy had firmly said "No."
"I shall be able to do more for you, father dear, if we do not. It will not seem so at first, but I know I am right," she said, and it was a rare wisdom in her sweet soul which led to the decision. At first it was very hard for Reuben to bear, but as the months went on he saw that it was best.
Draxy"s loving, thoughtful care of them never relaxed. The excellent woman whom she had secured for their servant went for her orders quite as often to Draxy as to Jane; very few meals were set out for them to which Draxy"s hand had not given the last final touch. She flitted back and forth between the two homes, equally of both the guardian angel; but the line of division and separation was just as distinctly drawn as if they had been under different roofs a mile apart. Two or three times in the week they dined and took tea together, but the habit never was formed of doing this on a special day. When Reuben said, "Couldn"t ye arrange it so"s always to eat your Sunday dinner with us, Draxy?" she replied:
"Sometimes Sunday dinner; sometimes Thursday; sometimes Sat.u.r.day, father dear. If we make it a fixed day, we shall not like it half so well; any of us. We"ll come often enough, you may be sure." And of this, too, Reuben soon saw the wisdom.
"O Draxy, Draxy, my little girl!" he said one day, when, just after breakfast, she ran in, exclaiming,--
"Father dear, we"re coming to take dinner with you and ma to-day. It"s a surprise party, and the chickens have come first; they"re in the kitchen now!"
"O Draxy, Draxy," he exclaimed, "it"s a great deal nicer not to know it beforehand. How could you be so wise, child?"
Draxy put her arms round his neck and did not speak for a moment. Then she said, "I don"t think it is wisdom, dear. Real true love knows by instinct, just as the bee does, which shaped cell will hold most honey. I"m only a honey-maker for my darlings."
Jane looked mystified, but Reuben"s face quivered with pleasure.
"That you are, you blessed child," he said, and as, hearing the Elder"s step in the hall, she flew out of the room, Reuben covered his eyes with his hand.
Happy years leave slender records; but for suffering and sin there would not be history. The winter came, and the spring came, and the summer and the autumn, and no face in the quiet little parsonage looked a shade older for the year that had gone; no incident had taken place which could make a salient point in a story, and not one of the peaceful hearts could believe that a twelvemonth had flown. Elder Kinney"s pathetic fears lest he might love his Saviour less by reason of his new happiness, had melted like frost in early sunlight, in the sweet presence of Draxy"s child-like religion.
"O Draxy!" he said again and again, "seems to me I never half loved all these souls we are working for, before I had you. I don"t see how I could have been so afraid about it before we were married."
"Do I really help you, Mr. Kinney?" Draxy would reply, with a lingering emphasis on the "really," which made her husband draw her closer to him and forget to speak: "It seems very strange to me that I can. I feel so ignorant about souls. It frightens me to answer the smallest question the people ask me. I never do, in any way except to tell them if I have ever felt so myself, and how G.o.d seemed to help me out."
Blessed Draxy! that was the secret of her influence from first to last: the magnetic sympathy of a pure and upright soul, to whose rare strength had been added still rarer simplicity and lovingness. Old and young, men as well as women, came to her with unhesitating confidence. Before her marriage, they had all felt a little reserve with her, partly because she was of finer grain than they, partly because she had, deep down in her soul, a genuine shyness which showed itself only in quiet reticence. But now that she was the Elder"s wife, they felt that she was in a measure theirs. There is a very sweet side, as well as an inconvenient and irritating one, to the old-fashioned rural notion that the parish has almost as much right to the minister"s wife as to the minister. Draxy saw only the sweet side. With all the loyalty and directness which had made her, as a little girl, champion and counselor and comfort to her father, she now set her hand to the work of helping her husband do good to the people whom he called his children.
"If they are yours, they must be mine, too, Mr. Kinney," she would say, with a smile half arch, half solemn. "I hope I shan"t undo on week-days what you do on Sundays."
"What I do on Sundays is more"n half your work too, Draxy," the Elder would make reply; and it was very true. Draxy"s quicker brain and finer sense, and in some ways superior culture, were fast moulding the Elder"s habits of thought and speech to an extent of which she never dreamed.
Reuben"s income was now far in advance of their simple wants, and newspapers, magazines, and new books continually found their way to the parsonage. Draxy had only to mention anything she desired to see, and Reuben forthwith ordered it. So that it insensibly came to pa.s.s that the daily life of the little household was really an intellectual one, and Elder Kinney"s original and vigorous mind expanded fast in the congenial atmosphere. Yet he lost none of his old quaintness and simplicity of phrase, none of his fervor. The people listened to his sermons with wondering interest, and were not slow to ascribe some of the credit of the new unction to Draxy.
"Th" Elder"s getting more"n more like Mis" Kinney every day o" his life,"
they said: "there"s some o" her sayin"s in every sermon he writes.
"And no wonder," would be added by some more enthusiastic worshipper of Draxy"s. "I guess he"s got sense enough to know that she"s got more real book-learnin" in her head than he has, twice over. I shouldn"t wonder if she got to writin" some of his sermons for him out"n out, before long."
Dear Draxy"s reverent wifehood would have been grieved and dismayed if she had known that her efforts to second her husband"s appeals to his people were sometimes so eloquent as to make the Elder"s words forgotten. But she never dreamed of such a thing; she was too simple hearted and humble.
In the early days of the second winter came the Angel of the Annunciation, bearing a white lily to Draxy. Her joy and grat.i.tude were unspeakable, and the exquisite purity and elevation of her nature shone out transcendent in the new experience.
"Now I begin to feel surer that G.o.d really trusts me," she said, "since he is going to let me have a child of my own."
"O my dear friends!" she exclaimed more than once to mothers, "I never dreamed how happy you were. I thought I knew, but I did not."
Draxy"s spontaneous and unreserved joy of motherhood, while yet her babe was unborn, was a novel and startling thing to the women among whom she lived. The false notions on this point, grown out of ignorant and base thoughts, are too wide-spread, too firm-rooted, to be overthrown in an hour or a day, even by the presence of angelic truth incarnate. Some of Draxy"s best friends were annoyed and disquieted by her frankness and unreserve of delight. But as the weeks went on, the true instinct of complete motherhood thrilled for the first time in many a mother"s heart, under Draxy"s glowing words, and women talked tearfully one with another, in secret, with lowered voices, about the new revelation which had come to them through her.
"I"ve come to see it all quite different, since I"ve talked with Mis"
Kinney," said one young married woman, holding her baby close to her breast, and looking down with remorseful tenderness on its placid little face. "I shan"t never feel that I"ve quite made it up to Benjy, never, for the thoughts I had about him before he was born. I don"t see why n.o.body ever told us before, that we was just as much mothers to "em from the very first as we ever could be," and tears dropped on Benjy"s face; "an" I jest hope the Lord"ll send me"s many more"s we can manage to feed"n clothe, "n I"ll see if lovin" "em right along from the beginnin", with all my heart, "ll make "em beautiful an" happy an" strong an" well, "s Mis" Kinney sez.
I b"lieve it"s much"s ef "twas in the Bible, after all she told me, and read me out of a Physiology, an" it stands to natur", which"s more"n the old way o" talkin did."
This new, strong current of the divinest of truths, stirred the very veins of the village. Mothers were more loving and fathers more tender, and maidens were sweeter and graver--all for the coming of this one little babe into the bosom of full and inspired motherhood.
On the morning when Draxy"s son was born, a stranger pa.s.sing through the village would have supposed that some great news of war or of politics had arrived. Little knots of people stood at gates, on corners, all talking earnestly; others were walking rapidly to and fro in the street.
Excitement filled the air.