"Few things! Oh, uncle," said Draxy, with a trembling voice, and before he knew what she was about to do she had s.n.a.t.c.hed his fat, weather-beaten old hand and kissed it. No woman had ever kissed John Melville"s hand before.
From that moment he looked upon Draxy as a princess who had let him once kiss hers!
Captain Melville and Reuben were friends before bed-time. Reuben"s gentle simplicity and unworldliness, and patient demeanor, roused in the rough sailor a sympathy like that he had always felt for women. And to Reuben the hearty good cheer, and brisk, bluff sailor ways were infinitely winning and stimulating.
The next day Mrs. Melville came home. In a short time the little household had adjusted itself, and settled down into its routine of living. When, in a few days, the great car-load of the Millers" furniture arrived, Capt.
Melville insisted upon its all going to the auction-rooms excepting the kitchen furniture, and a few things for which Jane had especial attachment. It brought two hundred dollars, which, in addition to the price of the farm, and the store and its stock, gave Reuben just nineteen hundred dollars to put in the Savings Bank.
"And I am to be counted at least two thousand more, father dear, so you are not such a very poor man after all," said Draxy, laughing and dancing around him.
Now Draxy Miller"s real life began. In after years she used to say, "I was born first in my native town; second, in the Atlantic Ocean!" The effect of the strong sea air upon her was something indescribable; joy seemed to radiate from her whole being. She smiled whenever she saw the sea. She walked on the beach; she sat on the rocks; she learned to swim in one lesson, and swam so far out that her uncle dared not follow, and called to her in imploring terror to return. Her beauty grew more and more radiant every day. This the sea gave to her body. But there was a far subtler new life than the physical, a far finer new birth than the birth of beauty,--which came to Draxy here. This, books gave to her soul. Only a few years before, a free library had been founded in this town, by a rich and benevolent man. Every week hundreds of volumes circulated among the families where books were prized, and could not be owned. When Draxy"s uncle first took her into this library, and explained to her its purpose and regulations, she stood motionless for a few moments, looking at him--and at the books: then, with tears in her eyes, and saying, "Don"t follow me, uncle dear; don"t mind me, I can"t bear it," she ran swiftly into the street, and never stopped until she had reached home and found her father. An hour later she entered the library again, leading her father by the hand. She had told him the story on the way. Reuben"s thin cheeks were flushed. It was almost more than he too could bear. Silently the father and daughter walked up and down the room, looking into the alcoves. Then they sat down together, and studied the catalogue. Then they rose and went out, hand in hand as they had entered, speaking no word, taking no book. For one day the consciousness of this wealth filled their hearts beyond the possibility of one added desire. After that, Draxy and her father were to be seen every night seated at the long table in the reading-room. They read always together, Draxy"s arm being over the back of her father"s chair. Many a man and many a woman stopped and looked long at the picture. But neither Draxy nor her father knew it.
At the end of two years, Draxy Miller had culture. She was ignorant still, of course; she was an uneducated girl; she wept sometimes over her own deficiencies; but her mind was stored with information of all sorts; she had added Wordsworth to her Shakespeare; she had journeyed over the world with every traveller whose works she could find; and she had tasted of Plato and Epictetus. Reuben"s unfailing simplicity and purity of taste saved her from the mischiefs of many of the modern books. She had hardly read a single novel; but her love of true poetry was a pa.s.sion.
In the mean time she had become the favorite seamstress of the town. Her face, and voice, and smile would alone have won way for her; but in addition to those, she was a most dexterous workwoman. If there had only been twice as many days in a year, she would have been--glad. Her own earnings in addition to her father"s, and to their little income from the money in the bank, made them comfortable; but with Draxy"s expanded intellectual life had come new desires: she longed to be taught.
One day she said to her father, "Father dear, what was the name of that ca.n.a.l contractor who borrowed money of you and never paid it?"
Reuben looked astonished, but told her.
"Is he alive yet?"
"Oh, yes," said Reuben, "and he"s rich now. There was a man here only last week who said he"d built him a grand house this year."
Draxy shut her hands nervously. "Father, I shall go and get that money."
"You, child! Why it"s two days" journey; and he"d never pay you a cent. I tried times enough," replied Reuben.
"But I think perhaps he would be more likely to pay it to a woman; he would be ashamed," said Draxy, "especially if he is rich now, and I tell him how much we need it."
"No, no, child; I shouldn"t hear to your going; no more would mother; and it would be money wasted besides," said Reuben, with sternness unusual for him.
Draxy was silent. The next morning she went to the railway station and ascertained exactly how much the journey would cost. She was disheartened at the amount. It would be difficult for her to save so much out of a whole year"s earnings. That day Draxy"s face was sad. She was sewing at the house of one of her warmest friends. All her employers were her friends, but this one was a woman of rare intelligence and culture, who had loved Draxy ever since the day she had found her reading a little volume of Wordsworth, one of the Free Library books, while she was eating her dinner in the sewing-room.
Draxy looked her grat.i.tude, but said nothing. Not the least of her charms, to the well-bred people who employed her, was her exquisite reticence, her gentle and unconscious withdrawal into herself, in spite of all familiarity with which she might be treated.
A few days later Mrs. White sent a note to Draxy with the thirty dollars inclosed, and this note to Mr. Miller:--
"MR. MILLER--DEAR SIR:--
"This money has been contributed, by Draxy"s friends. You do not know how much we all prize and esteem your daughter and wish to help her. I hope you will be willing that she should use this money for the journey on which her heart is so set. I really advise you as a friend to let her make the effort to recover that money; I think she will get it.
"Truly, your friend,
"A. WHITE."
This note brought tears of pride to Reuben"s eyes. Draxy watched him closely, and said:--
"Father dear, I should like to go to-morrow."
Her preparations had already been made. She knew beforehand that her cause was won; that her father"s sense of justice would not let him interfere with her use of the gift for the purpose for which it was made.
It was on a clear cold morning in January that Draxy set out. It was the second journey of her life, and she was alone for the first time; but she felt no more fear than if she had been a sparrow winging its way through a new field. The morning twilight was just fading away; both the east and the west were clear and glorious; the east was red, and the west pale blue; high in the west stood the full moon, golden yellow; below it a long narrow bar of faint rose-color; below that, another bar of fainter purple; then the low brown line of a long island; then an arm of the sea; the water was gray and still; the ice rims stretched far out from the coast, and swayed up and down at the edges, as the waves pulsed in and out.
Flocks of gulls were wheeling, soaring in the air, or lighting and floating among the ice fragments, as cold and snowy as they. Draxy leaned her head against the side of the car and looked out on the marvelous beauty of the scene with eyes as filled with calm delight as if she had all her life journeyed for pleasure, and had had nothing to do but feed and develop her artistic sense.
A company of travelling actors sat near her; a dozen tawdry women and coa.r.s.e men, whose loud voices and vulgar jests made Draxy shudder. She did not know what they could be; she had never seen such behavior; the men took out cards and began to play; the women leaned over, looked on, and clapped the men on their shoulders. Draxy grew afraid, and the expression of distress on her face attracted the conductor"s notice. He touched her on the shoulder.
"I"ll take you into the next car, Miss, if you don"t like to be near these people. They"re only actors; there"s no harm in them, but they"re a rough set."
"Actors," said Draxy, as the kind conductor lifted her from one platform to another. "I never thought they were like that. Do they play Shakespeare?"
"I don"t know, I"m sure," said the conductor, puzzled enough: "but I dare say they do."
"Then I"m glad I never went to the theatre," thought Draxy, as she settled herself in her new seat. For a few moments she could not banish her disturbed and unhappy feeling. She could not stop fancying some of the grand words which she most loved in Shakespeare, repeated by those repulsive voices.
But soon she turned her eyes to the kindling sky, and forgot all else. The moon was slowly turning from gold to silver; then it would turn from silver to white cloud, then to film, then vanish away. Draxy knew that day and the sun would conquer. "Oh, if I only understood it," sighed Draxy.
Then she fell to thinking about the first chapter in Genesis; and while she looked upon that paling moon, she dreamed of other moons which no human eyes ever saw. Draxy was a poet; but as yet she had never dared to show even to her father the little verses she had not been able to help writing. "Oh, how dare I do this; how dare I?" she said to herself, as alone in her little room, she wrote line after line. "But if n.o.body ever knows, it can do no harm. It is strange I love it, though, when I am so ashamed."
This morning Draxy had that mysterious feeling as if all things were new, which so often comes to poetic souls. It is at once the beauty and the burden, the exhaustion and the redemption of their lives. No wonder that even common men can sometimes see the transfiguration which often comes to him before whose eyes death and resurrection are always following each other, instant, perpetual, glorious. Draxy took out her little diary.
Folded very small, and hid in the pocket of it, was a short poem that she had written the year before on a Tiarella plant which had blossomed in her window. Mrs. White had brought it to her with some ferns and mosses from the mountains; and all winter long it had flowered as if in summer.
Draxy wondered why this golden moon reminded her of the Tiarella. She did not know the subtle underlying bonds in nature. These were the Tiarella verses:--
My little Tiarella, If thou art my own, Tell me how thus in winter Thy shining flowers have blown.
Art thou a fairy smuggler, Defying law?
Didst take of last year"s summer More than summer saw?
Or hast thou stolen frost-flakes Secretly at night?
Thy stamens tipped with silver, Thy petals spotless white, Are so like those which cover My window-pane; Wilt thou, like them, turn back at noon To drops again?
Oh, little Tiarella, Thy silence speaks; No more my foolish question Thy secret seeks.
The sunshine on my window Lies all the day.
How shouldst thou know that summer Has pa.s.sed away?
The frost-flake"s icy silver Is dew at noon for thee.
O winter sun! O winter frost, Make summer dews for me!
After reading these over several times, Draxy took out her pencil, and very shyly screening herself from all observation, wrote on the other side of the paper these lines:
The Morning Moon.
The gold moon turns to white; The white moon fades to cloud; It looks so like the gold moon"s shroud, It makes me think about the dead, And hear the words I have heard read, By graves for burial rite.
I wonder now how many moons In just such white have died; I wonder how the stars divide Among themselves their share of light; And if there were great years of night Before the earth saw noons.
I wonder why each moon, each sun, Which ever has been or shall be, In this day"s sun and moon I see; I think perhaps all of the old Is hidden in each new day"s hold; So the first day is not yet done!
And then I think--our dust is spent Before the balances are swung; Shall we be loneliest among G.o.d"s living creatures? Shall we dare To speak in this eternal air The only discontent?
Then she shut the book resolutely, and sat up straight with a little laugh, saying to herself, "This is a pretty beginning for a business journey!"
Far better than you knew, sweet Draxy! The great successes of life are never made by the men and women who have no poetic comprehension in their souls.