The Deacon came in to-night, so amused that he was on the broad grin when he presented himself, and chuckling even when he said good-evening.
"What pleases you?" I asked. "You seem much amused about something."
"I am," he answered. "I"ve been appointed your guardian."
"By the town authorities?" I demanded. "I should have thought I was old enough to look after myself."
"It"s your family," he chuckled. "Miss Privet has written to me from Boston."
"Cousin Mehitable?" I exclaimed.
"Miss Mehitable Privet," he returned.
"She has written to you about me?" asked I.
He nodded, in evident delight over the situation.
My astonishment got the better of my manners so that I forgot to ask him to sit down, but stood staring at him like a b.o.o.by. I remembered Cousin Mehitable had met him once or twice on her infrequent visits to Tuskamuck, and had been graciously pleased to approve of him,--largely, I believe, on account of some accidental discovery of his very satisfactory pedigree. That she should write to him, however, was most surprising, and argued an amount of feeling on her part much greater than I had appreciated. I knew she would be shocked and perhaps scandalized by my having baby, and she had written to me with sufficient emphasis, but I did not suppose she would invoke outside aid in her attempts to dispossess me of Thomasine.
"But why should she write to you?" I asked Deacon Daniel.
"She said," was his answer, "she didn"t know who else to write to."
"But what did she expect you to do?"
The Deacon chuckled and caressed his beardless chin with a characteristic gesture. When he is greatly amused he seizes himself by the chin as if he must keep his jaw stiff or an undeaconical laugh would come out in spite of him.
"I don"t think she cared much what I did if I relieved you of that baby," was his reply. "She said if I was any sort of a guardian of the poor perhaps I could put it in a home."
"But you are not," I said.
"No," he a.s.sented.
"And you shouldn"t have her if you were," I added.
"I don"t want the child," Deacon Daniel returned. "I shouldn"t know what to do with it."
Then we both laughed, and I got him seated in Father"s chair, and we had a long chat over the whole situation. I had not realized how much I wanted to talk matters over with somebody. Aunt Naomi is out of the question, because she is so fond of telling things; Miss Charlotte would be better, but she is not very worldly wise; and if I may tell the truth, I wanted to talk with a man. The advice of women is wise often, and yet more often it is comforting; but it has somehow not the conclusiveness of the decision of a sensible man. At least that is the way I felt to-night, though in many matters I should never think of trusting to a man"s judgment.
"I think I shall adopt baby legally," I said. "Then n.o.body could take her away or bother me about her."
He asked me if her father would agree, and I said that I was sure he would.
"It would make her your heir if you died without a will," he commented.
I said that nothing was more easy than to make a will, and of course I should mean to provide for her.
"You are not afraid of wills, then?" Deacon Daniel observed, looking at me curiously. "So many folks can"t bear the idea of making one."
"Very likely it"s partly because I am a lawyer"s daughter," I said; "but in any case making a will wouldn"t have any more terrors for me than writing a check. But then I never had any fear of death anyway."
Deacon Daniel regarded me yet more intently, clasping his great white hands over his knee.
"I never can quite make you out, Miss Ruth," he said after a little.
"You haven"t any belief in a hereafter that I know of, but you seem to have no trouble about it."
I asked him why I should have, and he answered that most people do.
"Perhaps that is because they feel a responsibility about the future that I don"t," I returned. "I don"t think I can alter what is to come after death, and I don"t see what possible good I can do by fretting about it. Father brought me up, you know, to feel that I had all I could attend to in making the best I can of this life, without wasting my strength in speculating about another. In any case I can"t see why I should be any more afraid of death than I am of sleep. I understand one as well as I do the other."
He looked at the rug thoughtfully a moment, and then, as if he declined to be drawn into an argument, he came back to the original subject of our talk.
"Would Tom Webbe want to have anything to do with the child?" he asked.
"I think he would rather forget she is in the world," I told him. "By and by he may be fond of her, but now he tries not to think of her at all. I want to make her so attractive and lovely he can"t help caring for her."
"But then she will care for him," the Deacon commented.
"Why, of course she will. That is what I hope. Then she might influence him, and help him."
"You are willing to share her with her father even if you do adopt her?"
he asked.
I did not understand his manner, but I told him I did not think I had any right to deprive her of her father"s affection or him of hers if I adopted her a dozen times over.
The Deacon made no answer. His face was graver, and for some time we sat without further word.
"Tom Webbe isn"t as bad as he seems, Miss Ruth," Deacon Daniel said at length. "If you had to live with his mother, I guess you"d be ready to excuse him for "most anything. His father never had the s.p.u.n.k to say boo to a goose, and Mrs. Webbe has bullied him from the time we were boys. He"s as good as a man can be, but it"s a pity he don"t carry out Paul"s idea of being ruler in his own house."
"Paul was a bachelor like you, Deacon Daniel," I answered, rather saucily; "and neither of you knows anything about it."
He grinned, but only added that Tom had been nagged into most of his wildness.
"I"m not excusing him," he went on, apparently afraid that he should seem to be condoning iniquity; "but there"s a good deal to be said for him. Aunt Naomi says he ought to be driven out of decent society, but Tom Webbe never did a mean thing in his life."
I was rather surprised to hear this defense from Deacon Richards, but I certainly agreed with him. Tom"s sin makes me cringe; but I realize that I"m not capable of judging him, and he certainly has a good deal of excuse for whatever evil he has fallen into.
June 2. One thing more which Deacon Richards said has made me think a good deal. He asked me what Tom had meant to do about the child if its mother lived. I told him Julia had been willing for me to have baby in any case. He thought in silence a moment.
"I don"t believe," he said, "Tom ever meant to live with that woman. He must have married her to clear his conscience."
"He married her so the child should not be disgraced," I answered.
Deacon Daniel looked at me with those great keen eyes glowing beneath his s.h.a.ggy white brows.
"Then he went pretty far toward clearing his record," was his comment.
"There are not many men would have tied themselves to such a wife for the sake of a child."