"Well," said aunt Mary Ellen, stepping in, "I"m afraid your hinges want greasing. How do you do, Isabel? How do you do?" She put up her face and kissed her niece. Aunt Mary Ellen was so pretty, so round, so small, that she always seemed timid, and did the commonest acts of life with a gentle grace. "I heard voices," she said, walking into the sitting-room.
"Sadie here?"
The parson had stepped forward, more bent than usual, for he was peering down into her face.
"Mary Ellen!" he exclaimed.
The little woman looked up at him--very sadly, Isabel thought.
"Yes, William," she answered. But she was untying her bonnet, and she did not offer to shake hands.
Isabel stood by with downcast eyes, waiting to take her things, and aunt Mary Ellen looked searchingly up at her as she laid her mittens on the pile. The girl, without a word, went into the bedroom, and her aunt followed her.
"Isabel," said she rapidly, "I saw the chest. Have you burnt the things?"
"No," answered Isabel in wonder. "No."
"Then don"t you! don"t you touch "em for the world." She went back into the sitting-room, and Isabel followed. The candle was guttering, and aunt Mary Ellen pushed it toward her. "I don"t know where the snuffers are," she said. "Lamp smoke?"
Isabel did not answer, but she lighted the lamp. She had never seen her aunt so full of decision, so charged with an unfamiliar power. She felt as if strange things were about to happen. The parson was standing awkwardly. He wondered whether he ought to go. Aunt Mary Ellen smoothed her brown hair with both hands, sat down, and pointed to his chair.
"Sit a spell," she said. "I guess I shall have something to talk over with you."
The parson sat down. He tried to put his fingers together, but they trembled, and he clasped his hands instead.
"It"s a long time since we"ve seen you in Tiverton," he began.
"It would have been longer," she answered, "but I felt as if my niece needed me."
Here Isabel, to her own surprise, gave a little sob, and then another.
She began crying angrily into her handkerchief.
"Isabel," said her aunt, "is there a fire in the kitchen?"
"Yes," sobbed the girl.
"Well, you go out there and lie down on the lounge till you feel better.
Cover you over, and don"t be cold. I"ll call you when there"s anything for you to do."
Tall Isabel rose and walked out, wiping her eyes. Her little aunt sat mistress of the field. For many minutes there was silence, and the clock ticked. The parson felt something rising in his throat. He blew his nose vigorously.
"Mary Ellen"--he began. "But I don"t know as you want me to call you so!"
"You can call me anything you"re a mind to," she answered calmly. She was near-sighted, and had always worn spectacles. She took them off and laid them on her knee. The parson moved involuntarily in his chair. He remembered how she had used to do that when they were talking intimately, so that his eager look might not embarra.s.s her. "Nothing makes much difference when folks get to be as old as you and I are."
"I don"t feel old," said the parson resentfully. "I do _not_! And you don"t look so."
"Well, I am. We"re past our youth. We"ve got to the point where the only way to renew it is to look out for the young ones."
The parson had always had with her a way of reading her thought and bursting out boyishly into betrayal of his own.
"Mary Ellen," he cried, "I never should have explained it so, but Isabel looks like you!"
She smiled sadly. "I guess men make themselves think "most anything they want to," she answered. "There may be a family look, but I can"t see it.
She"s tall, too, and I was always a pint o" cider--so father said."
"She"s got the same look in her eyes," pursued the parson hotly. "I"ve always thought so, ever since she was a little girl."
"If you begun to notice it then," she responded, with the same gentle calm, "you"d better by half ha" been thinking of your own wife and her eyes. I believe they were black."
"Mary Ellen, how hard you are on me! You did"t use to be. You never were hard on anybody. You wouldn"t have hurt a fly."
Her face contracted slightly. "Perhaps I wouldn"t! perhaps I wouldn"t!
But I"ve had a good deal to bear this afternoon, and maybe I do feel a little different towards you from what I ever have felt. I"ve been hearing a loose-tongued woman tell how my own niece has been made town-talk because a man old enough to know better was running after her. I said, years ago, I never would come into this place while you was in it; but when I heard that, I felt as if Providence had marked out the way. I knew I was the one to step into the breach. So I had Tim harness up and bring me over, and here I am. William, I don"t want you should make a mistake at your time of life!"
The minister seemed already a younger man. A strong color had risen in his face. He felt in her presence a fine exhilaration denied him through all the years without her. Who could say whether it was the woman herself or the resurrected spirit of their youth? He did not feel like answering her. It was enough to hear her voice. He leaned forward, looking at her with something piteous in his air.
"Mary Ellen," he ventured, "you might as well say "another mistake." I did make one. You know it, and I know it."
She looked at him with a frank affection, entirely maternal. "Yes, William," she said, with the same gentle firmness in her voice, "we"ve pa.s.sed so far beyond those things that we can speak out and feel no shame. You did make a mistake. I don"t know as "t would be called so to break with me, but it was to marry where you did. You never cared about her. You were good to her. You always would be, William; but "t was a shame to put her there."
The parson had locked his hands upon his knees. He looked at them, and sad lines of recollection deepened in his face.
"I was desperate," he said at length, in a low tone. "I had lost you.
Some men take to drink, but that never tempted me. Besides, I was a minister. I was just ordained. Mary Ellen, do you remember that day?"
"Yes," she answered softly, "I remember." She had leaned back in her chair, and her eyes were fixed upon vacancy with the suffused look of tears forbidden to fall.
"You wore a white dress," went on the parson, "and a bunch of Provence roses. It was June. Your sister always thought you dressed too gay, but you said to her, "I guess I can wear what I want to, to-day of all times.""
"We won"t talk about her. Yes, I remember."
"And, as G.o.d is my witness, I couldn"t feel solemn, I was so glad! I was a minister, and my girl--the girl that was going to marry me--sat down there where I could see her, dressed in white. I always thought of you afterwards with that white dress on. You"ve stayed with me all my life, just that way."
Mary Ellen put up her hand with a quick gesture to hide her middle-aged face. With a thought as quick, she folded it resolutely upon the other in her lap. "Yes, William," she said. "I was a girl then. I wore white a good deal."
But the parson hardly heeded her. He was far away. "Mary Ellen," he broke out suddenly, a smile running warmly over his face, and creasing his dry, hollow cheeks, "do you remember that other sermon, my trial one? I read it to you, and then I read it to Parson Sibley. And do you remember what he said?"
"Yes, I remember. I didn"t suppose you did." Her cheeks were pink. The corners of her mouth grew exquisitely tender.
"You knew I did! "Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves" eyes." I took that text because I couldn"t think of anything else all summer. I remember now it seemed to me as if I was in a garden--always in a garden. The moon was pretty bright, that summer.
There were more flowers blooming than common. It must have been a good year. And I wrote my sermon lying out in the pine woods, down where you used to sit hemming on your things. And I thought it was the Church, but do all I could, it was a girl--or an angel!"
"No, no!" cried Mary Ellen, in bitterness of entreaty.
"And then I read the sermon to you under the pines, and you stopped sewing, and looked off into the trees; and you said "t was beautiful.
But I carried it to old Parson Sibley that night, and I can see just how he looked sitting there in his study, with his great spectacles pushed up on his forehead, and his hand drumming on a book. He had the dictionary put in a certain place on his table because he found he"d got used to drumming on the Bible, and he was a very particular man. And when I got through reading the sermon, his face wrinkled all up, though he didn"t laugh out loud, and he came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder. "William," says he, "you go home and write a doctrinal sermon, the stiffest you can. _This one"s about a girl._ You might give it to Mary Ellen North for a wedding-present.""
The parson had grown almost gay under the vivifying influence of memory.
But Mary Ellen did not smile.