John Ward, Preacher Part 54

"Well, don't talk about it," said Dr. Howe, walking restlessly back and forth.

Mrs. Dale took off her gla.s.ses, and rubbed them on the corner of her black silk ap.r.o.n. "It would never have happened," she said positively, "if they had had children. I declare, I"--and she stopped, as though about to suggest that Helen should adopt a child at once. Mrs. Dale usually blamed John and Helen with equal impartiality, but to-day the fault seemed to belong entirely to her niece. She was very much puzzled to know how she was to "make excuses" without telling an untruth. "I'll just speak to Giff about it," she thought; "it all depends on the way Deborah Woodhouse hears it, and Giff is really quite sensible, and can advise me what to tell her."

She saw him that afternoon, but, as she said afterwards in reluctant confidence to her husband, "Giff hasn't much sense, after all. He thought it was best to just tell the truth about it."

"Yes?" responded Mr. Dale. "Well, I have often noticed, I am only apt to admire the good sense of people who agree with me. Gifford doubtless has not the advantage of feeling sure that his wishes const.i.tute the standards of right and wrong."

"Nonsense," said Mrs. Dale; "I am sure I don't know what you are talking about."

"Well, what are you going to do?" asked her husband.

"Oh," Mrs. Dale answered, "Gifford will tell Deborah Woodhouse the truth (Helen wants him to), but he will do it as carefully and as mildly as possible. And he will make her promise to keep it to herself. But you know Deborah Woodhouse; she trickles--there is no other word for it--everything. She couldn't keep a secret to save her life. But Helen will have it so. Oh, dear, dear, dear! Heaven save us from willful women!"

Gifford broke the news to his aunts as wisely as he knew how, but he did not hide the truth. It was not until the day before he went back to Lockhaven that he told them; he had put it off as long as he could, hoping, as Dr. Howe had done, that John Ward would see how useless it was to carry out his plan. Gifford had found the sisters together. Miss Ruth was at work in her studio, while Miss Deborah sat in the doorway, in the shadow of the grape-vines, topping and tailing gooseberries into a big blue bowl. She had a handful of crushed thyme in her lap, and some pennyroyal.

"It isn't roses," Miss Deborah remarked, "but it is better than Ruth's turpentine. And so long as I have got to sit here (for I will sit here while she's copying the miniature; it is a sacred charge), the pennyroyal is stronger than the paint."

Miss Ruth, her hands neatly gloved, was mixing her colors a little wearily; somehow, on her canvas, the face of the little sister lost what beauty it had ever known.

"I can't get the eyes," Miss Ruth sighed. "I have a great mind to help you with your preserving, sister."

"My dear Ruth," said Miss Deborah, with much dignity, "do I try to do your work?"

"But you know you couldn't paint, dear Deborah," said the younger sister eagerly. The round china-blue eyes of the little sister stared at her maliciously.

"Well," returned Miss Deborah, running her small hand through the gooseberries in the bowl, "neither could you make gooseberry jelly, or even a tart." Then seeing her nephew lounging down the flagged path to the door of the studio, his straw hat pushed back and his hands in his pockets, she was suddenly reminded of his packing. "I hope, Giff, dear,"

she cried, "you left plenty of room in your trunk? I have a number of articles I want you to take."

"There's lots of room, aunt Deborah," he answered. "You know I had to put in a bag of straw to fill up, when I came on,--I couldn't have things rattle around."

Miss Deborah laughed. "You need your aunt to look after you, my dear."

"Or a wife," said Miss Ruth, looking up at him over her gleaming spectacles.

"Nonsense," replied her sister vigorously; "don't put such ideas into his head, if you please. I must say such jokes are not in good taste, dear Ruth."

But Miss Ruth was more anxious about her light than Gifford's marriage.

"You are really so big, Giff," she complained mildly, "you darken the whole studio, standing there in the doorway. Do pray sit down."

Gifford obediently took his seat upon the step, and this brought his face on a level with Miss Ruth's.

"Oh, that is nice," the little lady said, with gentle enthusiasm. "I shall have your eyes to look at. I have not been able to get the little sister's eyes just to suit me."

It made no difference to Miss Ruth that Gifford's eyes were gray and full of trouble. "Aunt Deborah," he said abruptly, "Helen Ward is not going back to Lockhaven for the present. Indeed, I do not know when she will go."

Miss Deborah forgot her gooseberries, in her surprise. "Not going back!"

she cried, while her sister said, "Is Mr. Ward coming here?"

Then Gifford told them the story as briefly as he could, interrupted by small cries of amazement and dismay. "Well," exclaimed Miss Deborah, her delicate hands uplifted, "well! I never heard of such a thing! How shocking, how ill-bred! And she is going to be at the rectory? Ruth, my dear, you must never go there without me, do you hear? It is not proper.

A wife separated from her husband! Dear me, dear me!"

"How can she leave him?" gasped Miss Ruth. "Married people ought to love each other so that they could not be parted."

"You have never been in a position to judge how they ought to love each other," said Miss Deborah sharply. "But this is what comes of youthful marriages, Gifford. A person should have reached years of maturity before thinking of marriage. Such things do not happen when people are reasonably old"--

"But not too old, sister," Miss Ruth interrupted, a little color creeping into her faded cheek.

Miss Deborah did not notice the amendment; she was anxious to hear the practical side of the matter, and had questions to ask about Helen's money, and whether Gifford supposed that that man would do anything for her; but except their grave disapproval that Helen should differ from her husband, nothing was said of theology. As they talked, the sisters grew full of sympathy, which waxed and waned as they thought of Helen's sorrow, or the impropriety of her action.

"I shall make her some jelly directly," said Miss Deborah, "and put in plenty of Madeira; the poor thing needs strength."

"This must be the reason," Miss Ruth said,--she had put her brushes down some time ago,--"that she was in such distress that day at her mother's grave. Oh, how trying this is for her! Indeed, I am sure death is easier to bear, when one--loves--than a parting like this."

"Really, dear Ruth," returned her sister, holding her head very straight, "you would not say that if you knew what it was to lose a--friend, by death. At least Mr. Ward is alive, even if Helen cannot see him. Ah, dear me! Well, I wonder how Adele Dale feels now? I should be miserable if we had such a thing happen in our family. A husband and wife quarrel, and separate! Shocking!"

"But there is no quarrel, you know," Gifford protested slowly, and for the third or fourth time.

But Miss Deborah brushed this aside. "They are separated; it is the same thing. In our family, an unhappy marriage was never known. Even when your grandfather's sister married a Bellingham,--and of course everybody knows the Bellingham temper,--and they quarreled, just three weeks to a day after the wedding, she never thought of such a disgraceful thing as leaving him. I have heard dear mamma say she never spoke to him again, except when she had to ask for money; that almost killed her, she was so proud. But she never would have lowered herself by leaving him. Yes, this is really most improper in poor dear Helen."

Miss Deborah's feelings vibrated, even while she was making the jelly, and though it was finally sent, she balanced her kindness by saying to Mrs. Dale that it did not seem just right for a young thing like Lois to know of such a painful affair. It gave Miss Deborah so much pleasure to say this to her old enemy that she made excuses for Helen for a whole day afterwards.

Late that afternoon Gifford went to say good-by at the rectory. It was a still, hazy August day, with a hint of autumn in the air; sometimes a yellowing leaf floated slowly down, or one would notice that the square tower of St. Michael's could be seen, and that the ivy which covered its south side was beginning to redden.

Miss Helen was not at home, Jean said. She thought she'd gone up to the graveyard,--she most always went there.

So Gifford started in search of her. "She ought not to be alone so much,"

he thought, and he wondered, with a man's dullness in such matters, why, if she and Lois had made up after that one quarrel, they were not the same tender friends. He met Lois at the rectory gate. She was coming from the village, and there was a look in her face which gave him a sudden jealous pain. She held a letter in her hand, and her eyes were running over with happiness; her lips smiled so that they almost broke into laughter as she spoke.

"Something seems to make you very happy, Lois?" he said.

"It does," she cried,--"very, very!"

"I am glad," he said, wis.h.i.+ng she could find it in her heart to tell him of her joy.

"Forsythe has come to his senses," he thought. "I suppose he has been unusually loving, confound him!"

The two young people parted, each a little graver than when they met.

"How he does like to be with Helen!" Lois thought, as she went on, and Gifford sighed impatiently as he wished Forsythe were more worthy of her.

He found Helen walking wearily home alone. "I wanted to say good-by," he said, taking her hand in his big warm grasp, "and just tell you that I'll look after him, you know, in any way I can. I'll see him every day, Helen." She looked at him gratefully, but did not speak. "I wish,"

Gifford continued, hesitating, "you would not take such long walks by yourself. Why don't you let Lois come with you?"

"She would not care to," she answered briefly.

"Oh, I think you are wrong there," he remonstrated. "She is lonely, too."

Helen seemed to consider. "You know it has been an unhappy summer for Lois, and if you shut her out of your sorrow"--

"I did not mean to be selfish," she replied, not seeing how much Gifford spoke for her own sake, "and I do not shut her out; but so long as she only sympathizes with me, and not with John too, I cannot let her talk to me about it."