Tiverton Tales Part 9

"Yes," she repeated softly, "I remember."

"And then I laughed a little, and got out of the study the best way I could, and ran over to you to tell you what he said. And I left the sermon in your work-basket. I've often wished, in the light of what came afterwards--I've often wished I'd kept it. Somehow 't would have brought me nearer to you."

It seemed as if she were about to rise from her chair, but she quieted herself and dulled the responsive look upon her face.

"Mary Ellen," the parson burst forth, "I know how I took what came on us the very next week, but I never knew how you took it. Should you just as lieves tell me?"

She lifted her head until it held a n.o.ble pose. Her eyes shone brilliantly, though indeed they were doves' eyes.

"I'll tell you," said she. "I couldn't have told you ten years ago,--no, nor five! but now it's an old woman talking to an old man. I was given to understand you were tired of me, and too honorable to say so. I don't know what tale was carried to you"--

"She said you'd say 'yes' to that rich fellow in Sudleigh, if I'd give you a chance!"

"I knew 't was something as shallow as that. Well, I'll tell you how I took it. I put up my head and laughed. I said, 'When William Bond wants to break with me, he'll say so.' And the next day you did say so."

The parson wrung his hands in an involuntary gesture of appeal.

"Minnie! Minnie!" he cried, "why didn't you save me? What made you let me _be_ a fool?"

She met his gaze with a tenderness so great that the words lost all their sting.

"You always were, William," she said quietly. "Always rus.h.i.+ng at things like Job's charger, and having to rush back again. Never once have I read that without thinking of you. That's why you fixed up an angel out of poor little Isabel."

The parson made a fine gesture of dissent. He had forgotten Isabel.

"Do you want to know what else I did?" Her voice grew hard and unfamiliar. "I'll tell you. I went to my sister Eliza, and I said: 'Some way or another, you've spoilt my life. I'll forgive you just as soon as I can--maybe before you die, maybe not. You come with me!' and I went up garret, where she kept the chest with things in it that belonged to them that had died. There it sets now. I stood over it with her. 'I'm going to put my dead things in here,' I said. 'If you touch a finger to 'em, I'll get up in meeting and tell what you've done. I'm going to put in everything left from what you've murdered; and every time you come here, you'll remember you were a murderer.' I frightened her. I'm glad I did.

She's dead and gone, and I've forgiven her; but I'm glad now!"

The parson looked at her with amazement. She seemed on fire. All the smouldering embers of a life denied had blazed at last. She put on her gla.s.ses and walked over to the chest.

"Here!" she continued; "let's uncover the dead. I've tried to do it ever since she died, so the other things could be burned; but my courage failed me. Could you turn these screws, if I should get you a knife?

They're in tight. I put 'em in myself, and she stood by."

The little lid of the till had been screwed fast. The two middle-aged people bent over it together, trying first the scissors and then the broken blade of the parson's old knife. The screws came slowly. When they were all out, he stood back a pace and gazed at her. Mary Ellen looked no longer alert and vivified. Her face was haggard.

"I shut it," she said, in a whisper. "You lift it up."

The parson lifted the lid. There they lay, her poor little relics,--a folded ma.n.u.script, an old-fas.h.i.+oned daguerreotype, and a tiny locket.

The parson could not see. His hand shook as he took them solemnly out and gave them to her. She bent over the picture, and looked at it, as we search the faces of the dead. He followed her to the light, and, wiping his gla.s.ses, looked also.

"That was my picture," he said musingly. "I never've had one since. And that was mother's locket. It had"--He paused and looked at her.

"Yes," said Mary Ellen softly; "it's got it now." She opened the little trinket; a warm, thick lock of hair lay within, and she touched it gently with her finger. "Should you like the locket, because 't was your mother's?"

She hesitated; and though the parson's tone halted also, he answered at once:--

"No, Mary Ellen, not if you'll keep it. I should rather think 'twas with you."

She put her two treasures in her pocket, and gave him the other.

"I guess that's your share," she said, smiling faintly. "Don't read it here. Just take it away with you."

The ma.n.u.script had been written in the cramped and awkward hand of his youth, and the ink upon the paper was faded after many years. He turned the pages, a smile coming now and then.

"'Thou hast doves' eyes,'" he read,--"'thou hast doves' eyes!'" He murmured a sentence here and there. "Mary Ellen," he said at last, shaking his head over the ma.n.u.script in a droll despair, "it isn't a sermon. Parson Sibley had the rights of it. It's a love-letter!" And the two old people looked in each other's wet eyes and smiled.

The woman was the first to turn away.

"There!" said she, closing the lid of the chest; "we've said enough.

We've wiped out old scores. We've talked more about ourselves than we ever shall again; for if old age brings anything, it's thinking of other people--them that have got life before 'em. These your rubbers?"

The parson put them on, with a dazed obedience. His hand shook in buckling them. Mary Ellen pa.s.sed him his coat, but he noticed that she did not offer to hold it for him. There was suddenly a fine remoteness in her presence, as if a frosty air had come between them. The parson put the sermon in his inner pocket, and b.u.t.toned his coat tightly over it. Then he pinned on his shawl. At the door he turned.

"Mary Ellen," said he pleadingly, "don't you ever want to see the sermon again? Shouldn't you like to read it over?"

She hesitated. It seemed for a moment as if she might not answer at all.

Then she remembered that they were old folks, and need not veil the truth.

"I guess I know it 'most all by heart," she said quietly. "Besides, I took a copy before I put it in there. Good-night!"

"Good-night!" answered the parson joyously. He closed the door behind him and went crunching down the icy path. When he had unfastened the horse and sat tucking the buffalo-robe around him, the front door was opened in haste, and a dark figure came flying down the walk.

"Mr. Bond!" thrilled a voice.

"Whoa!" called the parson excitedly. He was throwing back the robe to leap from the sleigh when the figure reached him. "Oh!" said he; "Isabel!"

She was breathing hard with excitement and the determination grown up in her mind during that last half hour of her exile in the kitchen.

"Parson,"--forgetting a more formal address, and laying her hand on his knee,--"I've got to say it! Won't you please forgive me? Won't you, please? I can't explain it"--

"Bless your heart, child!" answered the parson cordially; "you needn't try to. I guess I made you nervous."

"Yes," agreed Isabel, with a sigh of relief, "I guess you did." And the parson drove away.

Isabel ran, light of heart and foot, back into the warm sitting-room, where aunt Mary Ellen was standing just where he had left her. She had her gla.s.ses off, and she looked at Isabel with a smile so vivid that the girl caught her breath, and wondered within herself how aunt Mary Ellen had looked when she was young.

"Isabel," said she, "you come here and give me a corner of your ap.r.o.n to wipe my gla.s.ses. I guess it's drier 'n my handkerchief."

HORN O' THE MOON

If you drive along Tiverton Street, and then turn to the left, down the Gully Road, you journey, for the s.p.a.ce of a mile or so, through a bewildering succession of damp greenery, with noisy brooks singing songs below you, on either side, and the treetops on the level with your horse's feet. Few among the older inhabitants ever take this drive, save from necessity, because it is conceded that the dampness there is enough, even in summer, to "give you your death o' cold;" and as for the young, to them the place wears an eerie look, with its miniature suggestion of impa.s.sable gulfs and roaring torrents. Yet no youth reaches his majority without exploring the Gully. He who goes alone is the more a hero; but even he had best leave two or three trusty comrades reasonably near, not only to listen, should he call, but to stand his witnesses when he afterwards declares where he has been. It is a fearsome thing to explore that lower stratum of this round world, so close to the rus.h.i.+ng brook that it drowns your thoughts, though not your apprehensions, and to go slipping about over wet boulders and among dripping ferns; but your fears are fears of the spirit. They are inherited qualms. You s.h.i.+ver because your grandfathers and fathers and uncles have s.h.i.+vered there before you. If you are very brave indeed, and naught but the topmost round of destiny will content you, possibly you penetrate still further into green abysses, and come upon the pool where, tradition says, an ancient trout has his impregnable habitation.

Apparently, n.o.body questions that the life of a trout may be indefinitely prolonged, under the proper conditions of a retired dusk; and the same fish that served our grandfathers for a legend now enlivens our childish days. When you meet a youngster, ostentatiously setting forth for the Gully Road, with bait-box and pole, you need not ask where he is going; though if you have any human sympathy in the pride of life, you will not deny him his answer:--

"Down to have a try for the old trout!"