Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and the First Christmas of New England Part 6

An indescribable feeling, blended of pity and reverence, swelled in his heart as he looked at her and marked the whitening hair, the thin worn little hands so busy with their love work, and thought of all the bearing and forbearing, the waiting, the watching, the long-suffering that had made up her life for so many years. The very look of exquisite calm and resolved strength in her patient eyes and in the gentle lines of her face had something that seemed to him sad and awful--as the purely spiritual always looks to the more animal nature. With his blood bounding and tingling in his veins, his strong arms pulsating with life, and his heart full of a man's vigor and resolve, his mother's life seemed to him to be one of weariness and drudgery, of constant, unceasing self-abnegation.

Calm he knew she was, always sustained, never faltering; but her victory was one which, like the spiritual sweetness in the face of the dying, had something of sadness for the living heart.

He opened the door and came in, sat down by her on the floor, and laid his head in her lap.

"Mother, you never rest; you never stop working."

"Oh, no!" she said gaily, "I'm just going to stop now. I had only a few last things I wanted to get done."

"Mother, I can't bear to think of you; your life is too hard. We all have our amus.e.m.e.nts, our rests, our changes; your work is never done; you are worn out, and get no time to read, no time for anything but drudgery."

"Don't say drudgery, my boy--work done for those we love _never_ is drudgery. I'm so happy to have you all around me I never feel it."

"But, mother, you are not strong, and I don't see how you can hold out to do all you do."

"Well," she said simply, "when my strength is all gone I ask G.o.d for more, and he always gives it. 'They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.'" And her hand involuntarily fell on the open Bible.

"Yes, I know it," he said, following her hand with his eyes--while "Mother," he said, "I want you to give me your Bible and take mine. I think yours would do me more good."

There was a little bright flush and a pleased smile on his mother's face--

"Certainly, my boy, I will."

"I see you have marked your favorite places," he added. "It will seem like hearing you speak to read them."

"With all my heart," she added, taking up the Bible and kissing his forehead as she put it into his hands.

There was a struggle in his heart how to say farewell without saying it-- without letting her know that he was going to leave her. He clasped her in his arms and kissed her again and again.

"Mother," he said, "if I ever get into heaven it will be through you."

"Don't say that, my son--it must be through a better Friend than I am-- who loves you more than I do. I have not died for you--He did."

"Oh, that I knew where I might find him, then. You I can see--Him I cannot."

His mother looked at him with a face full of radiance, pity, and hope.

"I feel sure you _will_" she said. "You are consecrated," she added, in a low voice, laying her hand on his head.

"Amen," said James, in a reverential tone. He felt that she was at that moment--as she often was--silently speaking to One invisible of and for him, and the sense of it stole over him like a benediction. There was a pause of tender silence for many minutes.

"Well, I must not keep you up any longer, mother dear--it's time you were resting. Good-night." And with a long embrace and kiss they separated. He had yet fifteen miles to walk to reach the midnight stage that was to convey him to Salem.

As he was starting from the house with his bundle in his hand, the sound of a gay laugh came through the distant shrubbery. It was Diana and Bill returning from the husking. Hastily he concealed himself behind a clump of old lilac bushes till they emerged into the moonlight and pa.s.sed into the house. Diana was in one of those paroxysms of young girl frolic which are the effervescence of young, healthy blood, as natural as the gyrations of a bobolink on a clover head. James was thinking of dark nights and stormy seas, years of exile, mother's sorrows, home perhaps never to be seen more, and the laugh jarred on him like a terrible discord. He watched her into the house, turned, and was gone.

CHAPTER VI.

GONE TO SEA.

A little way on in his moonlight walk James's ears were saluted by the sound of some one whistling and crackling through the bushes, and soon Biah Carter, emerged into the moonlight, having been out to the same husking where Diana and Bill had been enjoying themselves. The sight of him resolved a doubt which had been agitating James's mind. The note to his mother which was to explain his absence and the reasons for it was still in his coat-pocket, and he had designed sending it back by some messenger at the tavern where he took the midnight stage; but here was a more trusty party. It involved, to be sure, the necessity of taking Biah into his confidence. James was well aware that to tell that acute individual the least particle of a story was like starting a gimlet in a pine board--there was no stop till it had gone through. So he told him in brief that a good berth had been offered to him on the _Eastern Star_, and he meant to take it to relieve his father of the pressure of his education.

"Wal naow--you don't say so," was Biah's commentary. "Wal, yis, 'tis hard sleddin' for the deacon--drefful hard sleddin.' Wal, naow, s'pose you're disapp'inted--shouldn't wonder--jes' so. Eddication's a good thing, but 'taint the only thing naow; folks larns a sight rubbin' round the world-- and then they make money. Jes' see, there's Cap'n Stebbins and Cap'n Andrews and Cap'n Merryweather--all livin' on good farms, with good, nice houses, all got goin' to sea. Expect Mis' Pitkin'll take it sort o' hard, she's so sot on you; but she's allers sayin' things is for the best, and maybe she'll come to think so 'bout this--folks gen'ally does when they can't help themselves. Wal, yis, naow--goin' to walk to the cross-road tavern? better not. Jest wait a minit and I'll hitch up and take ye over.

"Thank you, Biah, but I can't stop, and I'd rather walk, so I won't trouble you."

"Wal, look here--don't ye want a sort o' nest-egg? I've got fifty silver dollars laid up: you take it on venture and give me half what it brings."

"Thank you, Biah. If you'll trust me with it I'll hope to do something for us both."

Biah went into the house, and after some fumbling brought out a canvas bag, which he put into James's hand.

"Wanted to go to sea confoundedly myself, but there's Mariar Jane--she won't hear on't, and turns on the water-works if I peep a single word.

Farmin's drefful slow, but when a feller's got a gal he's got a cap'n; he has to mind orders. So you jest trade and we'll go sheers. I think consid'able of you, and I expect you'll make it go as fur as anybody."

"I'll try my best, you may believe, Biah," said James, shaking the hard hand heartily, as he turned on his way towards the cross-roads tavern.

The whole village of Maplewood on Thanksgiving Day morning was possessed of the fact that James Pitkin had gone off to sea in the _Eastern Star_, for Biah had felt all the sense of importance which the possession of a startling piece of intelligence gives to one, and took occasion to call at the tavern and store on his way up and make the most of his information, so that by the time the bell rang for service the news might be said to be everywhere. The minister's general custom on Thanksgiving Day was to get off a political sermon reviewing the State of New England, the United States of America, and Europe, Asia, and Africa; but it may be doubted if all the affairs of all these continents produced as much sensation among the girls in the singers' seat that day as did the news that James Pitkin had gone to sea on a four years' voyage. Curious eyes were cast on Diana Pitkin, and many were the whispers and speculations as to the part she might have had in the move; and certainly she looked paler and graver than usual, and some thought they could detect traces of tears on her cheeks. Some noticed in the tones of her voice that day, as they rose in the soprano, a tremor and pathos never remarked before--the unconscious utterance of a new sense of sorrow, awakened in a soul that up to this time had never known a grief.

For the letter had fallen on the heads of the Pitkin household like a thunderbolt. Biah came in to breakfast and gave it to Mrs. Pitkin, saying that James had handed him that last night, on his way over to take the midnight stage to Salem, where he was going to sail on the _Eastern Star_ to-day--no doubt he's off to sea by this time. A confused sound of exclamations went up around the table, while Mrs. Pitkin, pale and calm, read the letter and then pa.s.sed it to her husband without a word. The bright, fixed color in Diana's face had meanwhile been slowly ebbing away, till, with cheeks and lips pale as ashes, she hastily rose and left the table and went to her room. A strange, new, terrible pain--a sensation like being choked or smothered--a rush of mixed emotions--a fearful sense of some inexorable, unalterable crisis having come of her girlish folly--overwhelmed her. Again she remembered the deep tones of his good-by, and how she had only mocked at his emotion. She sat down and leaned her head on her hands in a tearless, confused sorrow.

Deacon' Pitkin was at first more shocked and overwhelmed than his wife.

His yesterday's talk with James had no such serious purpose. It had been only the escape-valve for his hypochondriac forebodings of the future, and nothing was farther from his thoughts than having it bear fruit in any such decisive movement on the part of his son. In fact, he secretly was proud of his talents and his scholars.h.i.+p, and had set his heart on his going through college, and had no more serious purpose in what he said the day before than the general one of making his son feel the difficulties and straits he was put to for him. Young men were tempted at college to be too expensive, he thought, and to forget what it cost their parents at home. In short, the whole thing had been merely the pa.s.sing off of a paroxysm of hypochondria, and he had already begun to be satisfied that he should raise his interest money that year without material difficulty. The letter showed him too keenly the depth of the suffering he had inflicted on his son, and when he had read it he cast a sort of helpless, questioning look on his wife, and said, after an interval of silence:

"Well, mother!"

There was something quite pathetic in the appealing look and voice.'

"Well, father," she answered in subdued tones; "all we can do now is to _leave_ it."

LEAVE IT!

Those were words often in that woman's mouth, and they expressed that habit of her life which made her victorious over all troubles, that habit of trust in the Infinite Will that actually could and did _leave_ every accomplished event in His hand, without murmur and without conflict.

If there was any one thing in her uniformly self-denied life that had been a personal ambition and a personal desire, it had been that her son should have a college education. It was the center of her earthly wishes, hopes and efforts. That wish had been cut off in a moment, that hope had sunk under her feet, and now only remained to her the task of comforting the undisciplined soul whose unguided utterances had wrought the mischief. It was not the first time that, wounded by a loving hand in this dark struggle of life, she had suppressed the pain of her own hurt that he that had wounded her might the better forgive himself.

"Dear father," she said to him, when over and over he blamed himself for his yesterday's harsh words to his son, "don't worry about it now; you didn't mean it. James is a good boy, and he'll see it right at last; and he is in G.o.d's hands, and we must leave him there. He overrules all."

When Mrs. Pitkin turned from her husband she sought Diana in her room.

"Oh, cousin! cousin!" said the girl, throwing herself into her arms.

"_Is_ this true? Is James _gone_? Can't we do _any_ thing? Can't we get him back? I've been thinking it over. Oh, if the s.h.i.+p wouldn't sail! and I'd go to Salem and beg him to come back, on my knees. Oh, if I had only known yesterday! Oh, cousin, cousin! he wanted to talk with me, and I wouldn't hear him!--oh, if I only had, I could have persuaded him out of it! Oh, why didn't I know?"

"There, there, dear child! We must accept it just as it is, now that it is done. Don't feel so. We must try to look at the good."

"Oh, show me that letter," said Diana; and Mrs. Pitkin, hoping to tranquilize her, gave her James's note. "He thinks I don't care for him,"

she said, reading it hastily. "Well, I don't wonder! But I _do_ care! I love him better than anybody or anything under the sun, and I never will forget him; he's a brave, n.o.ble, good man, and I shall love him as long as I live--I don't care who knows it! Give me that locket, cousin, and write to him that I shall wear it to my grave."