Way Down East Part 12

Anna found strength and sustenance in his mere presence, though she did not say a word to him, but he was such a faithful soul. Good, honest Dave.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE VILLAGE GOSSIP SNIFFS SCANDAL.

"Flavia, most tender of her own good name, Is rather careless of her sister's fame!

Her superfluity the poor supplies, But if she touch a character it dies."--_Cowper_.

It was characteristic of Marthy Perkins and her continual pursuit of pleasure, that she should wade through snowdrifts to Squire Bartlett's and ask for a lift in his sleigh. The Squire's family were going to a surprise party to be given to one of the neighbor's, and Marthy was as determined about going as a debutante.

She came in, covered with snow, hooded, shawled and coated till she resembled a huge coc.o.o.n. The Squire placed a big armchair for her near the fire, and Marshy sat down, but not without disdaining Anna's offers to remove her wraps. She sniffed at Anna--no other word will express it--and savagely clutched her big old-fas.h.i.+oned m.u.f.f when Anna would have taken it from her to dry it of the snow.

The sleighbells jingled merrily as the different parties drove by, singing, whistling, laughing, on their way to the party. The church choir, snugly installed in "Doc" Wiggins' sleigh, stopped at the Squire's to "thaw out," and try a step or two; Rube Whipple, the town constable, giving them his famous song, "All Bound 'Round with a Woolen String."

Rube was, as usual, the pivot around which the merry-making centered.

A few nights before, burglars had broken into the postoffice and carried off the stamps, and the town constable was, as usual, the last one to hear of it. On the night in question, he had spent the evening at the corner grocery store with a couple of his old pals, the stove answering the purpose of a rather large bulls-eye, at which they expectorated, with conscientious regularity, from time to time. Seth Holcomb, Marthy Perkins' faithful swain, had been of the corner grocery party.

"Well, Constable, hear you and Seth helped keep the stove warm the other night, while thieves walked off with the postoffice," Marthy announced; "what I'd like to know is, how much bitters, rheumatism bitters, you had during the evening?"

"Well, Marthy Perkins, you ought to be the last to throw it up to Seth that he's obliged to spend his evenings round a corner grocery--that's adding insult to injury."

"Insult to injury I reckon can stand, Rube; it's when you add Seth's bitters that it staggers."

But Seth, who never minded Marthy's stings and jibes, only remarked: "The recipy for them bitters was given to me by a blame good doctor."

"That cuts you out, Wiggins," the Squire said playfully.

"No, I don't care about standing father to Seth's bitters," "Doc"

Wiggins remarked, "but I've tasted worse stuff on a cold night."

"Oh, Seth ain't pertickler about the temperature, when he takes a dose of bitters. Hot or cold, it's all the same to him," finished Marthy.

Seth took the opportunity to whisper to her: "You're going to sit next to me in 'Doc' Wiggins' sleigh to-night, ain't you, Marthy?"

"Indeed I ain't," said the spinster, scornfully tossing her head, "my place will have to be filled by the bitters-bottle; I am going with the Squire and Mrs. Bartlett."

"Doc" Wiggins' party left in high good humor, the Squire and his party promising to follow immediately. Anna ran upstairs to get Mrs.

Bartlett's bonnet and cloak, and Marthy, with a great air of mystery, got up, and, carefully closing the door after the girl, turned to the Squire and his wife with:

"I've come to tell you something about her."

"Something about Anna?" said the Squire indignantly.

"Oh, no, not about our Anna," protested Mrs. Bartlett: "Why, she is the best kind of a girl; we are all devoted to her."

"That's just the saddest part of it, I says to myself when I heard.

How can I ever make up my mind to tell them pore, dear Bartletts, who took her in, and has been treating her like one of their own family ever since? It will come hard on, them, I sez, but that ought not to deter me from my duty."

"Look here, Marthy," thundered the Squire, "if you've got anything to say about that girl, out with it----"

"Well, land sake--you needn't be so touchy; she ain't kin to you, and you might thank your lucky stars she ain't."

"Well, what is it, Marthy?" interposed Mrs. Bartlett. "Anna'll be down in a minute."

"Well, you know, I have been sewin' down to Warren Center this last week, and Maria Thomson, from Belden, was visiting there, and naturally we all got to talking 'bout folks up this way, and that girl Anna Moore's name was mentioned, and I'm blest if Maria Thomson didn't recognize her from my description.

"I was telling them 'bout the way she came here last June, pale as a ghost, and how she said her mother had just died and she'd been sick, and they knew right off who she was."

Marthy loved few things as she did an interested audience. It was her meat and drink.

"Well, she didn't call herself Moore in Belden, though that was her mother's name--she called herself Lennox," Marthy grinned. "She was one of those married ladies who forgot their wedding rings."

The Squire knit his brows and his jaws came together with a snap; there were tears in Mrs. Bartlett's eyes. The gossip looked from one to the other to see the impression her words were making.

It spurred her on to new efforts. She positively rolled the words about in delight before she could utter them.

"Well, the girl's mother, who had been looking worried out of her skin, took sick and died all of a sudden, and the girl took sick herself very soon afterwards--and what do you think? A girl baby was born to Mrs.

Lennox, but her husband never came near her. Fortunately, the baby did not live to embarra.s.s her. It died, and she packed up and left Belden.

That's when she came here.

"And now," continued the village inquisitor, summing up her terrible evidence, "what are we to think of a girl called Miss Moore in one town and Mrs. Lennox in the other, with no sign of a wedding ring and no sign of a husband? And what are we going to think of that baby? It seems to me scandalous." And she leaned back in her chair and rocked furiously.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Martha Perkins tells the story of Anna Moore's past life.]

The Squire brought his hand down or the table with terrible force, his pleasant face, was distorted with rage and indignation.

"Just what I always said would come of taking in strange creatures that we knew nothing about. Do you think that I will have a creature like that in my house with my wife and my niece, polluting them with her very presence?--out she goes this minute!"

He strode over to the door through which Anna had pa.s.sed a few moments before, he flung it open and was about to call when he felt his wife cling frantically to his arm.

"Father, don't do anything in anger that you'll repent of later. How do you know this is true? Look how well the girl has acted since she has been here"--and in a lower voice, "you know that Marthy's given to talking."

The hand on the k.n.o.b relaxed, a kindly light replaced the anger in his eyes.

"You are right, Looizy, what we've heard is only hearsay, I'll not say a word to the girl till I know; but to-morrow I am going to Belden and find out the whole story from beginning to end."

Kate and the professor came in laden with wraps, laughing and talking in great glee. Kate was going to ride in the sleigh with the professor, and the discovery of a new species of potato-bug could not have delighted him more. He was in a most gallant mood, and concluding that this was the opportunity for making himself agreeable, he undertook to put on Kate's rubbers over her dainty dancing slippers.

Perhaps it was a glimpse of the cobwebby black silk stocking that ensnared his wits, perhaps it was the delight of kneeling to Kate even in this humble capacity. In either case, the result was equally grotesque; Kate found her dainty feet neatly enclosed in the professor's ungainly arctics, while he hopelessly contemplated her overshoe and the size of his own foot.

Anna returned with Mrs. Bartlett's bonnet and cloak before the laugh at the professor had subsided. She adjusted the cloak, tied Mrs.

Bartlett's bonnet strings with daughterly care and then turned to look after the Squire's comfort, but he strode past her to the sleigh with Marthy. Kate and the professor called on a cheery "Good-night," but Mrs. Bartlett remained long enough to take the pretty, sorrowful face in her hands and give it a sweet, motherly kiss.

When the jingling of the sleighbells died away across the snow, Hi offered to read jokes to Anna from "Pickings from Puck," which he had selected as a Christmas present from Kate, if she would consent to have supper in the sitting-room, where it was warm and cosy. Anna began to pop the corn, and Hi to read the jokes with more effort than he would have expended on the sawing of a cord of wood.