The Old Peabody Pew: A Christmas Romance of a Country Church

By Wiggin

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Title: The Old Peabody Pew
       A Christmas Romance of a Country Church


Author: Kate Douglas Wiggin

Release Date: March 22, 2005  [eBook #1902]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD PEABODY PEW***





Transcribed from the 1907 Archibald Constable & Co. edition by David
Price, email [email protected]





The Old Peabody Pew: A Christmas Romance of a Country Church


Dedication


To a certain handful of dear New England women of names unknown to the
world, dwelling in a certain quiet village, alike unknown:--

We have worked together to make our little corner of the great universe a
pleasanter place in which to live, and so we know, not only one another's
names, but something of one another's joys and sorrows, cares and
burdens, economies, hopes, and anxieties.

We all remember the dusty uphill road that leads to the green church
common.  We remember the white spire pointing upward against a background
of blue sky and feathery elms.  We remember the sound of the bell that
falls on the Sabbath morning stillness, calling us across the
daisy-sprinkled meadows of June, the golden hayfields of July, or the
dazzling whiteness and deep snowdrifts of December days.  The little
cabinet-organ that plays the doxology, the hymn-books from which we sing
"Praise God from whom all blessings flow," the sweet freshness of the old
meeting-house, within and without--how we have toiled to secure and
preserve these humble mercies for ourselves and our children!

There really _is_ a Dorcas Society, as you and I well know, and one not
unlike that in these pages; and you and I have lived through many
discouraging, laughable, and beautiful experiences while we emulated the
Bible Dorcas, that woman "full of good works and alms deeds."

There never was a Peabody Pew in the Tory Hill Meeting-House, and Nancy's
love story and Justin's never happened within its century-old walls; but
I have imagined only one of the many romances that have had their birth
under the shadow of that steeple, did we but realize it.

As you have sat there on open-windowed Sundays, looking across purple
clover-fields to blue distant mountains, watching the palm-leaf fans
swaying to and fro in the warm stillness before sermon time, did not the
place seem full of memories, for has not the life of two villages ebbed
and flowed beneath that ancient roof?  You heard the hum of droning bees
and followed the airy wings of butterflies fluttering over the
gravestones in the old churchyard, and underneath almost every moss-grown
tablet some humble romance lies buried and all but forgotten.

If it had not been for you, I should never have written this story, so I
give it back to you tied with a sprig from Ophelia's nosegay; a spring of
"rosemary, that's for remembrance."

K. D. W.

August, 1907




CHAPTER I


Edgewood, like all the other villages along the banks of the Saco, is
full of sunny slopes and leafy hollows.  There are little, rounded, green-
clad hillocks that might, like their scriptural sisters, "skip with joy,"
and there are grand, rocky hills tufted with gaunt pine trees--these
leading the eye to the splendid heights of a neighbour State, where snow-
crowned peaks tower in the blue distance, sweeping the horizon in a long
line of majesty.

Tory Hill holds its own among the others for peaceful beauty and fair
prospect, and on its broad, level summit sits the white-painted Orthodox
Meeting-House.  This faces a grassy common where six roads meet, as if
the early settlers had determined that no one should lack salvation
because of a difficulty in reaching its visible source.

The old church has had a dignified and fruitful past, dating from that
day in 1761 when young Paul Coffin received his call to preach at a
stipend of fifty pounds sterling a year; answering "that never having
heard of any Uneasiness among the people about his Doctrine or manner of
life, he declared himself pleased to Settle as Soon as might be Judged
Convenient."

But that was a hundred and fifty years ago, and much has happened since
those simple, strenuous old days.  The chastening hand of time has been
laid somewhat heavily on the town as well as on the church.  Some of her
sons have marched to the wars and died on the field of honour; some,
seeking better fortunes, have gone westward; others, wearying of village
life, the rocky soil, and rigours of farm-work, have become entangled in
the noise and competition, the rush and strife, of cities.  When the
sexton rings the bell nowadays, on a Sunday morning, it seems to have
lost some of its old-time militant strength, something of its hope and
courage; but it still rings, and although the Davids and Solomons, the
Matthews, Marks, and Pauls of former congregations have left few
descendants to perpetuate their labours, it will go on ringing as long as
there is a Tabitha, a Dorcas, a Lois, or a Eunice left in the community.

This sentiment had been maintained for a quarter of a century, but it was
now especially strong, as the old Tory Hill Meeting-House had been
undergoing for several years more or less extensive repairs.  In point of
fact, the still stronger word, "improvements," might be used with
impunity; though whenever the Dorcas Society, being female, and therefore
possessed of notions regarding comfort and beauty, suggested any serious
changes, the finance committees, which were inevitably male in their
composition, generally disapproved of making any impious alterations in a
tabernacle, chapel, temple, or any other building used for purposes of
worship.  The majority in these august bodies asserted that their
ancestors had prayed and sung there for a century and a quarter, and what
was good enough for their ancestors was entirely suitable for them.
Besides, the community was becoming less and less prosperous, and church-
going was growing more and more lamentably uncommon, so that even from a
business standpoint, any sums expended upon decoration by a poor and
struggling parish would be worse than wasted.

In the particular year under discussion in this story, the valiant and
progressive Mrs. Jeremiah Burbank was the president of the Dorcas
Society, and she remarked privately and publicly that if her ancestors
liked a smoky church, they had a perfect right to the enjoyment of it,
but that she didn't intend to sit through meeting on winter Sundays, with
her white ostrich feather turning grey and her eyes smarting and
watering, for the rest of her natural life.

Whereupon, this being in a business session, she then and there proposed
to her already hypnotized constituents ways of earning enough money to
build a new chimney on the other side of the church.

An awe-stricken community witnessed this beneficent act of vandalism,
and, finding that no thunderbolts of retribution descended from the
skies, greatly relished the change.  If one or two aged persons
complained that they could not sleep as sweetly during sermon-time in the
now clear atmosphere of the church, and that the parson's eye was keener
than before, why, that was a mere detail, and could not be avoided; what
was the loss of a little sleep compared with the discoloration of Mrs.
Jere Burbank's white ostrich feather and the smarting of Mrs. Jere
Burbank's eyes?

A new furnace followed the new chimney, in due course, and as a sense of
comfort grew, there was opportunity to notice the lack of beauty.  Twice
in sixty years had some well-to-do summer parishioner painted the
interior of the church at his own expense; but although the roof had been
many times reshingled, it had always persisted in leaking, so that the
ceiling and walls were disfigured by unsightly spots and stains and
streaks.  The question of shingling was tacitly felt to be outside the
feminine domain, but as there were five women to one man in the church
membership, the feminine domain was frequently obliged to extend its
limits into the hitherto unknown.  Matters of tarring and water-proofing
were discussed in and out of season, and the very school-children imbibed
knowledge concerning lapping, overlapping, and cross-lapping, and first
and second quality of cedar shingles.  Miss Lobelia Brewster, who had a
rooted distrust of anything done by mere man, created strife by remarking
that she could have stopped the leak in the belfry tower with her red
flannel petticoat better than the Milltown man with his new-fangled
rubber sheeting, and that the last shingling could have been more
thoroughly done by a "female infant babe"; whereupon the person
criticized retorted that he wished Miss Lobelia Brewster had a few infant
babes to "put on the job--he'd like to see 'em try."  Meantime several
male members of the congregation, who at one time or another had sat on
the roof during the hottest of the dog days to see that shingling
operations we're conscientiously and skilfully performed, were very
pessimistic as to any satisfactory result ever being achieved.

"The angle of the roof--what they call the 'pitch'--they say that that's
always been wrong," announced the secretary of the Dorcas in a business
session.

"Is it that kind of pitch that the Bible says you can't touch without
being defiled?  If not, I vote that we unshingle the roof and alter the
pitch!"  This proposal came from a sister named Maria Sharp, who had
valiantly offered the year before to move the smoky chimney with her own
hands, if the "men-folks" wouldn't.

But though the incendiary suggestion of altering the pitch was received
with applause at the moment, subsequent study of the situation proved
that such a proceeding was entirely beyond the modest means of the
society.  Then there arose an ingenious and militant carpenter in a
neighbouring village, who asserted that he would shingle the
meeting-house roof for such and such a sum, and agree to drink every drop
of water that would leak in afterward.  This was felt by all parties to
be a promise attended by extraordinary risks, but it was accepted
nevertheless, Miss Lobelia Brewster remarking that the rash carpenter,
being already married, could not marry a Dorcas anyway, and even if he
died, he was not a resident of Edgewood, and therefore could be more
easily spared, and that it would be rather exciting, just for a change,
to see a man drink himself to death with rain-water.  The expected
tragedy never occurred, however, and the inspired shingler fulfilled his
promise to the letter, so that before many months the Dorcas Society
proceeded, with incredible exertion, to earn more money, and the interior
of the church was neatly painted and made as fresh as a rose.  With no
smoke, no rain, no snow nor melting ice to defile it, the good old
landmark that had been pointing its finger Heavenward for over a century
would now be clean and fragrant for years to come, and the weary sisters
leaned back in their respective rocking-chairs and drew deep breaths of
satisfaction.

These breaths continued to be drawn throughout an unusually arduous
haying season; until, in fact, a visitor from a neighbouring city was
heard to remark that the Tory Hill Meeting-House would be one of the best
preserved and pleasantest churches in the whole State of Maine, if only
it were suitably carpeted.

This thought had secretly occurred to many a Dorcas in her hours of pie-
making, preserving, or cradle-rocking, but had been promptly extinguished
as flagrantly extravagant and altogether impossible.  Now that it had
been openly mentioned, the contagion of the idea spread, and in a month
every sort of honest machinery for the increase of funds had been set in
motion: harvest suppers, pie sociables, old folk's concerts, apron sales,
and, as a last resort, a subscription paper, for the church floor
measured hundreds of square yards, and the carpet committee announce that
a good ingrain could not be purchased, even with the church discount, for
less than ninety-seven cents a yard.

The Dorcases took out their pencils, and when they multiplied the surface
of the floor by the price of the carpet per yard, each Dorcas attaining a
result entirely different from all the others, there was a shriek of
dismay, especially from the secretary, who had included in her
mathematical operation certain figures in her possession representing the
cubical contents of the church and the offending pitch of the roof,
thereby obtaining a product that would have dismayed a Croesus.  Time
sped and efforts increased, but the Dorcases were at length obliged to
clip the wings of their desire and content themselves with carpeting the
pulpit and pulpit steps, the choir, and the two aisles, leaving the floor
in the pews until some future year.

How the women cut and contrived and matched that hardly-bought red
ingrain carpet, in the short December afternoons that ensued after its
purchase; so that, having failed to be ready for Thanksgiving, it could
be finished for the Christmas festivities!

They were sewing in the church, and as the last stitches were being
taken, Maria Sharp suddenly ejaculated in her impulsive fashion:--

"Wouldn't it have been just perfect if we could have had the pews
repainted before we laid the new carpet!"

"It would, indeed," the president answered; "but it will take us all
winter to pay for the present improvements, without any thought of fresh
paint.  If only we had a few more men-folks to help along!"

"Or else none at all!" was Lobelia Brewster's suggestion.  "It's havin'
so few that keeps us all stirred up.  If there wa'n't any anywheres, we'd
have women deacons and carpenters and painters, and get along first rate;
for somehow the supply o' women always holds out, same as it does with
caterpillars an' flies an' grasshoppers!"

Everybody laughed, although Maria Sharp asserted that she for one was not
willing to be called a caterpillar simply because there were too many
women in the universe.

"I never noticed before how shabby and scarred and dirty the pews are,"
said the minister's wife as she looked at them reflectively.

"I've been thinking all the afternoon of the story about the poor old
woman and the lily," and Nancy Wentworth's clear voice broke into the
discussion.  "Do you remember some one gave her a stalk of Easter lilies
and she set them in a glass pitcher on the kitchen table?  After looking
at them for a few minutes, she got up from her chair and washed the
pitcher until the glass shone.  Sitting down again, she glanced at the
little window.  It would never do; she had forgotten how dusty and
blurred it was, and she took her cloth and burnished the panes.  Then she
scoured the table, then the floor, then blackened the stove before she
sat down to her knitting.  And of course the lily had done it all, just
by showing, in its whiteness, how grimy everything else was."

The minister's wife who had been in Edgewood only a few months, looked
admiringly at Nancy's bright face, wondering that five-and-thirty years
of life, including ten of school-teaching, had done so little to mar its
serenity.  "The lily story is as true as the gospel!" she exclaimed, "and
I can see how one thing has led you to another in making the church
comfortable.  But my husband says that two coats of paint on the pews
would cost a considerable sum."

"How about cleaning them?  I don't believe they've had a good hard
washing since the flood."  The suggestion came from Deacon Miller's wife
to the president.

"They can't even be scrubbed for less than fifteen or twenty dollars, for
I thought of that and asked Mrs. Simpson yesterday, and she said twenty
cents a pew was the cheapest she could do it for."

"We've done everything else," said Nancy Wentworth, with a twitch of her
thread; "why don't we scrub the pews?  There's nothing in the orthodox
creed to forbid, is there?"

"Speakin' o' creeds," and here old Mrs. Sargent paused in her work,
"Elder Ransom from Acreville stopped with us last night, an' he tells me
they recite the Euthanasian Creed every few Sundays in the Episcopal
Church.  I didn't want him to know how ignorant I was, but I looked up
the word in the dictionary.  It means easy death, and I can't see any
sense in that, though it's a terrible long creed, the Elder says, an' if
it's any longer 'n ourn, I should think anybody _might_ easy die learnin'
it!"

"I think the word is Athanasian," ventured the minister's wife.

"Elder Ransom's always plumb full o' doctrine," asserted Miss Brewster,
pursuing the subject.  "For my part, I'm glad he preferred Acreville to
our place.  He was so busy bein' a minister, he never got round to bein'
a human creeter.  When he used to come to sociables and picnics, always
lookin' kind o' like the potato blight, I used to think how complete he'd
be if he had a foldin' pulpit under his coat tails; they make foldin'
beds nowadays, an' I s'pose they could make foldin' pulpits, if there was
a call."

"Land sakes, I hope there won't be!" exclaimed Mrs. Sargent.  "An' the
Elder never said much of anything either, though he was always preachin'!
Now your husband, Mis' Baxter, always has plenty to say after you think
he's all through.  There's water in his well when the others is all dry!"

"But how about the pews?" interrupted Mrs. Burbank.  "I think Nancy's
idea is splendid, and I want to see it carried out.  We might make it a
picnic, bring our luncheons, and work all together; let every woman in
the congregation come and scrub her own pew."

"Some are too old, others live at too great a distance," and the
minister's wife sighed a little; "indeed, most of those who once owned
the pews or sat in them seemed to be dead, or gone away to live in busier
places."

"I've no patience with 'em, gallivantin' over the earth," and here
Lobelia rose and shook the carpet threads from her lap.  "I shouldn't
want to live in a livelier place than Edgewood, seem's though!  We wash
and hang out Mondays, iron Tuesdays, cook Wednesdays, clean house and
mend Thursdays and Fridays, bake Saturdays, and go to meetin' Sundays.  I
don't hardly see how they can do any more 'n that in Chicago!"

"Never mind if we have lost members!" said the indomitable Mrs. Burbank.
"The members we still have left must work all the harder.  We'll each
clean our own pew, then take a few of our neighbours', and then hire Mrs.
Simpson to do the wainscoting and floor.  Can we scrub Friday and lay the
carpet Saturday?  My husband and Deacon Miller can help us at the end of
the week.  All in favour manifest it by the usual sign.  Contrary minded?
It is a vote."

There never were any contrary minded when Mrs. Jere Burbank was in the
chair.  Public sentiment in Edgewood was swayed by the Dorcas Society,
but Mrs. Burbank swayed the Dorcases themselves as the wind sways the
wheat.




CHAPTER II


The old Meeting House wore an animated aspect when the eventful Friday
came, a cold, brilliant, sparkling December day, with good sleighing, and
with energy in every breath that swept over the dazzling snowfields.  The
sexton had built a fire in the furnace on the way to his morning work--a
fire so economically contrived that it would last exactly the four or
five necessary hours, and not a second more.  At eleven o'clock all the
pillars of the society had assembled, having finished their own household
work and laid out on their respective kitchen tables comfortable
luncheons for the men of the family, if they were fortunate enough to
number any among their luxuries.  Water was heated upon oil-stoves set
about here and there, and there was a brave array of scrubbing-brushes,
cloths, soap, and even sand and soda, for it had been decided and
manifested-by-the-usual-sign-and-no-contrary-minded-and-it-was-a-vote
that the dirt was to come off, whether the paint came with it or not.
Each of the fifteen women present selected a block of seats, preferably
one in which her own was situated, and all fell busily to work.

"There is nobody here to clean the right-wing pews," said Nancy
Wentworth, "so I will take those for my share."

"You're not making a very wise choice, Nancy," and the minister's wife
smiled as she spoke.  "The infant class of the Sunday-school sits there,
you know, and I expect the paint has had extra wear and tear.  Families
don't seem to occupy those pews regularly nowadays."

"I can remember when every seat in the whole church was filled, wings an'
all," mused Mrs. Sargent, wringing out her wascloth in a reminiscent
mood.  "The one in front o' you, Nancy, was always called the 'deef pew'
in the old times, and all the folks that was hard o' hearin' used to
congregate there."

"The next pew hasn't been occupied since I came here," said the
minister's wife.

"No," answered Mrs. Sargent, glad of any opportunity to retail
neighbourhood news.  "'Squire Bean's folks have moved to Portland to be
with the married daughter.  Somebody has to stay with her, and her
husband won't.  The 'Squire ain't a strong man, and he's most too old to
go to meetin' now.  The youngest son has just died in New York, so I
hear."

"What ailed him?" inquired Maria Sharp.

"I guess he was completely wore out takin' care of his health," returned
Mrs. Sargent.  "He had a splendid constitution from a boy, but he was
always afraid it wouldn't last him.--The seat back o' 'Squire Bean's is
the old Peabody pew--ain't that the Peabody pew you're scrubbin', Nancy?"

"I believe so," Nancy answered, never pausing in her labours.  "It's so
long since anybody sat there, it's hard to remember."

"It is the Peabodys', I know it, because the aisle runs right up facin'
it.  I can see old Deacon Peabody settin' in this end same as if 'twas
yesterday."

"He had died before Jere and I came back here to live," said Mrs.
Burbank.  "The first I remember, Justin Peabody sat in the end seat; the
sister that died, next, and in the corner, against the wall, Mrs.
Peabody, with a crepe shawl and a palm-leaf fan.  They were a handsome
family.  You used to sit with them sometimes, Nancy; Esther was great
friends with you."

"Yes, she was," Nancy replied, lifting the tattered cushion from its
place and brushing it; "and I with her.--What is the use of scrubbing and
carpeting, when there are only twenty pew-cushions and six hassocks in
the whole church, and most of them ragged?  How can I ever mend this?"

"I shouldn't trouble myself to darn other people's cushions!"

This unchristian sentiment came in Mrs. Miller's ringing tones from the
rear of the church.

"I don't know why," argued Maria Sharp.  "I'm going to mend my Aunt
Achsa's cushion, and we haven't spoken for years; but hers is the next
pew to mine, and I'm going to have my part of the church look decent,
even if she is too stingy to do her share.  Besides, there aren't any
Peabodys left to do their own darning, and Nancy was friends with
Esther."

"Yes, it's nothing more than right," Nancy replied, with a note of relief
in her voice, "considering Esther."

"Though he don't belong to the scrubbin' sex, there is one Peabody alive,
as you know, if you stop to think, Maria; for Justin's alive, and livin'
out West somewheres.  At least, he's as much alive as ever he was; he was
as good as dead when he was twenty-one, but his mother was always too
soft-hearted to bury him."

There was considerable laughter over this sally of the outspoken Mrs.
Sargent, whose keen wit was the delight of the neighbourhood.

"I know he's alive and doing business in Detroit, for I got his address a
week or ten days ago, and wrote, asking him if he'd like to give a couple
of dollars toward repairing the old church."

Everybody looked at Mrs. Burbank with interest.

"Hasn't he answered?" asked Maria Sharp.

Nancy Wentworth held her breath, turned her face to the wall, and
silently wiped the paint of the wainscoting.  The blood that had rushed
into her cheeks at Mrs. Sargent's jeering reference to Justin Peabody
still lingered there for any one who ran to read, but fortunately nobody
ran; they were too busy scrubbing.

"Not yet.  Folks don't hurry about answering when you ask them for a
contribution," replied the president, with a cynicism common to persons
who collect funds for charitable purposes.  "George Wickham sent me
twenty-five cents from Denver.  When I wrote him a receipt, I said thank
you same as Aunt Polly did when the neighbours brought her a piece of
beef: 'Ever so much obleeged, but don't forget me when you come to kill a
pig.'--Now, Mrs. Baxter, you shan't clean James Bruce's pew, or what was
his before he turned Second Advent.  I'll do that myself, for he used to
be in my Sunday-school class."

"He's the backbone o' that congregation now," asserted Mrs. Sargent, "and
they say he's goin' to marry Mrs. Sam Peters, who sings in their choir as
soon as his year is up.  They make a perfect fool of him in that church."

"You can't make a fool of a man that nature ain't begun with," argued
Miss Brewster.  "Jim Bruce never was very strong-minded, but I declare it
seems to me that when men lose their wives, they lose their wits!  I was
sure Jim would marry Hannah Thompson that keeps house for him.  I
suspected she was lookin' out for a life job when she hired out with
him."

"Hannah Thompson may keep Jim's house, but she'll never keep Jim, that's
certain!" affirmed the president; "and I can't see that Mrs. Peters will
better herself much."

"I don't blame her, for one!" came in no uncertain tones from the left-
wing pews, and the Widow Buzzell rose from her knees and approached the
group by the pulpit.  "If there's anything duller than cookin' three
meals a day _for_ yourself, and settin' down and eatin' 'em _by_
yourself, and then gettin' up and clearin' 'em away _after_ yourself, I'd
like to know it!  I shouldn't want any good-lookin', pleasant-spoken man
to offer himself to me without he expected to be snapped up, that's all!
But if you've made out to get one husband in York County, you can thank
the Lord and not expect any more favours.  I used to think Tom was poor
comp'ny and complain I couldn't have any conversation with him, but land,
I could talk at him, and there's considerable comfort in that.  And I
could pick up after him!  Now every room in my house is clean, and every
closet and bureau drawer, too; I can't start drawin' in another rug, for
I've got all the rugs I can step foot on.  I dried so many apples last
year I shan't need to cut up any this season.  My jelly and preserves
ain't out, and there I am; and there most of us are, in this village,
without a man to take steps for and trot 'round after!  There's just
three husbands among the fifteen women scrubbin' here now, and the rest
of us is all old maids and widders.  No wonder the men-folks die, or move
away like Justin Peabody; a place with such a mess o' women-folks ain't
healthy to live in, whatever Lobelia Brewster may say."




CHAPTER III


Justin Peabody had once faithfully struggled with the practical
difficulties of life in Edgewood, or so he had thought, in those old days
of which Nancy Wentworth was thinking as she wiped the paint of the
Peabody pew.  Work in the mills did not attract him; he had no capital to
invest in a stock of goods for store-keeping; school-teaching offered him
only a pittance; there remained then only the farm, if he were to stay at
home and keep his mother company.

"Justin don't seem to take no holt of things," said the neighbours.

"Good Heavens!"  It seemed to him that there were no things to take hold
of!  That was his first thought; later he grew to think that the trouble
all lay in himself, and both thoughts bred weakness.

The farm had somehow supported the family in the old Deacon's time, but
Justin seemed unable to coax a competence from the soil.  He could, and
did, rise early and work late; till the earth, sow crops; but he could
not make the rain fall nor the sun shine at the times he needed them, and
the elements, however much they might seem to favour his neighbours,
seldom smiled on his enterprises.  The crows liked Justin's corn better
than any other in Edgewood.  It had a richness peculiar to itself, a
quality that appealed to the most jaded palate, so that it was really
worth while to fly over a mile of intervening fields and pay it the
delicate compliment of preference.

Justin could explain the attitude of caterpillars, worms, grasshoppers,
and potato-bugs toward him only by assuming that he attracted them as the
magnet in the toy boxes attracts the miniature fishes.

"Land of liberty! look at 'em congregate!" ejaculated Jabe Slocum, when
he was called in for consultation.  "Now if you'd gone in for breedin'
insecks, you could be as proud as Cuffy an' exhibit 'em at the County
Fair!  They'd give yer prizes for size an' numbers an' speed, I guess!
Why, say, they're real crowded for room--the plants ain't give 'em enough
leaves to roost on!  Have you tried 'Bug Death'?"

"It acts like a tonic on them," said Justin gloomily.

"Sho! you don't say so!  Now mine can't abide the sight nor smell of it.
What 'bout Paris green?"

"They thrive on it; it's as good as an appetizer."

"Well," said Jabe Slocum, revolving the quid of tobacco in his mouth
reflectively, "the bug that ain't got no objection to p'ison is a bug
that's got ways o' thinkin' an' feelin' an' reasonin' that I ain't able
to cope with!  P'r'aps it's all a leadin' o' Providence.  Mebbe it shows
you'd ought to quit farmin' crops an' take to raisin' live stock!"

Justin did just that, as a matter of fact, a year or two later; but stock
that has within itself the power of being "live" has also rare
qualifications for being dead when occasion suits, and it generally did
suit Justin's stock.  It proved prone not only to all the general
diseases that cattle-flesh is heir to, but was capable even of suicide.
At least, it is true that two valuable Jersey calves, tied to stakes on
the hillside, had flung themselves violently down the bank and strangled
themselves with their own ropes in a manner which seemed to show that
they found no pleasure in existence, at all events on the Peabody farm.

These were some of the little tragedies that had sickened young Justin
Peabody with life in Edgewood, and Nancy Wentworth, even then, realized
some of them and sympathized without speaking, in a girl's poor, helpless
way.

Mrs. Simpson had washed the floor in the right wing of the church and
Nancy had cleaned all the paint.  Now she sat in the old Peabody pew
darning the forlorn, faded cushion with grey carpet-thread: thread as
grey as her own life.

The scrubbing-party had moved to its labours in a far corner of the
church, and two of the women were beginning preparations for the basket
luncheons.  Nancy's needle was no busier than her memory.  Long years ago
she had often sat in the Peabody pew, sometimes at first as a girl of
sixteen when asked by Esther, and then, on coming home from school at
eighteen, "finished," she had been invited now and again by Mrs. Peabody
herself, on those Sundays when her own invalid mother had not attended
service.

Those were wonderful Sundays--Sundays of quiet, trembling peace and
maiden joy.

Justin sat beside her, and she had been sure then, but had long since
grown to doubt the evidence of her senses, that he, too, vibrated with
pleasure at the nearness.  Was there not a summer morning when his hand
touched her white lace mitt as they held the hymn-book together, and the
lines of the

   Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,
   Thy better portion trace,

became blurred on the page and melted into something indistinguishable
for a full minute or two afterward?  Were there not looks, and looks, and
looks?  Or had she some misleading trick of vision in those days?
Justin's dark, handsome profile rose before her: the level brows and fine
lashes; the well-cut nose and lovable mouth--the Peabody mouth and chin,
somewhat too sweet and pliant for strength, perhaps.  Then the eyes
turned to hers in the old way, just for a fleeting glance, as they had so
often done at prayer-meeting, or sociable, or Sunday service.  Was it not
a man's heart she had seen in them?  And oh, if she could only be sure
that her own woman's heart had not looked out from hers, drawn from its
maiden shelter in spite of all her wish to keep it hidden!

Then followed two dreary years of indecision and suspense, when Justin's
eyes met hers less freely; when his looks were always gloomy and anxious;
when affairs at the Peabody farm grew worse and worse; when his mother
followed her husband, the old Deacon, and her daughter Esther to the
burying-ground in the churchyard.  Then the end of all things came, the
end of the world for Nancy: Justin's departure for the West in a very
frenzy of discouragement over the narrowness and limitation and injustice
of his lot; over the rockiness and barrenness and unkindness of the New
England soil; over the general bitterness of fate and the "bludgeonings
of chance."

He was a failure, born of a family of failures.  If the world owed him a
living, he had yet to find the method by which it could be earned.  All
this he thought and uttered, and much more of the same sort.  In these
days of humbled pride self was paramount, though it was a self he
despised.  There was no time for love.  Who was he for a girl to lean
upon?--he who could not stand erect himself!

He bade a stiff good-bye to his neighbours, and to Nancy he vouchsafed
little more.  A handshake, with no thrill of love in it such as might
have furnished her palm, at least, some memories to dwell upon; a few
stilted words of leave-taking; a halting, meaningless sentence or two
about his "botch" of life--then he walked away from the Wentworth
doorstep.  But half way down the garden path, where the shrivelled
hollyhocks stood like sentinels, did a wave of something different sweep
over him--a wave of the boyish, irresponsible past when his heart had
wings and could fly without fear to its mate--a wave of the past that was
rushing through Nancy's mind, well-nigh burying her in its bitter-sweet
waters!  For he lifted his head, and suddenly retracing his steps, he
came toward her, and, taking her hand again, said forlornly: "You'll see
me back when my luck turns, Nancy."

Nancy knew that the words might mean little or much, according to the
manner in which they were uttered, but to her hurt pride and sore, shamed
woman-instinct, they were a promise, simply because there was a choking
sound in Justin's voice and tears in Justin's eyes.  "You'll see me back
when my luck turns, Nancy;" this was the phrase upon which she had lived
for more than ten years.  Nancy had once heard the old parson say, ages
ago, that the whole purpose of life was the growth of the soul; that we
eat, sleep, clothe ourselves, work, love, all to give the soul another
day, month, year, in which to develop.  She used to wonder if her soul
could be growing in the monotonous round of her dull duties and her
duller pleasures.  She did not confess it even to herself; nevertheless
she knew that she worked, ate, slept, to live until Justin's luck turned.
Her love had lain in her heart a bird without a song, year after year.
Her mother had dwelt by her side and never guessed; her father too; and
both were dead.  The neighbours also, lynx-eyed and curious, had never
suspected.  If she had suffered, no one in Edgewood was any the wiser,
for the maiden heart is not commonly worn on the sleeve in New England.
If she had been openly pledged to Justin Peabody, she could have waited
twice ten years with a decent show of self-respect, for long engagements
were viewed rather as a matter of course in that neighbourhood.  The
endless months had gone on since that grey November day when Justin had
said good-bye.  It had been just before Thanksgiving, and she went to
church with an aching and ungrateful heart.  The parson read from the
eighth chapter of St. Matthew, a most unexpected selection for that
holiday.  "If you can't find anything else to be thankful for," he cried,
"go home and be thankful you are not a leper!"

Nancy took the drastic counsel away from the church with her, and it was
many a year before she could manage to add to this slender store anything
to increase her gratitude for mercies given, though all the time she was
outwardly busy, cheerful, and helpful.

Justin had once come back to Edgewood, and it was the bitterest drop in
her cup of bitterness that she was spending that winter in Berwick
(where, so the neighbours told him, she was a great favourite in society,
and was receiving much attention from gentlemen), so that she had never
heard of his visit until the spring had come again.  Parted friends did
not keep up with one another's affairs by means of epistolary
communication, in those days, in Edgewood; it was not the custom.  Spoken
words were difficult enough to Justin Peabody, and written words were
quite impossible, especially if they were to be used to define his half-
conscious desires and his fluctuations of will, or to recount his
disappointments and discouragements and mistakes.




CHAPTER IV


It was Saturday afternoon, the twenty-fourth of December, and the weary
sisters of the Dorcas band rose from their bruised knees and removed
their little stores of carpet-tacks from their mouths.  This was a
feminine custom of long standing, and as no village dressmaker had ever
died of pins in the digestive organs, so were no symptoms of carpet-tacks
ever discovered in any Dorcas, living or dead.  Men wondered at the habit
and reviled it, but stood confounded in the presence of its indubitable
harmlessness.

The red ingrain carpet was indeed very warm, beautiful, and comforting to
the eye, and the sisters were suitably grateful to Providence, and
devoutly thankful to themselves, that they had been enabled to buy, sew,
and lay so many yards of it.  But as they stood looking at their
completed task, it was cruelly true that there was much left to do.

The aisles had been painted dark brown on each side of the red strips
leading from the doors to the pulpit, but the rest of the church floor
was "a thing of shreds and patches."  Each member of the carpet committee
had paid (as a matter of pride, however ill she could afford it) three
dollars and sixty-seven cents for sufficient carpet to lay in her own
pew; but these brilliant spots of conscientious effort only made the
stretches of bare, unpainted floor more evident.  And that was not all.
Traces of former spasmodic and individual efforts desecrated the present
ideals.  The doctor's pew had a pink and blue Brussels on it; the
lawyer's, striped stair-carpeting; the Browns from Deerwander sported
straw matting and were not abashed; while the Greens, the Whites, the
Blacks and the Greys displayed floor coverings as dissimilar as their
names.

"I never noticed it before!" exclaimed Maria Sharp, "but it ain't
Christian, that floor! it's heathenish and ungodly!"

"For mercy's sake, don't swear, Maria," said Mrs. Miller nervously.
"We've done our best, and let's hope that folks will look up and not
down.  It isn't as if they were going to set in the chandelier; they'll
have something else to think about when Nancy gets her hemlock branches
and white carnations in the pulpit vases.  This morning my Abner picked
off two pinks from the plant I've been nursing in my dining-room for
weeks, trying to make it bloom for Christmas.  I slapped his hands good,
and it's been haunting me ever since to think I had to correct him the
day before Christmas--Come, Lobelia, we must be hurrying!"

"One thing comforts me," exclaimed the Widow Buzzell, as she took her
hammer and tacks preparatory to leaving; "and that is that the Methodist
meetin'-house ain't got any carpet at all."

"Mrs. Buzzell, Mrs. Buzzell!" interrupted the minister's wife, with a
smile that took the sting from her speech.  "It will be like punishing
little Abner Miller; if we think those thoughts on Christmas Eve, we
shall surely be haunted afterward."

"And anyway," interjected Maria Sharp, who always saved the situation,
"you just wait and see if the Methodists don't say they'd rather have no
carpet at all than have one that don't go all over the floor.  I know
'em!" and she put on her hood and blanket-shawl as she gave one last fond
look at the improvements.

"I'm going home to get my supper, and come back afterward to lay the
carpet in my pew; my beans and brown bread will be just right by now, and
perhaps it will rest me a little; besides, I must feed 'Zekiel."

As Nancy Wentworth spoke, she sat in a corner of her own modest rear
seat, looking a little pale and tired.  Her waving dark hair had loosened
and fallen over her cheeks, and her eyes gleamed from under it wistfully.
Nowadays Nancy's eyes never had the sparkle of gazing into the future,
but always the liquid softness that comes from looking backward.

"The church will be real cold by then, Nancy," objected Mrs.
Burbank.--"Good-night, Mrs. Baxter."

"Oh, no!  I shall be back by half-past six, and I shall not work long.  Do
you know what I believe I'll do, Mrs. Burbank, just through the holidays?
Christmas and New Year's both coming on Sunday this year, there'll be a
great many out to church, not counting the strangers that'll come to the
special service to-morrow.  Instead of putting down my own pew carpet
that'll never be noticed here in the back, I'll lay it in the old Peabody
pew, for the red aisle-strip leads straight up to it; the ministers
always go up that side, and it does look forlorn."

"That's so!  And all the more because my pew, that's exactly opposite in
the left wing, is new carpeted and cushioned," replied the president.  "I
think it's real generous of you, Nancy, because the Riverboro folks,
knowing that you're a member of the carpet committee, will be sure to
notice, and think it's queer you haven't made an effort to carpet your
own pew."

"Never mind!" smiled Nancy wearily.  "Riverboro folks never go to bed on
Saturday nights without wondering what Edgewood is thinking about them!"

The minister's wife stood at her window watching Nancy as she passed the
parsonage.

"How wasted!  How wasted!" she sighed.  "Going home to eat her lonely
supper and feed 'Zekiel . . . I can bear it for the others, but not for
Nancy . . . Now she has lighted her lamp, now she has put fresh pine on
the fire, for new smoke comes from the chimney.  Why should I sit down
and serve my dear husband, and Nancy feed 'Zekiel?"

There was some truth in Mrs. Baxter's feeling.  Mrs. Buzzell, for
instance, had three sons; Maria Sharp was absorbed in her lame father and
her Sunday-school work; and Lobelia Brewster would not have considered
matrimony a blessing, even under the most favourable conditions.  But
Nancy was framed and planned for other things, and 'Zekiel was an
insufficient channel for her soft, womanly sympathy and her bright
activity of mind and body.

'Zekiel had lost his tail in a mowing-machine; 'Zekiel had the asthma,
and the immersion of his nose in milk made him sneeze, so he was wont to
slip his paw in and out of the dish and lick it patiently for five
minutes together.  Nancy often watched him pityingly, giving him kind and
gentle words to sustain his fainting spirit, but to-night she paid no
heed to him, although he sneezed violently to attract her attention.

She had put her supper on the lighted table by the kitchen window and was
pouring out her cup of tea, when a boy rapped at the door.  "Here's a
paper and a letter, Miss Wentworth," he said.  "It's the second this
week, and they think over to the store that that Berwick widower must be
settin' up and takin' notice!"

She had indeed received a letter the day before, an unsigned
communication, consisting only of the words, "Second Epistle of John.
Verse 12."

She had taken her Bible to look out the reference and found it to be:--

"Having many things to write unto you, I would not write with paper and
ink; but I trust to come unto you, and speak face to face, that our joy
may be full."

The envelope was postmarked New York, and she smiled, thinking that Mrs.
Emerson, a charming lady who had spent the summer in Edgewood, and had
sung with her in the village choir, was coming back, as she had promised,
to have a sleigh ride and see Edgewood in its winter dress.  Nancy had
almost forgotten the first letter in the excitements of her busy day, and
now here was another, from Boston this time.  She opened the envelope and
found again only a single sentence, printed, not written.  (Lest she
should guess the hand, she wondered?)

"Second Epistle of John.  Verse 5."

"And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment
unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one
another."

Was it Mrs. Emerson?  Could it be--any one else?  Was it--?  No, it might
have been, years ago; but not now; not now!--And yet; he was always so
different from other people; and once, in church, he had handed her the
hymn-book with his finger pointing to a certain verse.

She always fancied that her secret fidelity of heart rose from the fact
that Justin Peabody was "different."  From the hour of their first
acquaintance, she was ever comparing him with his companions, and always
to his advantage.  So long as a woman finds all men very much alike (as
Lobelia Brewster did, save that she allowed some to be worse!), she is in
no danger.  But the moment in which she perceives and discriminates
subtle differences, marvelling that there can be two opinions about a
man's superiority, that moment the miracle has happened.

"And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment
unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one
another."

No, it could not be from Justin.  She drank her tea, played with her
beans abstractedly, and nibbled her slice of steaming brown bread.

"Not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee."

No, not a new one; twelve, fifteen years old, that commandment!

"That we love one another."

Who was speaking?  Who had written these words?  The first letter sounded
just like Mrs. Emerson, who had said she was a very poor correspondent,
but that she should just "drop down" on Nancy one of these days; but this
second letter never came from Mrs. Emerson.--Well, there would be an
explanation some time; a pleasant one; one to smile over, and tell
'Zekiel and repeat to the neighbours; but not an unexpected, sacred,
beautiful explanation, such a one as the heart of a woman could imagine,
if she were young enough and happy enough to hope.

She washed her cup and plate; replaced the uneaten beans in the brown
pot, and put them away with the round loaf, folded the cloth (Lobelia
Brewster said Nancy always "set out her meals as if she was entertainin'
company from Portland"), closed the stove dampers, carried the lighted
lamp to a safe corner shelf, and lifted 'Zekiel to his cushion on the
high-backed rocker, doing all with the nice precision of long habit.  Then
she wrapped herself warmly, and locking the lonely little house behind
her, set out to finish her work in the church.




CHAPTER V


At this precise moment Justin Peabody was eating his own beans and brown
bread (articles of diet of which his Detroit landlady was lamentably
ignorant) at the new tavern, not far from the meeting-house.

It would not be fair to him to say that Mrs. Burbank's letter had brought
him back to Edgewood, but it had certainly accelerated his steps.

For the first six years after Justin Peabody left home, he had drifted
about from place to place, saving every possible dollar of his uncertain
earnings in the conscious hope that he could go back to New England and
ask Nancy Wentworth to marry him.  The West was prosperous and
progressive, but how he yearned, in idle moments, for the grimmer and
more sterile soil that had given him birth!

Then came what seemed to him a brilliant chance for a lucky turn of his
savings, and he invested them in an enterprise which, wonderfully as it
promised, failed within six months and left him penniless.  At that
moment he definitely gave up all hope, and for the next few years he put
Nancy as far as possible out of his mind, in the full belief that he was
acting an honourable part in refusing to drag her into his tangled and
fruitless way of life.  If she ever did care for him,--and he could not
be sure, she was always so shy,--she must have outgrown the feeling long
since, and be living happily, or at least contentedly, in her own way.  He
was glad in spite of himself when he heard that she had never married;
but at least he hadn't it on his conscience that _he_ had kept her
single!

On the seventeenth of December, Justin, his business day over, was
walking toward the dreary house in which he ate and slept.  As he turned
the corner, he heard one woman say to another, as they watched a man
stumbling sorrowfully down the street: "Going home will be the worst of
all for him--to find nobody there!"  That was what going home had meant
for him these ten years, but he afterward felt it strange that this
thought should have struck him so forcibly on that particular day.
Entering the boarding-house, he found Mrs. Burbank's letter with its
Edgewood postmark on the hall table, and took it up to his room.  He
kindled a little fire in the air-tight stove, watching the flame creep
from shavings to kindlings, from kindlings to small pine, and from small
pine to the round, hardwood sticks; then when the result seemed certain,
he closed the stove door and sat down to read the letter.  Whereupon all
manner of strange things happened in his head and heart and flesh and
spirit as he sat there alone, his hands in his pockets, his feet braced
against the legs of the stove.

It was a cold winter night, and the snow and sleet beat against the
windows.  He looked about the ugly room: at the washstand with its square
of oilcloth in front and its detestable bowl and pitcher; at the rigours
of his white iron bedstead, with the valley in the middle of the lumpy
mattress and the darns in the rumpled pillowcases; at the dull
photographs of the landlady's hideous husband and children enshrined on
the mantelshelf; looked at the abomination of desolation surrounding him
until his soul sickened and cried out like a child's for something more
like home.  It was as if a spring thaw had melted his ice-bound heart,
and on the crest of a wave it was drifting out into the milder waters of
some unknown sea.  He could have laid his head in the kind lap of a woman
and cried: "Comfort me!  Give me companionship or I die!"

The wind howled in the chimney and rattled the loose window-sashes; the
snow, freezing as it fell, dashed against the glass with hard, cutting
little blows; at least, that is the way in which the wind and snow
flattered themselves they were making existence disagreeable to Justin
Peabody when he read the letter; but never were elements more mistaken.

It was a June Sunday in the boarding-house bedroom; and for that matter
it was not the boarding-house bedroom at all: it was the old Orthodox
church on Tory Hill in Edgewood.

The windows were wide open, and the smell of the purple clover and the
humming of the bees were drifting into the sweet, wide spaces within.
Justin was sitting in the end of the Peabody pew, and Nancy Wentworth was
beside him; Nancy, cool and restful in her white dress; dark-haired Nancy
under the shadow of her shirred muslin hat.

   Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,
   Thy better portion trace.

The melodeon gave the tune, and Nancy and he stood to sing, taking the
book between them.  His hand touched hers, and as the music of the hymn
rose and fell, the future unrolled itself before his eyes; a future in
which Nancy was his wedded wife; and the happy years stretched on and on
in front of them until there was a row of little heads in the old Peabody
pew, and mother and father could look proudly along the line at the young
things they were bringing into the house of the Lord.

The recalling of that vision worked like magic in Justin's blood.  His
soul rose and stretched its wings and "traced its better portion"
vividly, as he sprang to his feet and walked up and down the bedroom
floor.  He would get a few days' leave and go back to Edgewood for
Christmas, to join, with all the old neighbours, in the service at the
meeting-house; and in pursuance of this resolve, he shook his fist in the
face of the landlady's husband on the mantelpiece and dared him to
prevent.

He had a salary of fifty dollars a month, with some very slight prospect
of an increase after January.  He did not see how two persons could eat,
and drink, and lodge, and dress on it in Detroit, but he proposed to give
Nancy Wentworth the refusal of that magnificent future, that brilliant
and tempting offer.  He had exactly one hundred dollars in the bank, and
sixty or seventy of them would be spent in the journeys, counting two
happy, blessed fares back from Edgewood to Detroit; and if he paid only
his own fare back, he would throw the price of the other into the pond
behind the Wentworth house.  He would drop another ten dollars into the
plate on Christmas Day toward the repairs on the church; if he starved,
he would do that.  He was a failure.  Everything his hand touched turned
to naught.  He looked himself full in the face, recognizing his weakness,
and in this supremest moment of recognition he was a stronger man than he
had been an hour before.  His drooping shoulders had straightened; the
restless look had gone from his eyes; his sombre face had something of
repose in it, the repose of a settled purpose.  He was a failure, but
perhaps if he took the risks (and if Nancy would take them--but that was
the trouble, women were so unselfish, they were always willing to take
risks, and one ought not to let them!), perhaps he might do better in
trying to make a living for two than he had in working for himself alone.
He would go home, tell Nancy that he was an unlucky good-for-naught, and
ask her if she would try her hand at making him over.




CHAPTER VI


These were the reasons that had brought Justin Peabody to Edgewood on the
Saturday afternoon before Christmas, and had taken him to the new tavern
on Tory Hill, near the Meeting-House.

Nobody recognized him at the station or noticed him at the tavern, and
after his supper he put on his overcoat and started out for a walk,
aimlessly hoping that he might meet a friend, or failing that, intending
to call on some of his old neighbours, with the view of hearing the
village news and securing some information which might help him to decide
when he had better lay himself and his misfortunes at Nancy Wentworth's
feet.  They were pretty feet!  He remembered that fact well enough under
the magical influence of familiar sights and sounds and odours.  He was
restless, miserable, anxious, homesick--not for Detroit, but for some
heretofore unimagined good; yet, like Bunyan's shepherd boy in the Valley
of Humiliation, he carried "the herb called Hearts-ease in his bosom,"
for he was at last loving consciously.

How white the old church looked, and how green the blinds!  It must have
been painted very lately: that meant that the parish was fairly
prosperous.  There were new shutters in the belfry tower, too; he
remembered the former open space and the rusty bell, and he liked the
change.  Did the chimney use to be in that corner?  No; but his father
had always said it would have drawn better if it had been put there in
the beginning.  New shingles within a year: that was evident to a
practised eye.  He wondered if anything had been done to the inside of
the building, but he must wait until the morrow to see, for, of course,
the doors would be locked.  No; the one at the right side was ajar.  He
opened it softly and stepped into the tiny square entry that he recalled
so well--the one through which the Sunday-school children ran out to the
steps from their catechism, apparently enjoying the sunshine after a
spell of orthodoxy; the little entry where the village girls congregated
while waiting for the last bell to ring--they made a soft blur of pink
and blue and buff, a little flutter of curls and braids and fans and
sunshades, in his mind's eye, as he closed the outer door behind him and
gently opened the inner one.  The church was flooded with moonlight and
snowlight, and there was one lamp burning at the back of the pulpit; a
candle, too, on the pulpit steps.  There was the tip-tap-tip of a tack-
hammer going on in a distant corner.  Was somebody hanging Christmas
garlands?  The new red carpet attracted his notice, and as he grew
accustomed to the dim light, it carried his eye along the aisle he had
trod so many years of Sundays, to the old familiar pew.  The sound of the
hammer ceased and a woman rose from her knees.  A stranger was doing for
the family honour what he ought himself to have done.  The woman turned
to shake her skirt, and it was Nancy Wentworth.  He might have known it.
Women were always faithful; they always remembered old landmarks, old
days, old friends, old duties.  His father and mother and Esther were all
gone; who but dear Nancy would have made the old Peabody pew right and
tidy for the Christmas festival?  Bless her kind womanly heart!

She looked just the same to him as when he last saw her.  Mercifully he
seemed to have held in remembrance all these years not so much her
youthful bloom as her general qualities of mind and heart: her
cheeriness, her spirit, her unflagging zeal, her bright womanliness.  Her
grey dress was turned up in front over a crimson moreen petticoat.  She
had on a cosy jacket, a fur turban of some sort with a redbreast in it,
and her cheeks were flushed from exertion.  "Sweet records, and promises
as sweet," had always met in Nancy's face, and either he had forgotten
how pretty she was, or else she had absolutely grown prettier during his
absence.

Nancy would have chosen the supreme moment of meeting very differently,
but she might well have chosen worse.  She unpinned her skirt and brushed
the threads off, smoothed the pew cushions carefully, and took a last
stitch in the ragged hassock.  She then lifted the Bible and the hymn-
book from the rack, and putting down a bit of flannel on the pulpit
steps, took a flatiron from an oil-stove, and opening the ancient books,
pressed out the well-thumbed leaves one by one with infinite care.  After
replacing the volumes in their accustomed place, she first extinguished
the flame of her stove, which she tucked out of sight, and then blew out
the lamp and the candle.  The church was still light enough for objects
to be seen in a shadowy way, like the objects in a dream, and Justin did
not realize that he was a man in the flesh, looking at a woman; spying,
it might be, upon her privacy.  He was one part of a dream and she
another, and he stood as if waiting, and fearing, to be awakened.

Nancy, having done all, came out of the pew, and standing in the aisle,
looked back at the scene of her labours with pride and content.  And as
she looked, some desire to stay a little longer in the dear old place
must have come over her, or some dread of going back to her lonely
cottage, for she sat down in Justin's corner of the pew with folded
hands, her eyes fixed dreamily on the pulpit and her ears hearing: "Not
as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from
the beginning."

Justin's grasp on the latch tightened as he prepared to close the door
and leave the place, but his instinct did not warn him quickly enough,
after all, for, obeying some uncontrollable impulse, Nancy suddenly fell
on her knees in the pew and buried her face in the cushions.

The dream broke, and in an instant Justin was a man--worse than that, he
was an eavesdropper, ashamed of his unsuspected presence.  He felt
himself standing, with covered head and feet shod, in the holy temple of
a woman's heart.

But his involuntary irreverence brought abundant grace with it.  The
glimpse and the revelation wrought their miracles silently and
irresistibly, not by the slow processes of growth which Nature demands
for her enterprises, but with the sudden swiftness of the spirit.  In an
instant changes had taken place in Justin's soul which his so-called
"experiencing religion" twenty-five years back had been powerless to
effect.  He had indeed been baptized then, but the recording angel could
have borne witness that this second baptism fructified the first, and
became the real herald of the new birth and the new creature.




CHAPTER VII


Justin Peabody silently closed the inner door, and stood in the entry
with his head bent and his heart in a whirl until he should hear Nancy
rise to her feet.  He must take this Heaven-sent chance of telling her
all, but how do it without alarming her?

A moment, and her step sounded in the stillness of the empty church.

Obeying the first impulse, he passed through the outer door, and standing
on the step, knocked once, twice, three times; then, opening it a little
and speaking through the chink, he called, "Is Miss Nancy Wentworth
here?"

"I'm here!" in a moment came Nancy's answer, and then, with a little
wondering tremor in her voice, as if a hint of the truth had already
dawned: "What's wanted?"

"You're wanted, Nancy, wanted badly, by Justin Peabody, come back from
the West."

The door opened wide, and Justin faced Nancy standing half-way down the
aisle, her eyes brilliant, her lips parted.  A week ago Justin's
apparition confronting her in the empty Meeting-House after nightfall,
even had she been prepared for it as now, by his voice, would have
terrified her beyond measure.  Now it seemed almost natural and
inevitable.  She had spent these last days in the church where both of
them had been young and happy together; the two letters had brought him
vividly to mind, and her labour in the old Peabody pew had been one long
excursion into the past in which he was the most prominent and the best-
loved figure.

"I said I'd come back to you when my luck turned, Nancy."

These were so precisely the words she expected him to say, should she
ever see him again face to face, that for an additional moment they but
heightened her sense of unreality.

"Well, the luck hasn't turned, after all, but I couldn't wait any longer.
Have you given a thought to me all these years, Nancy?"

"More than one, Justin"; for the very look upon his face, the tenderness
of his voice, the attitude of his body, outran his words and told her
what he had come home to say, told her that her years of waiting were
over at last.

"You ought to despise me for coming back again with only myself and my
empty hands to offer you."

How easy it was to speak his heart out in this dim and quiet place!  How
tongue-tied he would have been, sitting on the black haircloth sofa in
the Wentworth parlour and gazing at the open soapstone stove!

"Oh, men are such fools!" cried Nancy, smiles and tears struggling
together in her speech, as she sat down suddenly in her own pew and put
her hands over her face.

"They are," agreed Justin humbly, "but I've never stopped loving you,
whenever I've had time for thinking or loving.  And I wasn't sure that
you really cared anything about me; and how could I have asked you when I
hadn't a dollar in the world?"

"There are other things to give a woman besides dollars, Justin."

"Are there?  Well, you shall have them all, every one of them, Nancy, if
you can make up your mind to do without the dollars; for dollars seem to
be just what I can't manage."

Her hand was in his by this time, and they were sitting side by side in
the cushionless, carpetless Wentworth pew.  The door stood open; the
winter moon shone in upon them.  That it was beginning to grow cold in
the church passed unnoticed.  The grasp of the woman's hand seemed to
give the man new hope and courage, and Justin's warm, confiding, pleading
pressure brought balm to Nancy, balm and healing for the wounds her pride
had suffered; joy, too, half-conscious still, that her life need not be
lived to the end in unfruitful solitude.  She had waited, "as some grey
lake lies, full and smooth, awaiting the star below the twilight."  Justin
Peabody might have been no other woman's star, but he was Nancy's!

"Just you sitting beside me here makes me feel as if I'd been asleep or
dead all these years, and just born over again," said Justin.  "I've led
a respectable, hard-working, honest life, Nancy," he continued, "and I
don't owe any man a cent; the trouble is that no man owes me one.  I've
got enough money to pay two fares back to Detroit on Monday, although I
was terribly afraid you wouldn't let me do it.  It'll need a good deal of
thinking and planning, Nancy, for we shall be very poor."

Nancy had been storing up fidelity and affection deep, deep in the hive
of her heart all these years, and now the honey of her helpfulness stood
ready to be gathered.

"Could I keep hens in Detroit?" she asked.  "I can always make them pay."

"Hens--in three rooms, Nancy?"

Her face fell.  "And no yard?"

"No yard."

A moment's pause, and then the smile came.  "Oh, well, I've had yards and
hens for thirty-five years.  Doing without them will be a change.  I can
take in sewing."

"No, you can't, Nancy.  I need your backbone and wits and pluck and
ingenuity, but if I can't ask you to sit with your hands folded for the
rest of your life, as I'd like to, you shan't use them for other people.
You're marrying me to make a man of me, but I'm not marrying you to make
you a drudge."

His voice rang clear and true in the silence, and Nancy's heart vibrated
at the sound.

"Oh, Justin, Justin!" she whispered.  "There's something wrong somewhere,
but we'll find it out together, you and I, and make it right.  You're not
like a failure.  You don't even _look_ poor, Justin; there isn't a man in
Edgewood to compare with you, or I should be washing his dishes and
darning his stockings this minute.  And I am not a pauper!  There'll be
the rent of my little house and a carload of my furniture, so you can put
the three-room idea out of your mind, and your firm will offer you a
larger salary when you tell them you have a wife to take care of.  Oh, I
see it all, and it is as easy and bright and happy as can be!"

Justin put his arm around her and drew her close, with such a throb of
gratitude for her belief and trust that it moved him almost to tears.

There was a long pause: then he said:--

"Now I shall call for you to-morrow morning after the last bell has
stopped ringing, and we will walk up the aisle together and sit in the
old Peabody pew.  We shall be a nine-days' wonder anyway, but this will
be equal to an announcement, especially if you take my arm.  We don't
either of us like to be stared at, but this will show without a word what
we think of each other and what we've promised to be to each other, and
it's the only thing that will make me feel sure of you and settled in my
mind after all these mistaken years.  Have you got the courage, Nancy?"

"I shouldn't wonder!  I guess if I've had courage enough to wait for you,
I've got courage enough to walk up the aisle with you and marry you
besides!" said Nancy.--"Now it is too late for us to stay here any
longer, and you must see me only as far as my gate, for perhaps you
haven't forgotten yet how interested the Brewsters are in their
neighbours."

They stood at the little Wentworth gate for a moment, hand close clasped
in hand.  The night was clear, the air was cold and sparkling, but with
nothing of bitterness in it; the sky was steely blue and the evening star
glowed and burned like a tiny sun.  Nancy remembered the shepherd's song
she had taught the Sunday-school children, and repeated softly:--

   For I my sheep was watching
   Beneath the silent skies,
   When sudden, far to eastward,
   I saw a star arise;
   Then all the peaceful heavens
   With sweetest music rang,
   And glory, glory, glory!
   The happy angels sang.

   So I this night am joyful,
   Though I can scarce tell why,
   It seemeth me that glory
   Hath met us very nigh;
   And we, though poor and humble,
   Have part in heavenly plan,
   For, born to-night, the Prince of Peace
   Shall rule the heart of man.

Justin's heart melted within him like wax to the woman's vision and the
woman's touch.

"Oh, Nancy, Nancy!" he whispered.  "If I had brought my bad luck to you
long, long ago, would you have taken me then, and have I lost years of
such happiness as this?"

"There are some things it is not best for a man to be certain about,"
said Nancy, with a wise smile and a last good-night.




CHAPTER VIII


   "Ring out, sweet bells,
   O'er woods and dells
   Your lovely strains repeat,
   While happy throngs
   With joyous songs
   Each accent gladly greet."

Christmas morning in the old Tory Hill Meeting-House was felt by all of
the persons who were present in that particular year to be a most
exciting and memorable occasion.

The old sexton quite outdid himself, for although he had rung the bell
for more than thirty years, he had never felt greater pride or joy in his
task.  Was not his son John home for Christmas, and John's wife, and a
grandchild newly named Nathaniel for himself?  Were there not spareribs
and turkeys and cranberries and mince pies on the pantry shelves, and
barrels of rosy Baldwins in the cellar and bottles of mother's root beer
just waiting to give a holiday pop?  The bell itself forgot its age and
the suspicion of a crack that dulled its voice on a damp day, and,
inspired by the bright, frosty air, the sexton's inspiring pull, and the
Christmas spirit, gave out nothing but joyous tones.

Ding-dong!  Ding-dong!  It fired the ambitions of star scholars about to
recite hymns and sing solos.  It thrilled little girls expecting dolls
before night.  It excited beyond bearing dozens of little boys being
buttoned into refractory overcoats.  Ding-dong!  Ding-dong!  Mothers'
fingers trembled when they heard it, and mothers' voices cried: "If that
is the second bell, the children will never be ready in time!  Where are
the overshoes?  Where are the mittens?  Hurry, Jack!  Hurry, Jennie!"
Ding-dong!  Ding-dong!  "Where's Sally's muff?  Where's father's fur cap?
Is the sleigh at the door?  Are the hot soapstones in?  Have all of you
your money for the contribution box?"

Ding-dong!  Ding-dong!  It was a blithe bell, a sweet, true bell, a holy
bell, and to Justin, pacing his tavern room, as to Nancy, trembling in
her maiden chamber, it rang a Christmas message:--

   Awake, glad heart!  Arise and sing;
   It is the birthday of thy King!

The congregation filled every seat in the old Meeting-House.

As Maria Sharp had prophesied, there was one ill-natured spinster from a
rival village who declared that the church floor looked like Joseph's
coat laid out smooth; but in the general chorus of admiration, approval,
and good will, this envious speech, though repeated from mouth to mouth,
left no sting.

Another item of interest long recalled was the fact that on that august
and unapproachable day the pulpit vases stood erect and empty, though
Nancy Wentworth had filled them every Sunday since any one could
remember.  This instance, though felt at the time to be of mysterious
significance if the cause were ever revealed, paled into nothingness
when, after the ringing of the last bell, Nancy Wentworth walked up the
aisle on Justin Peabody's arm, and they took their seats side by side in
the old family pew.

("And consid'able close, too, though there was plenty o' room!")

("And no one that I ever heard of so much as suspicioned that they had
ever kept company!")

("And do you s'pose she knew Justin was expected back when she scrubbed
his pew a-Friday?")

("And this explains the empty pulpit vases!")

("And I always said that Nancy would make a real handsome couple if she
ever got anybody to couple with!")

During the unexpected and solemn procession of the two up the aisle the
soprano of the village choir stopped short in the middle of the Doxology,
and the three other voices carried it to the end without any treble.
Also, among those present there were some who could not remember
afterward the precise petitions wafted upward in the opening prayer.

And could it be explained otherwise than by cheerfully acknowledging the
bounty of an overruling Providence that Nancy Wentworth should have had a
new winter dress for the first time in five years--a winter dress of dark
brown cloth to match her beaver muff and victorine?  The existence of
this toilette had been known and discussed in Edgewood for a month past,
and it was thought to be nothing more than a proper token of respect from
a member of the carpet committee to the general magnificence of the
church on the occasion of its reopening after repairs.  Indeed, you could
have identified every member of the Dorcas Society that Sunday morning by
the freshness of her apparel.  The brown dress, then, was generally
expected; but why the white cashmere waist with collar and cuffs of point
lace, devised only and suitable only for the minister's wedding, where it
first saw the light?

"The white waist can only be explained as showing distinct hope!"
whispered the minister's wife during the reading of the church notices.

"To me it shows more than hope; I am very sure that Nancy would never
take any wear out of that lace for hope; it means certainty!" answered
Maria, who was always strong in the prophetic line.

By sermon time Justin's identity had dawned upon most of the
congregation.  A stranger to all but one or two at first, his presence in
the Peabody pew brought his face and figure back, little by little, to
the minds of the old parishioners.

When the contribution plate was passed, the sexton always began at the
right-wing pews, as all the sextons before him had done for a hundred
years.  Every eye in the church was already turned upon Justin and Nancy,
and it was with almost a gasp that those in the vicinity saw a ten dollar
bill fall in the plate.  The sexton reeled, or, if that is too
intemperate a word for a pillar of the church, the good man tottered, but
caught hold of the pew rail with one hand, and, putting the thumb of his
other over the bill, proceeded quickly to the next pew, lest the stranger
should think better of his gift, or demand change, as had occasionally
been done in the olden time.

Nancy never fluttered an eyelash, but sat quietly by Justin's side with
her bosom rising and falling under the beaver fur and her cold hands
clasped tight in the little brown muff.  Far from grudging this
appreciable part of their slender resources, she thrilled with pride to
see Justin's offering fall in the plate.

Justin was too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice anything, but his
munificent contribution had a most unexpected effect upon his reputation,
after all; for on that day, and on many another later one, when his
sudden marriage and departure with Nancy Wentworth were under discussion,
the neighbours said to one another:--

"Justin must be making money fast out West!  He put ten dollars in the
contribution plate a-Sunday, and paid the minister ten more next day for
marryin' him to Nancy; so the Peabody luck has turned at last!" which, as
a matter of fact, it had.

"And all the time," said the chairman of the carpet committee to the
treasurer of the Dorcas Society--"all the time, little as she realized
it, Nancy was laying the carpet in her own pew.  Now she's married to
Justin she'll be the makin' of him, or I miss my guess.  You can't do a
thing with men folks without they're right alongside where you can keep
your eye and hand on 'em.  Justin's handsome and good and stiddy; all he
need is some nice woman to put starch into him.  The Edgewood Peabodys
never had a mite o' stiffenin' in 'em,--limp as dishrags, every blessed
one!  Nancy Wentworth fairly rustles with starch.  Justin hadn't been
engaged to her but a few hours when they walked up the aisle together,
but did you notice the way he carried his head?  I declare I thought 't
would fall off behind!  I shouldn't wonder a mite but they prospered and
come back every summer to set in the old Peabody Pew."



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