Part 7

"Well now, listen!" Rachel continued placidly, "'Second day, 27th' (of fifth month, he means, the letter's been a _long time_ coming), 'attended their mid-week meeting at London Grove, where my tongue as it were clave to the roof of my mouth, while Hannah Husbands was much favored, and enabled to lift up her voice like the song of an angel'"--

"Who's Hannah Husbands?" cried Dorothy.

"Thee don't know her, dear. She was second cousin to thy father's step-mother; the families were not congenial, I believe; but she has a great gift for the ministry."

"I should think she'd better be at home with her children,--if she has any. Fancy _thee_, mother, going about to strange meetings, and lifting up thy voice."

"Hush! hush! Dorothy! Thy tongue's running away with thee. Consider the example thee's setting the boys."

"Thee'd better write to father about Dorothy, mother! Perhaps Hannah Husbands would like to know what she thinks about her preachin'!"

"Well now, be quiet, all of you. Here's something about Dorothy: 'I know that my dear daughter Dorothy is faithful and loving, albeit somewhat quick of speech, and restive under obligation. I would have thee remind her that an unwillingness to accept help from others argues a want of Christian Meekness. Entreat her, from me, not to conceal her needs from our neighbors, if so be she find her work oppressive. We know them to be of kindly intention, though not of our way of thinking in all particulars. Let her receive help from them, not as individuals, but as instruments of the Lord's protection, which it were impiety and ingratitude to deny.'"

"There!" cried Shep. "That means thee's to let Luke Jordan finish the sheep-washing. Thee'd better have done it in the first place. We wouldn't have the old ewe to pick if thee had!"

Dorothy was dimpling at the idea of Luke Jordan in the character of an instrument of heavenly protection. She had not regarded him in that light, it must be confessed, and had rejected him with scorn.

"He may if he wants to," she said; "but you boys shall drive them over. I'll have nothing to do with it."

"And shear them too, Dorothy? He asked to shear them long ago."

"Well, _let_ him shear them, and keep the wool too."

"I wouldn't say that, Dorothy!" said Rachel Barton. "We need the wool, and it seems as if over-payment might not be quite honest either."

"Oh! mother, mother! What a mother thee is!" cried Dorothy laughing, and rumpling her cap-strings in a tumultuous embrace.

"She's a great deal too good for _thee_, Dorothy Barton."

"She's too good for all of us! How did thee ever come to have such a graceless set of children, mother?"

"I'm very well satisfied," said Rachel. "But now do be quiet, and let's finish the letter. We must get to bed some time to-night!"

The wild clematis was in blossom now--the fences were white with it, and the rusty cedars were crowned with virgin wreaths, but the weeds were thick in the garden and in the potato patch. Dorothy, stretching her cramped back, looked longingly up the shadowy vista of the farm-lane, which had nothing to do but ramble off into the remotest green fields, where the daisies' faces were as white and clear as in early June.

One hot August night she came home late from the store. The stars were thick in the sky; the katydids made the night oppressive with their rasping questionings, and a hoarse revel of frogs kept the ponds from falling asleep in the shadow of the hills.

"Is thee very tired to-night, Dorothy?" her mother asked, as she took her seat on the low step of the porch. "Would thee mind turning old John out thyself?"

"No, mother, I'm not tired. But why--oh, _I_ know!" cried Dorothy, with a quick laugh. "The dance--at Slocum's barn. I _thought_ those boys were uncommonly helpful."

"Yes, dear, it's but natural they should want to see it. Hark! we can hear the music from here."

They listened, and the breeze brought across the fields the sound of fiddles and the rhythmic tramp of feet, softened by the distance. Dorothy's young pulses leaped.

"Mother, is it any harm for them just to _see_ it? They have so little fun except what they get out of teasing and shirking."

"My dear, thy father would never countenance such a scene of frivolity, or permit one of his children to look upon it."

Through our eyes and ears the world takes possession of our hearts.

"Then I'm to spare the boys this temptation, mother? Thee will trust _me_ to pass the barn?"

"I would trust my boys, if they were thy age Dorothy. But their resolution is tender, like their years."

It might be questioned whether the frame of mind in which the boys went to bed that night, under their mother's eye,--for Rachel could be firm in a case of conscience,--was more improving than the frivolity of Slocum's barn.

"Mother," called Dorothy, looking in at the kitchen window, where Rachel was stooping over the embers in the fireplace, to light a bedroom candle, "I want to speak to thee."

Rachel came to the window, screening the candle with her hand.

"Will thee trust _me_ to look at the dancing a little while? It is so very near."

"Why, Dorothy, does thee _want_ to?"

"Yes, mother, I believe I do. I've never seen a dance in my life. It cannot ruin me to look just once."

Rachel stood puzzled.

"Thee's old enough to judge for thyself, Dorothy. But, my child, do not tamper with thy inclinations through heedless curiosity. Thee knows thee's more impulsive than I could wish--for thy own peace."

"I'll be very careful, mother. If I feel in the _least_ wicked I will not look."

She kissed her mother's hand, which rested on the window-sill. Rachel did not like the kiss, or Dorothy's brilliant eyes and flushed cheeks, as the candle revealed them like a fair picture painted on the darkness. She hesitated, and Dorothy sped away up the lane with old John lagging at his halter.

Was it the music growing nearer that quickened her breathing, or only the closeness of the night, shut in between the wild grape-vine curtains, swung from one dark cedar column to another? She caught the sweet-brier breath as she hurried by, and now, a loop in the leafy curtain revealed the pond lying black in a hollow of the hills, with a whole heaven of stars reflected in it. Old John stumbled along over the stones, cropping the grass as he went. Dorothy tugged at his halter and urged him on to the head of the lane where two farm-gates stood at right angles. One of them was open, and a number of horses were tethered in a row along the fence within. They whinneyed a cheerful greeting to John as Dorothy slipped his halter and shut him into the field adjoining. Now should she walk into temptation with her eyes and ears open? The gate stood wide, with only one field of perfumed meadow-grass between her and the lights and music of Slocum's barn! The sound of revelry by night could hardly have taken a more innocent form than this rustic dancing of neighbors after a "raisin' bee," but had it been the rout of Comus and his crew, and Dorothy the Lady Una, trembling near, her heart could hardly have throbbed more thickly as she crossed the dewy meadow. A young maple stood within ten rods of the barn, and here she crouched in shadow.

The great doors stood wide open, and lanterns were hung from the beams lighting the space between the mows, where a dance was set, with youths and maidens in two long rows. The fiddlers sat on barrel-heads near the door; a lantern hanging just behind projected their shadows across the square of light on the trodden space in front where they executed a grotesque pantomime, keeping time to the music with spectral wavings and noddings. The dancers were Dorothy's young neighbors, whom she had known and yet not known all her life, but they had the strangeness of familiar faces seen suddenly in some fantastic dream.

Surely that was Nancy Slocum, in the bright pink gown, heading the line of girls, and that was Luke Jordan's sunburnt profile leaning from his place to pluck a straw from the mow behind him. They were marching now, and the measured tramp of feet, keeping solid time to the fiddles, set a strange tumult vibrating in Dorothy's blood; and now it stopped with a thrill as she recognized that Evesham was there marching with the young men, and that his peer was not among them. The perception of his difference came to her with a vivid shock. He was coming forward now, with his light, firm step, formidable in evening dress, and with a smile of subtle triumph in his eyes, to meet Nancy Slocum, in the bright pink gown; Dorothy felt she hated pink, of all the colors her faith had abjured. She could see, in spite of the obnoxious gown, that Nancy was very pretty. He was taking her first by the right hand, then by the left, and turning her gayly about;--and now they were meeting again, for the fourth or fifth time, in the centre of the barn, with all eyes upon them, and the music lingered while Nancy, holding out her pink petticoats, coyly revolved around him. Then began a mysterious turning, and clasping of hands, and weaving of Nancy's pink frock and Evesham's dark blue coat and white breeches in and out of the line of figures, until they met at the door, and taking each other by both hands, swept with a joyous measure to the head of the barn. Dorothy gave a little choking sigh.

What a senseless whirl it was! But she was thrilling with a new and strange excitement, too near the edge of pain to be long endured as a pleasure. If this were the influence of dancing, she did not wonder so much at her father's scruples,--and yet it held her like a spell.

All hands were lifted now, making an arch, through which Evesham, holding Nancy by the hands, raced stooping and laughing. As they emerged at the door, he threw up his head to shake a brown lock back. He looked flushed, and boyishly gay, and his hazel eye searched the darkness with that subtle ray of triumph in it which had made Dorothy afraid. She drew back behind the tree and pressed her hot cheek to the cool, rough bark. She longed for the stillness of the starlit meadow, and the dim lane, with its faint perfumes and whispering leaves.

But now suddenly the music stopped, and the dance broke up in a tumult of voices. Dorothy stole backward in the shadow of the tree-trunk, till it joined the darkness of the meadow, and then fled,--stumbling along with blinded eyes, and the music still vibrating in her ears. There came a quick rush of footsteps behind her, swishing through the long grass. She did not look back, but quickened her pace, struggling to reach the gate. Evesham was there before her. He had swung the gate to and was leaning with his back against it, laughing and panting.

"I've caught you, Dorothy, you little deceiver! You'll not get rid of me to-night with any of your tricks. I'm going to take you home to your mother, and tell her you were peeping at the dancing."

"Mother knows I am here," said Dorothy. "I asked her!" Her knees were trembling, and her heart almost choked her with its throbbing.

"I'm so glad you don't dance, Dorothy. This is much nicer than the barn; and the katydids are better fiddlers than old Darby and his son. I'll open the gate if you will put your hand in mine, so I can be sure of you--you little runaway!"

"I will stay here all night, first!" said Dorothy, in a low quivering voice.

"As you choose. I shall be happy as long as you are here."

Dead silence, while the katydids seemed to keep time to their heart-beats; the fiddles began tuning for another reel, and the horses tethered near stretched out their necks with low inquiring whinneys.

"Dorothy," said Evesham, softly, leaning toward her and trying to see her face in the darkness, "are you angry with me? Don't you think you deserve a little punishment for the trick you played me at the mill-head?"

"It was thy fault for wetting me!" Dorothy was too excited and angry to cry, but she was as miserable as she had ever been in her life before. "I didn't _want_ thee to stay. People who force themselves where they are not wanted must take what they get!"

"What did you say, Dorothy?"

"I say I didn't want thee then. I do not want thee now! Thee may go back to thy fiddling and dancing! I'd rather have one of those dumb brutes for company to-night than thee, Walter Evesham!"

"Very well! The reel has begun," said Evesham. "Fanny Jordan is waiting to dance it with me, or if she isn't she ought to be! Shall I open the gate for you?"

She passed out in silence, and the gate swung to with a heavy jar. She made good speed down the lane, and then waited outside the fence till her breath came more quietly.

"Is that thee, Dorothy?" Rachel's voice called from the porch. She came out to meet her, and they went along the walk together. "How damp thy forehead is, child! is the night so warm?" They sat down on the low steps, and Dorothy slid her arm under her mother's and laid her soft palm against the one less soft by twenty years of toil for others. "Thee's not been long, dear; was it as much as thee expected?"

"Mother, it was dreadful! I never wish to hear a fiddle again as long as I live!"

Rachel opened the way for Dorothy to speak further; she was not without some mild stirrings of curiosity on the subject herself; but Dorothy had no more to say.

They went into the house soon after, and as they separated for the night, Dorothy clung to her mother with a little nervous laugh.

"Mother, what is that text about Ephraim?"

"Ephraim is joined to idols?" Rachel suggested.

"Yes! Ephraim is joined to his idols!" said Dorothy, lifting her head. "Let him go!"

"Let him _alone_," corrected Rachel.

"Let him _alone!_" Dorothy repeated. "That is better yet."

"What's thee thinking of, dear?"

"Oh, I'm thinking about the dance in the barn."

"I'm glad thee looks at it in that light," said Rachel.

* * * * *

Dorothy knelt by her bed in the low chamber under the eaves, crying to herself that she was not the child of her mother any more.

She felt she had lost something, which, in truth, had never been hers. It was only the unconscious poise of her unawakened girlhood which had been stirred. She had mistaken it for that abiding peace which is not lost or won in a day.

Dorothy could not stifle the spring thrills in her blood any more than she could crush its color out of her cheek or brush the ripples out of her bright hair, but she longed for the cool grays and the still waters. She prayed that the "grave and beautiful damsel called Discretion" might take her by the hand and lead her to that "upper chamber, whose name is Peace." She lay awake, listening to the music from the barn, and waiting through breathless silences for it to begin again. She wondered if Fanny Jordan had grown any prettier since she had seen her as a half-grown girl; and then she despised herself for the thought. The katydids seemed to beat their wings upon her brain, and all the noises of the night, far and near, came to her strained senses, as if her silent chamber were a whispering gallery. The clock struck twelve, and in the silence that followed she missed the music; but voices, talking and laughing, were coming down the lane. There was the clink of a horse's hoof on the stones; now it was lost on the turf; and now they were all trooping noisily past the house. She buried her head in her pillow, and tried to bury with it the consciousness that she was wondering if Evesham were there, laughing with the rest.

Yes, Evesham was there. He walked with Farmer Jordan, behind the young men and girls, and discussed with him, somewhat absently, the war news and the prices of grain.

As they passed the dark old house, spreading its wide roofs, like a hen gathering her chickens under her wing, he became suddenly silent. A white curtain flapped in and out of an upper window. It was the window of the boys' room; but Evesham's instincts failed him there.

"Queer kinks them old Friend preachers git into their heads sometimes!" said farmer Jordan, as they passed the empty mill. "Now what do you s'pose took Uncle Tommy Barton off right on top of plantin', leavin' his wife 'n' critters 'n' child'en to look after themselves? Mighty good preachin' it ought to be, to make up for such practicin'. Wonderful set ag'in the war, Uncle Tommy is! He's a-preachin' up peace now. But Lord! all the preachin' sence Moses won't keep men from fightin' when their blood's up and there's ter'tory in it!"

"It makes saints of the women," said Evesham shortly.

"Wal, yes! Saints in heaven before their time, some of 'em. There's Dorothy, now. _She'll_ hoe her row with any saint _in_ the kingdom or out of it. I never see a hulsomer-lookin' gal. My Luke, he run the furrers in her corn-patch last May. Said it made him sick to see a gal like that a-staggerin' after a plow. She wouldn't more'n _half let_ him! She's a proud little piece. They're all proud, Quakers is. I never could see no 'poorness of spirit,' come to git at 'em! And they're wonderful clannish, too. My Luke, he'd a notion he'd like to run the hull concern--Dorothy 'n' all; but I told him he might 's well p'int off. Them Quaker gals don't never marry out o' meetin'. Besides, the farm's too poor!"

"Good-night, Mr. Jordan!" said Evesham suddenly. "I'm off across lots!" He leaped the fence, crashed through the alder hedge-row, and disappeared in the dusky meadow.

Evesham was by no means satisfied with his experiments in planetary distances. Somewhere, he felt sure, either in his orbit or hers, there must be a point where Dorothy would be less insensible to the attraction of atoms in the mass. Thus far, she had reversed the laws of the spheres, and the greater had followed the less. When she had first begun to hold a permanent place in his thoughts, he had invested her with something of that atmosphere of peace and cool passivity which hedges in the women of her faith. It had been like a thin, clear glass, revealing her loveliness, but cutting off the magnetic currents. A young man is not long satisfied with the mystery his thoughts have woven around the woman who is their object. Evesham had grown impatient; he had broken the spell of her sweet remoteness. He had touched her, and found her human,--deliciously, distractingly human, but with a streak of obduracy which history has attributed to the Quakers under persecution. In vain he haunted the mill-dam, and bribed the boys with traps and pop-guns, and lingered at the well-curb to ask Dorothy for water, which did not reach his thirst. She was there in the flesh, with her arms aloft, balancing the well-sweep, while he stooped with his lips at the bucket; but in spirit she was unapproachable. He felt, with disgust at his own persistence, that she even grudged him the water! He grew savage and restless, and fretted over the subtle changes which he counted in Dorothy, as the summer waned. She was thinner and paler,--perhaps with the heats of harvest, which had not, indeed, been burdensome from its abundance. Her eyes were darker and shyer, and her voice more languid. Was she wearing down, with all this work and care? A fierce disgust possessed him, that this sweet life should be cast into the breach between faith and works.

He did not see that Rachel Barton had changed, too,--with a change that meant more, at her age, than Dorothy's flushings and palings. He did not miss the mother's bent form from the garden, or the bench by the kitchen door, where she had been used to wash the milk-things.

Dorothy washed the milk-things now, and the mother spent her days in the sunny east room, between her bed and the easy-chair, where she sat and mused for hours over the five letters she had received from her husband in as many months. The boys had, in a measure, justified their father's faith in them, since Rachel's illness, and Dorothy was released from much of her out-door work; but the silence of the kitchen, when she was there alone with her ironing and dish-washing, was a heavier burden than she had yet known.

Nature sometimes strikes in upon the hopeless monotony of life in remote farm-houses, with one of her phenomenal moods. They come like besoms of destruction; but they scatter the web of stifling routine; they fling into the stiffening pool the stone which jars the atoms into crystal.

The storms which had ambushed in the lurid August skies, and circled ominously round the horizon during the first weeks of September, broke at last in an equinoctial which was long remembered in the mill-house. It took its place in the family calendar of momentous dates with the hard winter of 1800; with the late frost, which coated the incipient apples with ice, and froze the new potatoes in the ground; and with the year the typhus got into the valley.

The rain had been falling a night and a day. It had been welcomed with thanksgiving; but it had worn out its welcome some hours since, and now the early darkness was coming on without a lull in the storm. Dorothy and the two biggest boys had made the rounds of the farm-buildings, seeing all safe for the second night. The barns and mill stood on high ground, while the house occupied the sheltered hollow between. Little streams from the hills were washing in turbid currents across the lower levels; the waste-weir roared as in early spring; the garden was inundated, and the meadow a shallow pond. The sheep had been driven into the upper barn floor; the chickens were in the corn-bin; and old John and the cows had been transferred from the stable, which stood low, to the weighing-floor of the mill. A gloomy echoing and gurgling sounded from the dark wheel-chamber, where the water was rushing under the wheel, and jarring it with its tumult. At eight o'clock the wood-shed was flooded, and water began to creep under the kitchen door. Dorothy and the boys carried armfuls of wood, and stacked them in the passage to the sitting-room, two steps higher up. At nine o'clock the boys were sent, protesting, to bed; and Dorothy, looking out of their window, as she fumbled about in the dark for a pair of Shep's trowsers which needed mending, saw a lantern flickering up the road. It was Evesham, on his way to the mill-dams. The light glimmered on his oil-skin coat as he climbed the stile behind the well-curb.