Part 6

On the Sabbath day, when he and his aunt went by the Buckley house on their way to meeting, Persis was not at the window. His aunt surprised his sly glances. “They go to meeting early,” said she, demurely. Darius laughed in a shamefaced fashion.

After he and his aunt were seated in the meeting-house, he scarcely dared look up for a while, for he feared, should he see Persis suddenly and near at hand, his face might alter in spite of himself. And, in truth, when he did look up, and saw Persis close before him in a pew at the side of the pulpit, a tremor ran over him, his lips twitched, and all the color left his face. His aunt pressed her bottle of salts into his hand, and he pressed it back almost sharply, and turned red as a girl to the roots of his black hair. Then he sat up straight and looked over almost defiantly at Persis. Her face in her blue satin bonnet, with its drooping blue plume and lace veil thrown to one side, was fair enough to stir the heart of any mortal man who looked at her.

There were, indeed, in that meeting-house, certain godly men who kept their eyes sternly turned away, and would not look upon her, thinking it a sin, although it was a sin to their own hearts alone.

But many a young man besides Darius Hopkins, although he had seen her in that selfsame place Sabbath after Sabbath, still regarded her furtively with looks of almost startled adoration. Not one of them had ever spoken to her or heard her speak, or seen her except in the meeting-house, or at her window, or thickly veiled on the village street.

Persis to-day kept her eyes fixed upon the parson, exhorting under his echoing sounding-board. She never looked around, although she knew that Darius was sitting beside his aunt in her pew. She also was afraid, and she never recovered courage, like Darius. Her father, Ichabod, fiercely intent upon the discourse, his nervous face screwed to a very point of attention, sat on one side; her sister Submit, her back bowed like an old woman’s, on the other.

When meeting was over, Ichabod shot down the aisle, with his daughters following, as was his wont, and reached the door before many that sat farther back.

When Darius and his aunt came out of the meeting-house, the Buckleys were quite out of sight. When they emerged from the road past the graveyard through the woods, Persis was already at the window, with her bonnet off, but she kept her head turned far to one side, as if intent upon something in the room, and only the pink curve of one cheek was visible.

Darius had grown bold in the meeting-house; this time he looked, and forgot himself in looking.

“She is a pretty maid, but she is not for you, nor for any other young man unless he come for her with a coach and four, with a black gentleman a-driving,” said his aunt’s voice half mockingly at his side.

Then the young man turned and questioned her quite boldly. “I beg of you to tell me what you mean, aunt,” he said.

Then Mistress Tabitha Hopkins, holding her Sabbath gown high above her hooped satin petticoat as she stepped along, unfolded to her nephew Darius Hopkins the strange romance of Persis Buckley’s life.

“’Tis a shame!” cried the young man, indignantly, when she had finished--“a shame, to keep her a prisoner in this fashion!”

“’Tis only a prince with a coach and four can set her free. A prince from over seas, with a black gentleman a-driving,” said his aunt.

Darius turned, and stared back across the flat meadow-land at Ichabod Buckley’s house. It was late August now, and the meadow had great rosy patches of marsh-rosemary flung upon it like silken cloaks of cavaliers, and far-seen purple plumes of blazing-star. Darius studied slowly the low gray walls and long slant of gray roofs in the distance.

“A strong right arm and a willing heart might free her, were he prince or not!” said he. And he flung out his own right arm as if it were the one to do it.

“Were the maid willing to be freed,” said Mistress Tabitha, softly.

Darius colored. “That is true, aunt,” he said, with a downcast and humbled air, and he turned and went on soberly.

Mistress Tabitha looked at her nephew’s handsome face, and thought to herself, with loving but jealous pride, that no maid could refuse him as a deliverer. But she would not tell him so, for her heart was still sore at his preference of Persis to herself.

Darius Hopkins had an uneasy visit at his aunt Tabitha’s. He did not speak again of Persis Buckley, but he thought the more. Useless, as he told himself, as either hopes or fears were, they sprang up in his heart like persistent flames, and could not be trodden out.

He told himself that it was not sensible to think that the grand Englishman would ever come for Persis after all these years, and that it was nothing to him if he did. Yet he often trembled when he came in sight of her house lest he see a coach and four standing before it, and see her carried away before his very eyes.

And sometimes he would look at his own comely face in the glass, and look into his own heart, and feel as if the love therein must compel her even against her will; for she was not an angel or a goddess, after all, beautiful as she was, but only a mortal woman. “She cannot love this man whom she has not seen since she was a child, and he must be an old man now,” reasoned Darius, viewing his own gallant young face in the glass. And he smiled with hope, although he knew that he could not reasonably expect to have more of Persis than the sight of her face in the meeting-house or at the window were he to stay in the village a year.

For a long time Darius was not sure that Persis even noticed him when he passed by, but there came a day when he had that at least for his comfort. That day he had not passed her house until late; on the day before her face had been so far turned from the window that his heart had sunk. He had said to himself that he would be such a love-cracked fool no longer; he would not pass her house again unless of a necessity. So all that day he had sat moodily with his aunt, but just before dusk his resolution had failed him. He had strolled slowly across the meadow, while his aunt watched him from her window, smiling shrewdly.

He had not meant to glance even when he passed the Buckley house, but in spite of himself his eyes turned. And there was Persis at the window, leaning towards him, with her face all radiant with joy. It was only a second, and she was gone. Darius had no time for anything but that one look, but that was enough. He felt as if he had already routed the gallant with the coach and four. He meditated all sorts of audacious schemes as he went home. What could he not do, if Persis would only smile upon him? He felt like marching straight upon her house, like a soldier upon a castle, and demanding her of her father, who was her jailer.

But the next day his heart failed him again, for she was not at her window--nor the next, nor the next. He could not know that she was peeping through the crack in the shutter, and that her embroidery and her reading and her old thoughts were all thrown aside for his sake. Persis Buckley could do nothing, day nor night, but think of Darius Hopkins, and watch for him to pass her window.

She did not know why, but she did not like to look fairly out of the window at him any longer. She could only peep through the crack in the shutter, with her color coming and going, and her heart beating loud in her ears.

But when Darius saw no more of Persis at the window, he told himself that his conceit had misled him; that no such marvellous creature as that could have looked upon him as he had thought, and that his bold stare had affronted her.

So he did not pass the Buckley house for several days, and Persis watched in vain. One afternoon she rose up suddenly, with her soft cheek all creased where she had leaned it against the shutter. “He will not come; I will watch no longer,” she said to herself, half angrily. And she got out her green silk pelisse and her bonnet, and prepared to walk abroad. She went through the kitchen, and her sister Submit stared up at her from the hearth, which she was washing.

“You have not got on your veil, Persis,” said she.

“I want no veil,” Persis returned, impatiently.

“But you will get burned in the wind; father will not like it,” said Submit, with wondering and dull remonstrance.

“Well,” sighed Persis, resignedly. And Submit got the black-wrought veil, and tied it over her sister’s beautiful face.

Poor Persis, when she was out of the house, glanced hastily through the black maze of leaves and flowers across the meadow, but she saw no one coming. Then she strolled on away down the road through the woods. Just that side of the burying-ground there was an oak grove, and she went in there and sat down a little way from the road, with her back against a tree. It was very cool for the time of year, but the sun shone bright. All the oak-trees trilled sharply with the insects hidden in them, and the leaves rustled together.

Persis sat very stiffly under the oak-tree. Her petticoat was of green flowered chintz, and her pelisse and her bonnet of green silk. She was as undistinguishable as a green plant against the trunk of the tree, and neither Darius Hopkins nor his aunt Tabitha saw her when they passed. Persis heard their voices before they came in sight. She scarcely breathed. She seemed to be fairly hiding within herself, and forcing her very thoughts away from the eyes of Darius and his aunt.

Mistress Tabitha came down the wood, stepping with her fine mincing gait, and leaning upon her nephew’s arm. They never dreamed that Persis was near. The green waving lines of the forest met their eyes on either hand, but all unnoted, being as it were the revolutions of that green wheel of nature of which long acquaintance had dimmed their perception. Only an unusual motion therein could arouse their attention when their thoughts were elsewhere, and they were talking busily.

As they came opposite Persis, Mistress Tabitha cried out suddenly, and her voice was full of dismay. “Not to-morrow!” she cried out. “You go not to-morrow, Darius!”

And Darius replied, sadly: “I must, Aunt Tabitha. I must go back to Boston by the Thursday stage-coach, and to-day is Wednesday.”

Persis heard no more. She felt faint, and there was a strange singing in her ears. As soon as the aunt and nephew were well past, she got up and hastened back to the house. She took off her bonnet and pelisse, and sat down in her old place at the window, where she had watched so many years through her strange warped youth. When she saw Darius and his aunt returning, all her soul seemed to leap forward and look, out of her great dark eyes. But Darius never glanced her way. He knew she was there, for his aunt said, “There is Persis Buckley,” and nodded; but he dared not look, for fear lest he look too boldly, and she be offended.

Persis did not nod in response to Mistress Tabitha. She only looked, and looked at the slight, straight figure of the young man moving past her and out of her life. She thought that it was the last time that she should ever see him--the Boston stage left at daybreak. It seemed to her that he would never come again; and if he did, that she could not live until the time, but should ride away first from her old home forever, in gloomier state than had been planned for so many years.

When Darius and his aunt were out of sight she heard her father’s voice in the kitchen, and she arose and went out there with a sudden resolve. “Father,” she said, standing before Ichabod.

He looked at her in a curious startled way. There was a strange gleam in her soft eyes, and a strange expression about her docile mouth.

“What is it?” he said.

“He will never come, father. I want to be different.”

“Who will never come? What do you mean, Persis?”

“The--gentleman--the grand gentleman with--the coach and four. He will never come for me now. I want to be different, father. I want to work with Submit, and not stay in there by myself. If I have to any longer I shall die, I think. I want to be different. He will never come now, father.”

Ichabod Buckley trembled with long convulsive tremors, which seemed to leave him rigid and stiff as they passed. “He will come!” he returned, and he shouted out the words like an oath.

Submit, who was preparing supper, stopped, and stood pale and staring.

Persis quailed a little, but she spoke again.

“It is too long now, father,” she said. “He has forgotten me. He has married another in England. He will never come, and I want to be different. And should he come, after all, I should be sorely afraid to go with him now. I could never go with him now, father.”

Ichabod turned upon her, and spoke with such force that she shrank, as if before a stormy blast. “I tell ye he will come!” he shouted, hoarsely. “He will come, and you shall go with him, whether you will or no! He will come, and you shall sit there in that room and wait for him until he comes! You should wait there until you were dead, if he came not before. But he will, I tell ye--_he will come!_”

Persis fled before her father back to the best room, and sat there in the gathering dusk. Across the meadows the light of Tabitha Hopkins evening candle shone out suddenly like a low-hung star, and Persis sat watching it. When Submit called, in a scared voice, that supper was ready, she went out at once, and took her place at the table. There were pink spots in her usually pale cheeks; she spoke not a word, and scarcely tasted the little tid-bits grouped as usual around her plate. Her father swallowed his food with nervous gulps, then he left the table and went out. Soon Persis heard the grate of his tools on the gravestone slate, and knew that he had gone to work by candle-light, something he seldom did.

“Father is put out,” Submit said, with a half-scared, half-reproachful look at Persis.

“Oh, Submit!” Persis cried out, with the first appeal she had ever made in her life to her slow-witted elder sister, “I must be different, or I think I shall die!”

“Maybe he will come soon,” said Submit, who did not understand her sister’s appeal. “Maybe he will come soon, Persis. Father thinks so,” she repeated, as she rose from the table and padded heavily about, removing the supper dishes.

Then she added something which filled her sister’s soul with fright and dismay.

“Father he dreamt a dream last night,” said Submit, in her thick drone. “He dreamt that the grand gentleman came with the coach and four, and the black gentleman a-driving, and the grand lady in a velvet hood, just as he came before, and you got in and rode away. And he dreamt he came on a Thursday.”

“To-morrow is Thursday,” gasped Persis.

Submit nodded. “Father thinks he will come to-morrow,” said she. “He bade me not tell you, but I will for your comfort.”

Submit stared wonderingly at her sister’s distressed face as she ran out of the room; then she went on with her work. She presently, in sweeping the hearth, made a long black mark thereon, and straightway told herself that there was another sign that the gentleman was coming. Submit was well versed in New England domestic superstition, that being her only exercise of imagination.

Persis did not light the candles in the best room. She sat at the window in the dark, and watched again Mistress Tabitha’s candle-light across the meadow. She also stared from time to time in a startled way in the other direction towards the woodland road. Persis also was superstitious. She feared lest her father’s dream come true. She seemed to almost see now and then that stately equipage emerge as of old from the woods. She almost thought that she heard the far-away rumble of the wheels. She kept reminding herself that it was Wednesday, and her father’s dream said Thursday; but what if she did have to go away forever with that strange gentleman only the next day! She thought suddenly, not knowing why, of Clarissa Harlowe and Lovelace in her book. Mistress Tabitha’s purpose had not wholly failed in its effect. A great vague horror of something which she was too ignorant to see fairly came over her. The face of that fine strange gentleman, dimly remembered before through all the years, shaped itself suddenly and plainly out of the darkness like the face of a demon. Persis looked away, shuddering, to the candle-gleam over the meadow, and Darius Hopkins’s eyes seemed to look wistfully and lovingly into hers.

Persis Buckley arose softly, groped her way across the room in the dark, sliding noiselessly like a shadow, felt for the latch of the door that led into the front entry, lifted it cautiously, stole out into the entry, then opened the outer door with careful pains by degrees, and was out of the house.

Persis fled then past the plumy gloom of the pine-trees that skirted the wood, over the meadow, straight towards that candle-gleam in the Hopkins window.

There was a dry northeaster blowing, and it struck her as she fled, and lashed her clothing about her. She had on no outer wraps, and her head and her delicate face, which had always been veiled before a zephyr, were now all roughened and buffeted by this strong wind, which carried the sting of salt in it.

She never thought of it nor minded it. She fled on and on like a love-compelled bird, with only one single impulse in her whole being. The measure of freedom is always in proportion to the measure of previous restraint. Persis Buckley had been under a restraint which no maiden in this New England village had ever suffered, and she had gotten from it an impetus for a deed which they would have blushed to think of.

She fled on, forcing her way against the wind, which sometimes seemed to meet her like a moving wall, and sometimes like the rushing legions of that Prince of the Powers of the Air of whom she had read in the Bible, making as if they would lift her up bodily and carry her away among them into unknown tumult and darkness.

When Persis reached Tabitha Hopkins’s door, she was nearly spent. Her life had not trained her well for a flight in the teeth of the wind. She leaned against the door for a minute faint and gasping.

Then she raised the knocker, and it fell with only a slight clang; but directly she heard an inner door open, and a step.

Then the door swung back before her, and Darius Hopkins stood there in the dim candle-light shining from the room within.

He could not see Persis’s face plainly at first, only her little white hands reaching out to him like a child’s from the gloom.

“Who is it?” he asked, doubtfully, and his voice trembled.

Persis made a little panting sound that was half a sob. Darius bent forward, peering out. Then he cried out, and caught at those little beseeching hands.

“It is not you!” he cried. “It is not you! You have not come to me! It is not you!”

Darius Hopkins, scarcely knowing what he did, he was so stirred with joy and triumph and doubt and fear, led Persis into the house and the candle-lit room. Then, when he saw in truth before him that beautiful face which he had worshipped from afar, the young man trembled and fell down upon his knees before Persis as if she were indeed a queen, or an angel who had come to bless him, and kissed her hand.

But Persis stood there, trembling and pale, before him, with the tears falling from her wonderful eyes, and her sweet mouth quivering. “Do not let him carry me away,” she pleaded, faintly.

Then Darius sprang to his feet and put his arms around her. “Who is it would carry you away?” he said, angrily and tenderly. “No one shall have you. Who is it?”

“The--gentleman--from over-seas,” whispered Persis. Her soft wet cheek was pressed against Darius’s.

“He has not come?” he questioned, starting fiercely.

“No; but--father has dreamed that he will--to-morrow.”

Then Darius laughed gayly. “Dreams go by contraries,” he said.

“Do not let him carry me away,” Persis pleaded again, and she sobbed on his shoulder, and clung to him.

Darius held her more closely. “He shall never carry you away, even if he comes, against your will,” he said. “Do not fear.”

“I will go with nobody but you,” whispered Persis in his ear.

And he trembled, scarcely believing that he heard aright. And, indeed, he scarcely believed even yet that he was not dreaming, and that he held this beautiful creature in his arms, and, more than all, that she had come to him of her own accord.

“You--do--not--mean-- You cannot--oh, you cannot mean-- You are an angel. There is no one like you. You cannot--you cannot feel so about me?” he whispered, brokenly, at length.

Persis nodded against his breast.

“And--that was why--you came?”

Persis nodded again.

Darius bent her head back until he could see her beautiful, tearful face. He gazed at it with reverent wonder, then he kissed her forehead, and gently loosed her arm from his neck, and led her over to a chair.

He knelt down before her then as if she were a queen upon a throne, and held her hands softly. Then he questioned her as to how she had come, and about the expected coming of her strange gentleman suitor, and she answered him like a docile child.

Mistress Tabitha Hopkins stood for quite a time in the doorway, and neither of them saw her. Then she spoke up.

“I want to know what this means,” said she. “How came she here?” She pointed a sharp forefinger at Persis, who shrank before it.

But Darius arose quickly and went forward, blushing, but full of manly confidence. “Come out with me a moment, Aunt Tabitha,” he said; “I have something to say to you privately.” He took his aunt’s arm and led her out of the room, and, as he went, smiled back at Persis. “Do not be afraid, sweetheart,” he said.

“Sweetheart!” sniffed Mistress Tabitha, before the door closed.