Part 8

He had a nature capable of only one simple line of force, with no radiations or parallels, and that had early resolved itself into the service of the Squire and his house. After the Squire’s death he married a woman who lived in the family. She was much older than himself, and had a high temper, but was a good servant, and he married her to keep her to her allegiance to Evelina. Then he bent her, without her knowledge, to take his own attitude towards his mistress. No more could be gotten out of John Darby’s wife than out of John Darby concerning the doings at the Squire’s house. She met curiosity with a flash of hot temper, and he with surly taciturnity, and both intimidated.

The third of Evelina’s servants was the woman who had nursed her mother, and she was naturally subdued and undemonstrative, and rendered still more so by a ceaseless monotony of life. She never went to meeting, and was seldom seen outside the house. A passing vision of a long white-capped face at a window was about all the neighbors ever saw of this woman.

So Evelina’s gentle privacy was well guarded by her own household, as by a faithful system of domestic police. She grew old peacefully behind her green hedge, shielded effectually from all rough bristles of curiosity. Every new spring her own bloom showed paler beside the new bloom of her flowers, but people could not see it.

Some thirty years after the Squire’s death the man John Darby died; his wife, a year later. That left Evelina alone with the old woman who had nursed her mother. She was very old, but not feeble, and quite able to perform the simple household tasks for herself and Evelina. An old man, who saved himself from the almshouse in such ways, came daily to do the rougher part of the garden-work in John Darby’s stead. He was aged and decrepit; his muscles seemed able to perform their appointed tasks only through the accumulated inertia of a patiently toilsome life in the same tracks. Apparently they would have collapsed had he tried to force them to aught else than the holding of the ploughshare, the pulling of weeds, the digging around the roots of flowers, and the planting of seeds.

Every autumn he seemed about to totter to his fall among the fading flowers; every spring it was like Death himself urging on the resurrection; but he lived on year after year, and tended well Evelina’s garden, and the gardens of other maiden-women and widows in the village. He was taciturn, grubbing among his green beds as silently as a worm, but now and then he warmed a little under a fire of questions concerning Evelina’s garden. “Never see none sech flowers in nobody’s garden in this town, not sence I knowed ’nough to tell a pink from a piny,” he would mumble. His speech was thick; his words were all uncouthly slurred; the expression of his whole life had come more through his old knotted hands of labor than through his tongue. But he would wipe his forehead with his shirt-sleeve and lean a second on his spade, and his face would change at the mention of the garden. Its wealth of bloom illumined his old mind, and the roses and honeysuckles and pinks seemed for a second to be reflected in his bleared old eyes.

There had never been in the village such a garden as this of Evelina Adams’s. All the old blooms which had come over the seas with the early colonists, and started as it were their own colony of flora in the new country, flourished there. The naturalized pinks and phlox and hollyhocks and the rest, changed a little in color and fragrance by the conditions of a new climate and soil, were all in Evelina’s garden, and no one dreamed what they meant to Evelina; and she did not dream herself, for her heart was always veiled to her own eyes, like the face of a nun. The roses and pinks, the poppies and heart’s-ease, were to this maiden-woman, who had innocently and helplessly outgrown her maiden heart, in the place of all the loves of life which she had missed. Her affections had forced an outlet in roses; they exhaled sweetness in pinks, and twined and clung in honeysuckle-vines. The daffodils, when they came up in the spring, comforted her like the smiles of children; when she saw the first rose, her heart leaped as at the face of a lover.

She had lost the one way of human affection, but her feet had found a little single side-track of love, which gave her still a zest in the journey of life. Even in the winter Evelina had her flowers, for she kept those that would bear transplanting in pots, and all the sunny windows in her house were gay with them. She would also not let a rose leaf fall and waste in the garden soil, or a sprig of lavender or thyme. She gathered them all, and stored them away in chests and drawers and old china bowls--the whole house seemed laid away in rose leaves and lavender. Evelina’s clothes gave out at every motion that fragrance of dead flowers which is like the fragrance of the past, and has a sweetness like that of sweet memories. Even the cedar chest where Evelina’s mother’s blue bridal array was stored had its till heaped with rose leaves and lavender.

When Evelina was nearly seventy years old the old nurse who had lived with her her whole life died. People wondered then what she would do. “She can’t live all alone in that great house,” they said. But she did live there alone six months, until spring, and people used to watch her evening lamp when it was put out, and the morning smoke from her kitchen chimney. “It ain’t safe for her to be there alone in that great house,” they said.

But early in April a young girl appeared one Sunday in the old Squire’s pew. Nobody had seen her come to town, and nobody knew who she was or where she came from, but the old people said she looked just as Evelina Adams used to when she was young, and she must be some relation. The old man who had used to look across the meeting-house at Evelina, over forty years ago, looked across now at this young girl, and gave a great start, and his face paled under his gray beard stubble. His old wife gave an anxious, wondering glance at him, and crammed a peppermint into his hand. “Anything the matter, father?” she whispered; but he only gave his head a half-surly shake, and then fastened his eyes straight ahead upon the pulpit. He had reason to that day, for his only son, Thomas, was going to preach his first sermon therein as a candidate. His wife ascribed his nervousness to that. She put a peppermint in her own mouth and sucked it comfortably. “That’s all ’tis,” she thought to herself. “Father always was easy worked up,” and she looked proudly up at her son sitting on the hair-cloth sofa in the pulpit, leaning his handsome young head on his hand, as he had seen old divines do. She never dreamed that her old husband sitting beside her was possessed of an inner life so strange to her that she would not have known him had she met him in the spirit. And, indeed, it had been so always, and she had never dreamed of it. Although he had been faithful to his wife, the image of Evelina Adams in her youth, and that one love-look which she had given him, had never left his soul, but had given it a guise and complexion of which his nearest and dearest knew nothing.

It was strange; but now, as he looked up at his own son as he arose in the pulpit, he could seem to see a look of that fair young Evelina, who had never had a son to inherit her beauty. He had certainly a delicate brilliancy of complexion, which he could have gotten directly from neither father nor mother; and whence came that little nervous frown between his dark blue eyes? His mother had blue eyes, but not like his; they flashed over the great pulpit Bible with a sweet fire that matched the memory in his father’s heart.

But the old man put the fancy away from him in a minute; it was one which his stern common-sense always overcame. It was impossible that Thomas Merriam should resemble Evelina Adams; indeed, people always called him the very image of his father.

The father tried to fix his mind upon his son’s sermon, but presently he glanced involuntarily across the meeting-house at the young girl, and again his heart leaped and his face paled; but he turned his eyes gravely back to the pulpit, and his wife did not notice. Now and then she thrust a sharp elbow in his side to call his attention to a grand point in their son’s discourse. The odor of peppermint was strong in his nostrils, but through it all he seemed to perceive the rose and lavender scent of Evelina Adams’s youthful garments. Whether it was with him simply the memory of an odor, which affected him like the odor itself, or not, those in the vicinity of the Squire’s pew were plainly aware of it. The gown which the strange young girl wore was, as many an old woman discovered to her neighbor with loud whispers, one of Evelina’s, which had been laid away in a sweet-smelling chest since her old girlhood. It had been somewhat altered to suit the fashion of a later day, but the eyes which had fastened keenly upon it when Evelina first wore it up the meeting-house aisle could not mistake it. “It’s Evelina Adams’s lavender satin made over,” one whispered, with a sharp hiss of breath, in the other’s ear.

The lavender satin, deepening into purple in the folds, swept in a rich circle over the knees of the young girl in the Squire’s pew. She folded her little hands, which were encased in Evelina’s cream-colored silk mitts, over it, and looked up at the young minister, and listened to his sermon with a grave and innocent dignity, as Evelina had done before her. Perhaps the resemblance between this young girl and the young girl of the past was more one of mien than aught else, although the type of face was the same. This girl had the same fine sharpness of feature and delicately bright color, and she also wore her hair in curls, although they were tied back from her face with a black velvet ribbon, and did not veil it when she drooped her head, as Evelina’s used to do.

The people divided their attention between her and the new minister. Their curiosity goaded them in equal measure with their spiritual zeal, “I can’t wait to find out who that girl is,” one woman whispered to another.

The girl herself had no thought of the commotion which she awakened. When the service was over, and she walked with a gentle maiden stateliness, which seemed a very copy of Evelina’s own, out of the meeting-house, down the street to the Squire’s house, and entered it, passing under the stately Corinthian pillars, with a last purple gleam of her satin skirts, she never dreamed of the eager attention that followed her.

It was several days before the village people discovered who she was. The information had to be obtained, by a process like mental thumbscrewing, from the old man who tended Evelina’s garden, but at last they knew. She was the daughter of a cousin of Evelina’s on the father’s side. Her name was Evelina Leonard; she had been named for her father’s cousin. She had been finely brought up, and had attended a Boston school for young ladies. Her mother had been dead many years, and her father had died some two years ago, leaving her with only a very little money, which was now all gone, and Evelina Adams had invited her to live with her. Evelina Adams had herself told the old gardener, seeing his scant curiosity was somewhat awakened by the sight of the strange young lady in the garden, but he seemed to have almost forgotten it when the people questioned him.

“She’ll leave her all her money, most likely,” they said, and they looked at this new Evelina in the old Evelina’s perfumed gowns with awe.

However, in the space of a few months the opinion upon this matter was divided. Another cousin of Evelina Adams’s came to town, and this time an own cousin--a widow in fine black bombazine, portly and florid, walking with a majestic swell, and, moreover, having with her two daughters, girls of her own type, not so far advanced. This woman hired one of the village cottages, and it was rumored that Evelina Adams paid the rent. Still, it was considered that she was not very intimate with these last relatives. The neighbors watched, and saw, many a time, Mrs. Martha Loomis and her girls try the doors of the Adams house, scudding around angrily from front, to side and back, and knock and knock again, but with no admittance. “Evelina she won’t let none of ’em in more’n once a week,” the neighbors said. It was odd that, although they had deeply resented Evelina’s seclusion on their own accounts, they were rather on her side in this matter, and felt a certain delight when they witnessed a crestfallen retreat of the widow and her daughters. “I don’t s’pose she wants them Loomises marchin’ in on her every minute,” they said.

The new Evelina was not seen much with the other cousins, and she made no acquaintances in the village. Whether she was to inherit all the Adams property or not, she seemed, at any rate, heiress to all the elder Evelina’s habits of life. She worked with her in the garden, and wore her old girlish gowns, and kept almost as close at home as she. She often, however, walked abroad in the early dusk, stepping along in a grave and stately fashion, as the elder Evelina had used to do, holding her skirts away from the dewy roadside weeds, her face showing out in the twilight like a white flower, as if it had a pale light of its own.

Nobody spoke to her; people turned furtively after she had passed and stared after her, but they never spoke. This young Evelina did not seem to expect it. She passed along with the lids cast down over her blue eyes, and the rose and lavender scent of her garments came back in their faces.

But one night when she was walking slowly along, a full half-mile from home, she heard rapid footsteps behind, and the young minister, Thomas Merriam, came up beside her and spoke.

“Good-evening,” said he, and his voice was a little hoarse through nervousness.

Evelina started, and turned her fair face up towards his. “Good-evening,” she responded, and courtesied as she had been taught at school, and stood close to the wall, that he might pass; but Thomas Merriam paused also.

“I--” he began, but his voice broke. He cleared his throat angrily, and went on. “I have seen you in meeting,” he said, with a kind of defiance, more of himself than of her. After all, was he not the minister, and had he not the right to speak to everybody in the congregation? Why should he embarrass himself?

“Yes, sir,” replied Evelina. She stood drooping her head before him, and yet there was a certain delicate hauteur about her. Thomas was afraid to speak again. They both stood silent for a moment, and then Evelina stirred softly, as if to pass on, and Thomas spoke out bravely. “Is your cousin, Miss Adams, well?” said he.

“She is pretty well, I thank you, sir.”

“I have been wanting to--call,” he began; then he hesitated again. His handsome young face was blushing crimson.

Evelina’s own color deepened. She turned her face away. “Cousin Evelina never sees callers,” she said, with grave courtesy; “perhaps you did not know. She has not for a great many years.”

“Yes, I did know it,” returned Thomas Merriam; “that’s the reason I haven’t called.”

“Cousin Evelina is not strong,” remarked the young girl, and there was a savor of apology in her tone.

“But--” stammered Thomas; then he stopped again. “May I--has she any objections to--anybody’s coming to see you?”

[Illustration: “SHE HEARD RAPID FOOTSTEPS”]

Evelina started. “I am afraid Cousin Evelina would not approve,” she answered, primly. Then she looked up in his face, and a girlish piteousness came into her own. “I am very sorry,” she said, and there was a catch in her voice.

Thomas bent over her impetuously. All his ministerial state fell from him like an outer garment of the soul. He was young, and he had seen this girl Sunday after Sunday. He had written all his sermons with her image before his eyes, he had preached to her, and her only, and she had come between his heart and all the nations of the earth in his prayers. “Oh,” he stammered out, “I am afraid you can’t be very happy living there the way you do. Tell me--”

Evelina turned her face away with sudden haughtiness. “My cousin Evelina is very kind to me sir,” she said.

“But--you must be lonesome with nobody--of your own age--to speak to,” persisted Thomas, confusedly.

“I never cared much for youthful company. It is getting dark; I must be going,” said Evelina. “I wish you good-evening, sir.”

“Sha’n’t I--walk home with you?” asked Thomas, falteringly.

“It isn’t necessary, thank you, and I don’t think Cousin Evelina would approve,” she replied, primly; and her light dress fluttered away into the dusk and out of sight like the pale wing of a moth.

Poor Thomas Merriam walked on with his head in a turmoil. His heart beat loud in his ears. “I’ve made her mad with me,” he said to himself, using the old rustic school-boy vernacular, from which he did not always depart in his thoughts, although his ministerial dignity guarded his conversations. Thomas Merriam came of a simple homely stock, whose speech came from the emotions of the heart, all unregulated by the usages of the schools. He was the first for generations who had aspired to college learning and a profession, and had trained his tongue by the models of the educated and polite. He could not help, at times, the relapse of his thoughts, and their speaking to himself in the dialect of his family and his ancestors. “She’s ’way above me, and I ought to ha’ known it,” he further said, with the meekness of an humble but fiercely independent race, which is meek to itself alone. He would have maintained his equality with his last breath to an opponent; in his heart of hearts he felt himself below the scion of the one old gentle family of his native village.

This young Evelina, by the fine dignity which had been born with her and not acquired by precept and example, by the sweetly formal diction which seemed her native tongue, had filled him with awe. Now, when he thought she was angered with him, he felt beneath her lady-feet, his nostrils choked with a spiritual dust of humiliation.

He went forward blindly. The dusk had deepened; from either side of the road, from the mysterious gloom of the bushes, came the twangs of the katydids, like some coarse rustic quarrellers, each striving for the last word in a dispute not even dignified by excess of passion.

Suddenly somebody jostled him to his own side of the path. “That you, Thomas? Where you been?” said a voice in his ear.

“That you, father? Down to the post-office.”

“Who was that you was talkin’ with back there?”

“Miss Evelina Leonard.”

“That girl that’s stayin’ there--to the old Squire’s?”

“Yes.” The son tried to move on, but his father stood before him dumbly for a minute. “I must be going, father. I’ve got to work on my sermon,” Thomas said, impatiently.

“Wait a minute,” said his father. “I’ve got something to say to ye, Thomas, an’ this is as good a time to say it as any. There ain’t anybody ’round. I don’t know as ye’ll thank me for it--but mother said the other day that she thought you’d kind of an idea--she said you asked her if she thought it would be anything out of the way for you to go up to the Squire’s to make a call. Mother she thinks you can step in anywheres, but I don’t know. I know your book-learnin’ and your bein’ a minister has set you up a good deal higher than your mother and me and any of our folks, and I feel as if you were good enough for anybody, as far as that goes; but that ain’t all. Some folks have different startin’-points in this world, and they see things different; and when they do, it ain’t much use tryin’ to make them walk alongside and see things alike. Their eyes have got different cants, and they ain’t able to help it. Now this girl she’s related to the old Squire, and she’s been brought up different, and she started ahead, even if her father did lose all his property. She ’ain’t never eat in the kitchen, nor been scart to set down in the parlor, and satin and velvet, and silver spoons, and cream-pots ’ain’t never looked anything out of the common to her, and they always will to you. No matter how many such things you may live to have, they’ll always get a little the better of ye. She’ll be ’way above ’em; and you won’t, no matter how hard you try. Some ideas can’t never mix; and when ideas can’t mix, folks can’t.”

“I never said they could,” returned Thomas, shortly. “I can’t stop to talk any longer, father. I must go home.”

“No, you wait a minute, Thomas. I’m goin’ to say out what I started to, and then I sha’n’t ever bring it up again. What I was comin’ at was this: I wanted to warn ye a little. You musn’t set too much store by little things that you think mean consider’ble when they don’t. Looks don’t count for much, and I want you to remember it, and not be upset by ’em.”

Thomas gave a great start, and colored high. “I’d like to know what you mean, father,” he cried, sharply.

“Nothin’. I don’t mean nothin’, only I’m older ’n you, and it’s come in my way to know some things, and it’s fittin’ you should profit by it. A young woman’s looks at you don’t count for much. I don’t s’pose she knows why she gives ’em herself half the time; they ain’t like us. It’s best you should make up your mind to it; if you don’t, you may find it out by the hardest. That’s all. I ain’t never goin’ to bring this up again.”

“I’d like to know what you mean, father.” Thomas’s voice shook with embarrassment and anger.

“I ain’t goin’ to say anything more about it,” replied the old man. “Mary Ann Pease and Arabella Mann are both in the settin’-room with your mother. I thought I’d tell ye, in case ye didn’t want to see ’em, and wanted to go to work on your sermon.”