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‘Can’t P’liney. I used it fer a gun wad to shoot a squirrel with, an’ the cat ate the squirrel, letter an’ all. Yer don’t want me ter kill the cat, do yer, P’liney?’
‘Oh! Lemuel,’ she cried softly, ‘how could you? How could you do it?’
She sighed sorrowfully. She had tried so hard to make Lemuel a good boy, but nothing seemed to touch him, and, young as he was, the neighbours had begun to lay the blame of every misdeed upon his shoulders, and Deacon Croaker predicted with a mournful shake of his head, ‘No good will ever come of Lemuel Harding. He’s a bad lot, a bad lot.’
‘Sing to me!’ cried Polly, ‘the pain’s awful!’ and taking the weary little form in her arms, Pauline sang herself back into her usual happy trust.
She would not tell Belle her letter had been destroyed. She must shield Lemuel.
‘I’m doing my best,’ she said to herself, ‘God understands.’
‘Ain’t yer mad yit?’ whispered Lemuel anxiously, as he peered into the bright peaceful face on his way to bed.
The hand that stroked his tumbled hair was very gentle.
‘No, Lemuel, only sorry that my boy forgot the King was looking on.’
With a shame-faced look the boy’s hand sought his pocket, but Satan whispered, ‘She may be mad to-morrow,’ and he crept away.
‘What are you teasing Pauline about?’ asked Stephen, as he went upstairs.
‘Ain’t doin’ nuthin’,’ was the sullen reply.
‘Yes, you are. She don’t hev sorrowful looks in her eyes unless you’re cuttin’ up worse than common. You’ve just got to leave off sudden, or I’ll give you something you won’t ever forgit.’
‘Ain’t goin’ ter be bossed by nobody,’ said the boy doggedly, as he reached his room. ‘Was goin’ ter give her the old letter to-morrow, anyway, but now I don’t care if she never gits it,’ and opening the chest which held his few treasures, he deliberately shut up the letter in an old tin box, and went to bed.
‘Father is gettin’ so mortal queer,’ said Stephen discontentedly. ‘First he tells me to top-dress the upper lot, and then right off he wants me to harness up and go to the mill. I don’t see how a feller’s to know what to do. Most wish I’d gone West with Leander, it’s a free life there, and he’s his own master.’
‘“One is our Master, even Christ,”’ Pauline quoted softly. ‘Don’t go, Stephen, you and Lemuel are the only ones on the farm now, and father is getting old.’
She spoke sadly. She had noticed with a sinking heart how ‘queer’ her father was.
The years had slipped by until Polly was seventeen. A very frail little body she was, but always so patient and sweet, that Pauline never grudged the constant care.
Two of the boys had taken the shaping of their own lives and gone away, and Susan Ann had a home of her own with two little freckled-faced children to call her mother.
‘We’ll jog along together, Stephen,’ she said in her bright, cheery way. ‘Father forgets now and then, but he doesn’t mean any harm, and it’s only one day at a time, you know.’
Stephen looked at her admiringly.
‘You’re a brick, Pawliney, and I guess if you can stand it, I ought to be able to, with you round making the sunshine. I’d be a brute to go and leave you and Lem with it all on your shoulders’; and the honest, good-hearted fellow went in to give Polly a kiss before he started for the mill.
Clearing out an old trunk next day Pauline came across a soiled, tumbled envelope. It was the letter which Lemuel had tucked away and forgotten while he waited for her to ‘get mad.’
She opened it eagerly. It was from Richard Everidge.
‘I should like to come down and see you,’ he wrote, ‘in Sleepy Hollow, that is, if you care to have me, and it is quite convenient. Do not trouble to write unless you want me. If I do not get an answer I shall know you do not care.’
Richard Everidge had been married for three years now, and had a little girl.
She clasped her hands with one quick cry of pain. What must he have thought of her all these years? Her friend, who had always been so kind! so kind!
‘Pawliney!’ called her father, in the querulous accents of one whose brain is weakening. ‘Pawliney, I wish you’d come down and sing a little, the house is terrible lonesome since mother’s gone.’
And Pauline sang, in her full, sweet tones: —
‘“God moves in a mysterious wayHis wonders to perform.”’‘God is good, Pawliney?’
‘Yes, father.’
‘He never makes mistakes?’
‘Oh, no, father.’
‘You believe that, Pawliney?’
‘Yes, yes, I know it, father.’
And her voice rang out triumphantly in another stanza: —
‘“Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,But trust Him for His grace:Behind a frowning providenceHe hides a smiling face.”’Chapter X
The Angel of Patience
‘Here’s the mortgage money, Pawliney,’ said Stephen, as he handed her a roll of bank-notes. ‘It’s not due for a month yet, but I’ll be away for a week at the Bend, and if father gets hold of it he’ll take it to make matches of, as like as not. You’d better stow it away somewheres till the time comes.’
‘Very well, Stephen, I’ll put it in my strong box, and carry the key in my pocket. You won’t be away at the Bend any longer than you can help, Stephen? It’s such a comfort to have you in the house.’
They were standing by the light waggon, which Lemuel had brought round from the barn, ready for Stephen’s journey.
‘Don’t know about the comfort part, Pawliney,’ said Stephen, with a queer choke in his voice. ‘Seems like as if we all depended on you for that commodity. But I’ll be as quick as I kin. Good-bye, all of you. Git along, Goliath.’
Three days had passed since his departure, and Pauline stood in the doorway feasting her eyes on the lights and shadows which grouped themselves about the distant hills, when Lemuel brushed past her, clad in his Sunday best.
‘Why, Lemuel!’ she cried astonished, ‘you haven’t had your supper yet. Where are you going?’
‘To China,’ was the brusque response. ‘I’ve hed enuff of Sleepy Hollow, an’ bein’ ordered round by an old man with his head in the moon. It’s “Lemuel, do this,” an’ before I git started it’s “Lemuel, do the t’other thing.” You kin stand it ef you’re a mind ter; I won’t.’
‘But, Lemuel!’ gasped Pauline, ‘what will Stephen say?’
‘I don’t care what he says,’ said the boy roughly. ‘Stephen ain’t my boss.’
‘Oh, Lemuel, you can’t mean it!’ cried Pauline, as she followed him down the path to the main road.
‘See if I don’t!’ And he strode away from her, and vaulted over the gate.
‘But what will father do?’
‘Git somebody that’s ez loony ez himself. I ain’t,’ was the jeering reply.
‘Lemuel, you mustn’t go, it will kill father!’ and Pauline stretched out her hands to him appealingly.
A mocking laugh was the only reply as he disappeared round a bend of the road.
Pauline went slowly back to the house feeling bruised and stunned.
‘Pawliney,’ piped her father in his shrill voice, ‘where’s Lemuel? I told him to take the horse to the forge, and hoe the potatoes, and weed the onions, and go to the woods for a load. I don’t see how I’m to get through with such a lot of heedless boys around. What hev you done with him? You just spoil them all with your cossetin’.’
‘It will all come right, father,’ said Pauline soothingly. ‘Lemuel has gone away for awhile.’
‘Away!’ echoed the old man suspiciously. ‘Away, Pawliney? Did you know he was going?’
‘Yes, father; he will be back by-and-by, and Stephen will be home next week.’
She paced her room that night with a heavy heart. There was no way to hinder the misguided boy. Before Stephen could follow him he would be on the sea. He had often declared he meant to be a sailor. Suddenly she stopped, thunder-struck. The lid of her strong box had been forced open! With an awful dread at her heart she lifted it and looked in. The money was gone!
With a bitter cry she fell upon her knees. ‘A thief!’ Her Lemuel. The boy that she had borne with and prayed over all these years! And the money was due in a month! What should she do? Stephen must never know – Stephen, with his stalwart honesty and upright soul. His anger would be terrible, and she must shield Lemuel all she could. Poor Lemuel!
All night long she pondered sorrowfully. When the morning came she went to Deacon Croaker.
‘I hear you are behindhand with your wool,’ she said, in her straightforward way. ‘I will spin it for you if you like, and, Deacon, may I ask you as a favour to let me have the money in advance?’
The deacon looked at her curiously.
‘Hard up, air ye, Pawliney? Well, well, don’t colour up so, we all hev our scarce times. I ain’t partial to payin’ forehanded, but you was awful kind to Mis’ Croaker when her rheumatiz was bad on her, an’ I ain’t one ter forgit a favour. Cum in, Pawliney, while I git the money. Mis’ Croaker will be rale pleased; she thinks you’re the best spinner in the valley.’
‘No, thank you, I will wait out here.’
The old man hobbled into the house, and she stood waiting, clothed in her sorrow and shame.
‘So Lemuel’s ben an’ tuk French leave?’ he said, as he handed her the money. ‘Well, well, I allers did say that boy’d be a heart break tew ye, Pawliney. Well, what’s gone’s forgot. Don’t fret over him, Pawliney, he was a bad lot, a bad lot. Ye’er well rid of him, my dear.’
‘I never shall forget him,’ Pauline said gravely, ‘and he can’t get away from God, Deacon Croaker.’
She counted the bills as she hurried along. It would just make enough, with the butter money. That was all she had for clothes for herself and Polly – but Polly had enough for a while, and she could go without.
In the evenings, long after the others were in bed, she paced up and down the kitchen, spinning Deacon Croaker’s wool into smooth, even threads, but her heart ached as she prayed for her boy, and often, when in the still watches of the night Polly kept her vigils with pain, she heard her cry softly: —
‘Lemuel, Lemuel, oh! how could you, how could you do it?’
Her uncle’s family were living abroad now, and it was from Paris that Belle wrote, announcing her engagement to Reginald Gordon.
‘Just imagine, Paul,’ the letter went on, ‘I, of all possible people, a missionary’s wife! But the fact of the matter is, my precious saint, your splendid, consecrated life made me tingle with shame to my finger tips when I thought of my aimless existence, and when I remembered how you took up your cross and followed your Master to Sleepy Hollow, there seemed to be no reason why I should not follow Him to Africa. If it will comfort you, I want you to know that you have been the guiding star which has led me out of the sloth of my selfishness into active work for the King.’
The years slipped by peacefully after that. Her father grew daily more childish, and needed more constant watching, but she found time to read to Polly many a snatch from her favourite authors, and Tryphosa’s Bible lay always open near her hand.
At last the day came when, in the full noontide, her father had called to her in his weak voice, ‘It’s gettin’ dark, Pawliney, and Lemuel’s not come home.’
And she had answered with her brave, sweet faith, ‘Not yet, father, but he’ll come by-and-by. God knows.’
‘Yes, God knows,’ said the old man with a peaceful smile, ‘I think I’ll go to sleep now, I’m very tired. You’ve been a good girl, Pawliney; a good girl. God bless you, my dear.’
When the evening came Pauline laid her hand softly on the wrinkled brow, from which the shadows had forever lifted. ‘Dear old father,’ she whispered, ‘how little I thought, when I wished you and I could leave Sleepy Hollow, that you would be the first one to go away!’
‘You ought always to dress in silk, Pauline, instead of calico. I wish you could,’ and Polly’s eyes rested on her with a world of love in their depths.
Pauline laughed as she kissed her.
‘You silly child! Don’t you know that cotton grows, and silk has to be spun, which makes it costly? and cotton is content to be washed in spring water, while silk has to be bathed in tea. Can you spare me for a whole afternoon do you think, if I leave Carlyle and Whittier by your pillow?’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Well, I want to take some apple custard to that poor Dan who fell from the haymow, and I must go and see how Susan’s children are getting through the measles. Then old Mrs Croaker wants to be sung to, and the widow Larkin wants to be read to, and Matilda Jones is “jest pinin’ fer a talk.”’ She laughed merrily.
‘I never saw anyone get so much into their lives,’ said Polly wistfully. ‘I am so useless.’
‘You blessed child!’ cried Pauline, with the tears in her eyes; ‘you are our Angel of Patience. Don’t ever call yourself useless, dear, you are the centre of gravity for Stephen and me.’
When the twilight fell she sat in her favourite position near the open door, looking up at the rose-tinted clouds, as she made Polly laugh with merry descriptions of her different visits.
Suddenly she grew still, for a sun-browned, bearded man had crossed the threshold, and thrown a paper into her lap, saying huskily: —
‘There’s the mortgage, Pauline, to make a bonfire of. I’ve come home to stay.’
Before he had finished, her arms were around his neck, and Polly heard her cry softly, with the break of a great gladness in her voice: —
‘Lemuel! Why, Lemuel!’
Chapter XI
Pure Gold
Richard Everidge sat in his handsome library one evening in early summer, reading a letter from his only child, Muriel, the joy of his heart: —
‘My Dearest Papa, – We are stopping now in the quaintest little place, a veritable Sleepy Hollow, like its name, where Rip Van Winkle might have snoozed away for centuries without fear of being disturbed.
‘As I advised you in my last, we were on our way to Farningham, when something went wrong with the engine, and we had to stop here for repairs, and mamma was so charmed with this little village that she decided to stay awhile; she says it seems to suit her better than any place she has seen; poor mamma, I wish I could find some place where she would be satisfied. To me all the world seems so beautiful, but she says no one knows how to sympathise with her peculiar organisation.
‘That was Saturday. On Sunday morning I went to the little church, mamma was too tired, and now comes the best part of the story. I was looking round watching the different families, all in their Sunday best, coming in and getting seated, when suddenly a woman’s voice began to lead the little choir. I looked up with a start. She was tall and slender; and as she stood with lifted head singing her heart out, I don’t think I ever saw such a splendid carriage, even at the President’s reception in Washington. She looked like a princess among the plain farmer folk; for a crown she had a mass of lovely soft white hair, and the sweetest, clearest eyes I ever saw. When she was singing “Coronation” (which was quite appropriate for a princess) it seemed as if she would lift the whole congregation up to God.
‘After the service I could not help watching her for a minute, for, as you will have imagined ere this, my silly heart went out to her at once. She was the centre of a group; every one seemed to have something to say to her, and she was so nice with them all, kissing the children, and having a bright smile and word for some of the most uninteresting women and stupid-looking boys I ever saw. Just as I was going out of the door I felt a soft touch upon my arm, and turned to find her beside me. I am free to confess I never received such a welcome to any church before.
‘When I gave her my name she looked puzzled for a minute.
‘“Everidge,” she repeated. “It is, it must be; she would be just about your age. I believe you are the little Muriel that my cousin Belle used to write about. You must come home with me at once: your father was my dear friend in the long ago.”
‘And so here we are, ensconced with my princess. She has a wonderful way with her, for mamma came without making the slightest objection, and seems happier than I have seen her for months.
‘There are just four in the family, besides Martha Spriggs, the funny old girl. My princess, and her two stepbrothers, Stephen and Lemuel, and Polly, who has been a sufferer from spinal trouble all her life.
‘It is the quaintest old house, with low, small rooms, except on the east side, where Captain Lemuel has added two large rooms with the loveliest bay windows, which are always full of flowers and sunshine. I think the neighbours are horrified that they use them for common. You know country people always keep their best parlours done up in must and green paper; but the princess says, “Nothing is too good for Polly and the boys!” They just idolize her, and I fancy they have good reason to, for, as Stephen said, in his queer, blunt way, “she comes as near to an angel as any mortal ever will.” Captain Lemuel has been all over the world, and is very interesting. Mamma is so amused over his stories. Stephen is blunt, but I shouldn’t be afraid to trust him with every cent I owned, and Polly is just a bundle of sweetness and patience. I wish you could see how gentle these great, strong men are with her: Stephen won’t let any one but himself carry her to bed, and Lemuel is always ready to push her about in her wheel chair, and talk nonsense to her till she laughs and cries together.
‘And the princess! She is just everything to everybody. I cannot fancy what the house would be without her. I only hope she won’t die before Polly, for I’m sure it would kill her. She never takes her eyes off her when she is in the room, and when I teased her a little about it her eyes filled, and she cried softly: —
‘“It’s little wonder if I do love her, after thirty years of such nursing as no one even dreamed of.” It made me almost wish to be sick myself.
‘She has such a merry, tender way with her. I do not wonder Lemuel says they don’t mind rainy weather since Pauline makes sunshine to order. And she is the busiest creature! I believe she carries the whole of Sleepy Hollow on her heart and shoulders. She seems to have all the destitute and afflicted under her wing, and dispenses beef-tea and Bible promises with the same liberal hand.
‘Oh! Papa, I am so glad we were detained at Sleepy Hollow, for at last I have found what I have been looking for – an absolutely Christ-like life. Your own little daughter, Muriel.’
Richard Everidge remained deep in thought for a long time after he had kissed the large, girlish signature; then he drew a sheet of paper towards him, and wrote, in his clear, bold hand: —
‘My Darling Muriel, – I knew your princess, as she says, in “the long ago,” and she is, as you have found her, pure gold.
‘Make the most of your visit, for, next to your Bible, she is the best teacher you could have. Your loving ‘Father.’
The days lengthened into weeks and the Everidges were still at the Farm.
‘Why should you go?’ Pauline said, in her cheery, unanswerable way, when they spoke of leaving: ‘it does us good to have you, and it does you good to be here,’ and Muriel and her mother were content.
‘Princess,’ said the girl one day, as she watched her moving lightly about the kitchen, ‘I envy you your altitude.’
Pauline laughed merrily.
‘You dear child! Every one gets up the mountain if they keep on climbing.’
‘But I have not an atom of perseverance,’ sighed Muriel. ‘Christianity seems such a tremendous undertaking to me.’
‘Let me give you what was to me the beginning of all Gospels: “The kingdom of heaven is just as near us as our work is, for the gate of heaven for each soul lies in the endeavour to do that work perfectly.”
‘But, princess, you are such a royal creature. It seems such a waste for you to be buried here.’
‘The King never wastes, little one. If we have the angel aim and standard, we can consecrate the smallest acts. Don’t you know that “he who aims for perfectness in a trifle, is trying to do that trifle holily?”’
‘You dear princess! You make me think of one of Murillo’s pictures in the Louvre, which we saw when we were abroad last year. It is the interior of a convent kitchen, and instead of mortals in old dresses doing the work, there are beautiful white-winged angels. One puts the kettle on the fire, and one is lifting up a pail of water, and one is at the kitchen dresser reaching up for plates.’
Pauline smiled.
‘That is it exactly. How can anything we do be common when we remember our inheritance? You call me Princess, out of love, little one, but I am a princess in reality, for my Father is a King. Let me give you a good word which your father gave me long ago. “If you cannot realize your Ideal, you can at least idealize your Real.” I have been trying to do it ever since.’
‘That is just like papa,’ said Muriel, with a proud smile. ‘He says you are “pure gold,” princess.’
‘Did Rich – did your father say that?’ cried Pauline, and Muriel looked up to see a soft flush in her face, while her eyes shone. ‘The King’s daughter is all glorious within,’ she repeated slowly, ‘her clothing is of wrought gold.’ Then she chanted in her clear, triumphant voice: —
‘“They have clean robes,White robes;White robes are waiting for me!”‘Ah! little one, “the court dress of heaven differs somewhat from that of earth.”’
‘But, princess,’ said Muriel wistfully, ‘farm work and cooking and washing dishes over and over – it seems such drudgery.’
A great light broke over her face, and she cried in a low, exultant tone: —
‘“Blessed be Drudgery!” Christ bore it for thirty years, why should I mind for forty-nine? I have only to wait a little now for the “fulness of joy” and “pleasures for evermore.”’
Muriel threw her arms about her and kissed her softly.
‘Then our princess will be at home,’ she whispered, ‘in the Palace of the King.’