Mercy Philbrick's Choice Part 2

"And the meadow ought to go with the house, by all means," said Mr. Allen.

"I want it for color in the background, when I look at the house as I come down from the meeting-house hill. I wouldn't like to have anybody else own the canvas on which the picture of my home will be oftenest painted for my eyes. I'll give you three thousand dollars for the house, Mercy. I can only pay two thousand down, and pay you interest on the other thousand for a year or two. I'll soon clear it off. Will that do?"

"Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Allen. It will more than do," said poor Mercy, who could not believe in such sudden good fortune; "but do you think you ought to buy it so quick? Perhaps it wouldn't bring so much money as that. I had not asked anybody except Deacon Jones."

Mr. Allen laughed. "If you don't look out for yourself sharper than this, Mercy," he said, "in the new place 'where you're going to live, you'll fare badly. Perhaps it may be true, as you say, that n.o.body else would give you three thousand dollars for the house, because n.o.body might happen to want to live in it. But Deacon Jones knows better than anybody else the value of property here, and I am perfectly willing to give you the price he set on the place. I had laid by this two thousand dollars towards my house; and I could not build such a house as this, to-day, for three thousand dollars. But really, Mercy, you must look 'out for yourself better than this."

"I don't know," replied Mercy, looking out of the window, with an earnest gaze, as if she were reading a writing a great way off,--"I don't know about that. I doubt very much if looking out for one's self, as you call it, is the best way to provide for one's self."

That very night Mr. Allen wrote to Stephen; in two weeks, the whole matter was settled, and Mercy and her mother had set out on their journey. They carried with them but one small valise. The rest of their simple wardrobe had gone in boxes, with the furniture, by sailing vessel, to a city which was within three hours by rail of their new home. This was the feature of the situation which poor Mrs. Carr could not accept. In the bottom of her heart, she fully believed that they would never again see one of those boxes. The contents of some which she had herself packed were of a most motley description. In the beginning of the breaking up, while Mercy was at her wits' end, with the unwonted perplexities of packing the whole belongings of a house, her mother had tormented her incessantly by bringing to her every few minutes some utterly incongruous and frequently worthless article, and begging her to put it in at once, whatever she might be packing. Any one who has ever packed for a long journey, with an eager and excited child running up every minute with more and more c.u.mbrous toys, dogs, cats, Noah's arks, and so on, to be put in among books and under-clothing, can imagine Mercy's despair at her mother's restless activity.

"Oh, mother, not in this box! Not in with the china!" would groan poor Mercy, as her mother appeared with armfuls of ancient relics from the garret, such as old umbrellas, bonnets, bundles of old newspapers, broken spinning-wheels, andirons, and rolls of remains of old wall-paper, the last of which had disappeared from the walls of the house, long before Mercy was born. No old magpie was ever a more indiscriminate h.o.a.rder than Mrs. Carr had been; and, among all her h.o.a.rdings, there was none more amusing than her h.o.a.rding of old wall-papers. A sc.r.a.p a foot square seemed to her too precious to throw away. "It might be jest the right size to cover suthin' with," she would say; and, to do her justice, she did use in the course of a year a most unexampled amount of such fragments. She had a mania for papering and repapering and papering again every shelf, every box, every corner she could get hold of. The paste and brush were like toys to her; and she delighted in gay combinations, sticking on old bits of borders in fantastic ways, in most inappropriate situations.

"I do believe you'll paper the pigsty next, mother," said Mercy one day: "there's nothing left you can paper except that." Mrs. Carr took the suggestion in perfect good faith, and convulsed Mercy a few days later by entering the kitchen with the following extraordinary remark,--

"I don't believe it's worth while to paper the pigsty. I've been looking at it, and the boards they're so rough, the paper wouldn't lay smooth, anyhow; and I couldn't well get at the inside o' the roof, while the pig's in. It would look real neat, though. I'd like to do it."

Mercy endured her mother's help in packing for one day. Then the desperateness of the trouble suggested a remedy. Selecting a large, strong box, she had it carried into the garret.

"There, mother," she said, "now you can pack in this box all the old lumber of all sorts which you want to carry. And, if this box isn't large enough, you shall have two more. Don't tire yourself out: there's plenty of time; and, if you don't get it all packed by the time I am done, I can help you."

Then Mercy went downstairs feeling half-guilty, as one does when one has practised a subterfuge on a child.

How many times that poor old woman packed and unpacked that box, n.o.body could dream. All day long she trotted up and down, up and down; ransacking closets, chests, barrels; sorting and resorting, and forgetting as fast as she sorted. Now and then she would come across something which would rouse an electric chain of memories in the dim chambers of her old, worn-out brain, and she would sit motionless for a long time on the garret floor, in a sort of trance. Once Mercy found her leaning back against a beam, with her knees covered by a piece of faded blue Canton c.r.a.pe, on which her eyes were fastened. She did not speak till Mercy touched her shoulder.

"Oh, my! how you scared me, child!" she exclaimed. "D'ye see this ere blue stuff? I hed a gown o' thet once: it was drefful kind o' clingy stuff. I never felt exzackly decent in it, somehow: it hung a good deal like a night-gownd; but your father he bought it for the color. He traded off some sh.e.l.ls for it in some o' them furrin places. You wouldn't think it now, but it used to be jest the color o' a robin's egg or a light-blue 'bachelor's b.u.t.ton;' and your father he used to stick one o' them in my belt whenever they was in blossom, when I hed the gownd on. He hed a heap o' notions about things matchin'. He brought me that gownd the v'yage he made jest afore Caleb was born; and I never hed a chance to wear it much, the children come so fast. It warn't re'ly worn at all, 'n' I hed it dyed black for veils arterwards."

It was from this father who used to "stick" pale-blue flowers in his wife's belt, and whose love of delicate fabrics and tints made him courageous enough to lead her draped in Canton c.r.a.pe into the unpainted Cape Cod meeting-house, where her fellow-women bristled in homespun, that Mercy inherited all the artistic side of her nature. She knew this instinctively, and all her tenderest sentiment centred around the vague memory she retained of a tall, dark-bearded man, who, when she was only three years old, lifted her in his arms, called her his "little Mercy,"

and kissed her over and over again. She was most loyally affectionate to her mother, but the sentiment was not a wholly filial one. There was too much reversal of the natural order of the protector and the protected in it; and her life was on too different a plane of thought, feeling, and interest from the life of the uncultured, undeveloped, childish, old woman. Yet no one who saw them together would have detected any trace of this shortcoming in Mercy's feeling towards her mother. She had in her nature a fine and lofty fibre of loyalty which could never condescend even to parley with a thought derogatory to its object; was lifted above all consciousness of the possibility of any other course. This is a sort of organic integrity of affection, which is to those who receive it a tower of strength, that is impregnable to all a.s.sault except that of death itself. It is a rare type of love, the best the world knows; but the men and the women whose hearts are capable of it are often thought not to be of a loving nature. The cheaper and less lasting types of love are so much louder of voice and readier of phrase, as in cloths cheap fabrics, poor to wear, are often found printed in gay colors and big patterns.

The day before they left home, Mercy, becoming alarmed by a longer interval than usual without any sound from the garret, where her mother was still at work over her fantastic collections of old odds and ends, ran up to see what it meant.

Mrs. Carr was on her knees before a barrel, which had held rags and papers. The rags and papers were spread around her on the floor. She had leaned her head on the barrel, and was crying bitterly.

"Mother! mother! what is the matter?" exclaimed Mercy, really alarmed; for she had very few times in her life seen her mother cry. Without speaking, Mrs. Carr held up a little piece of carved ivory. It was of a creamy yellow, and shone like satin: a long shred of frayed pink ribbon hung from it. As she held it up to Mercy, a sunbeam flashed in at the garret window, and fell across it, sending long glints of light to right and left.

"What a lovely bit of carving! What is it, mother? Why does it make you cry?" asked Mercy, stretching out her hand to take the ivory.

"It's Caley's whistle," sobbed Mrs. Carr. "We allus thought Patience Swift must ha' took it. She nussed me a spell when he was a little feller, an' jest arter she went away we missed the whistle. Your father he brought that hum the same v'yage I told ye he brought the blue c.r.a.pe. He knowed I was a expectin' to be sick, and he was drefful afraid he wouldn't get hum in time; but he did. He jest come a sailin' into th' harbor, with every mite o' sail the old brig 'd carry, two days afore Caley was born. An' the next mornin',--oh, dear me! it don't seem no longer ago 'n yesterday,--while he was a dressin', an' I lay lookin' at him, he tossed that little thing over to me on the bed, 'n' sez he,--"

"T 'll be a boy, Mercy, I know 'twill; an' here's his bos'u'n's whistle all ready for him,' an' that night he bought that very yard o' pink rebbin, and tied it on himself, and laid it in the upper drawer into one o' the little pink socks I'd got all ready. Oh, it don't seem any longer ago 'n yesterday! An' sure enough it was a boy; an' your father he allus used to call him 'Bos'u'n,' and he'd stick this ere whistle into his mouth an' try to make him blow it afore he was a month old. But by the time he was nine months old he'd blow it ez loud ez I could. And his father he'd just lay back 'n his chair, and laugh 'n' laugh, 'n' call out, 'Blow away, my hearty!' Oh, my! it don't seem any longer ago'n yesterday. I wish I'd ha' known. I wa'n't never friends with Patience any more arter that. I never misgave me but what she'd got the whistle. It was such a curious cut thing, and cost a heap o' money. Your father wouldn't never tell what he gin for 't. Oh, my! it don't seem any longer ago 'n yesterday," and the old woman wiped her eyes on her ap.r.o.n, and struggling up on her feet took the whistle again from Mercy's hands.

"How old would my brother Caley be now, if he had lived, mother?" said Mercy, anxious to bring her mother gently back to the present.

"Well, let me see, child. Why, Caley--Caley, he'd be--How old am I, Mercy?

Dear me! hain't I lost my memory, sure enough, except about these ere old things? They seem's clear's daylight."

"Sixty-five last July, mother," said Mercy. "Don't you know I gave you your new specs then?"

"Oh, yes, child,--yes. Well, I'm sixty-five, be I? Then Caley,--Caley, he'd be, let me see--you reckon it, Mercy. I wuz goin' on nineteen when Caley was born."

"Why, mother," exclaimed Mercy, "is it really so long ago? Then my brother Caleb would be forty-six years old now!" and mercy took again in her hand the yellow ivory whistle, and ran her fingers over the faded and frayed pink ribbon, and looked at it with an indefinable sense of its being a strange link between her and a distant past, which, though she had never shared it, belonged to her by right. Hardly thinking what she did, she raised the whistle to her lips, and blew a loud, shrill whistle on it. Her mother started. "O Mercy, don't, don't!" she cried. "I can't bear to hear it."

"Now, mother, don't you be foolish," said Mercy, cheerily. "A whistle's a whistle, old or young, and made to be whistled with. We'll keep this to amuse children with: you carry it in your pocket. Perhaps we shall meet some children on the journey; and it'll be so nice for you to pop this out of your pocket, and give it to them to blow."

"So it will, Mercy, I declare. That 'ud be real nice. You're a master-piece for thinkin' o' things." And, easily diverted as a child, the old woman dropped the whistle into her deep pocket, and, forgetting all her tears, returned to her packing.

Not so Mercy. Having attained her end of cheering her mother, her own thoughts reverted again and again all day long, and many times in after years, whenever she saw the ivory whistle, to the strange picture of the lonely old woman in the garret coming upon her first-born child's first toy, lost for forty years; the picture, too, of the history of the quaint piece of carving itself; the day it was slowly cut and chiselled by a patient and ill-paid toiler in some city of China; its voyage in the keeping of the ardent young husband hastening home to welcome his first child; its forty years of silence and darkness in the old garret; and then its return to life and light and sound, in the hands and lips of new generations of children.

The journey which Mercy had so much dreaded was unexpectedly pleasant.

Mrs. Carr proved an admirable traveller with the exception of her incessant and garrulous anxiety about the boxes which had been left behind on the deck of the schooner "Maria Jane," and could not by any possibility overtake them for three weeks to come. She was, in fact, so much of a child that she was in a state of eager delight at every new scene and person. Her childishness proved the best of claims upon every one's courtesy. Everybody was ready to help "that poor sweet old woman;"

and she was so simply and touchingly grateful for the smallest kindness that everybody who had helped her once wanted to help her again. More than one of their fellow-travellers remembered for a long time the bright-faced young woman with her childish mother, and wondered where they could have been going, and what was to be their life.

On the fourth day, just as the sun was sinking behind the hills, they entered the beautiful river interval, through which the road to their new home lay. Mercy sat with her face almost pressed against the panes of the car-windows, eagerly scanning every feature of the landscape, to her so new and wonderful. To the dweller by the sea, the first sight of mountains is like the sight of a new heavens and a new earth. It is a revelation of a new life. Mercy felt strangely stirred and overawed. She looked around in astonishment at her fellow-pa.s.sengers, not one of whom apparently observed that on either hand were stretching away to the east and the west fields that were, even in this late autumn, like carpets of gold and green. Through these fertile meadows ran a majestic river, curving and doubling as if loath to leave such fair sh.o.r.es. The wooded mountains changed fast from green to purple, from purple to dark gray; and almost before Mercy had comprehended the beauty of the region, it was lost from her sight, veiled in the twilight's pale, indistinguishable tints. Her mother was fast asleep in her seat. The train stopped every few moments at some insignificant station, of which Mercy could see nothing but a narrow platform, a dim lantern, and a sleepy-looking station-master. Slowly, one or two at a time, the pa.s.sengers disappeared, until she and her mother were left alone in the car. The conductor and the brakeman, as they pa.s.sed through, looked at them with renewed interest: it was evident now that they were going through to the terminus of the road.

"Goin' through, be ye?" said the conductor. "It'll be dark when we get in; an' it's beginnin' to rain. 'S anybody comin' to meet ye?"

"No," said Mercy, uneasily. "Will there not be carriages at the depot? We are going to the hotel. I believe there is but one."

"Well, there may be a kerridge down to-night, an' there may not: there's no knowin'. Ef it don't rain too hard, I reckon Seth'll be down."

Mercy's sense of humor never failed her. She laughed heartily, as she said,--

"Then Seth stays away, does he, on the nights when he would be sure of pa.s.sengers?"

The conductor laughed too, as he replied,---

"Well, 'tisn't quite so bad's that. Ye see this here road's only a piece of a road. It's goin' up through to connect with the northern roads; but they 've come to a stand-still for want o' funds, an' more 'n half the time I don't carry n.o.body over this last ten miles. Most o' the people from our town go the other way, on the river road. It's shorter, an' some cheaper. There isn't much travellin' done by our folks, anyhow. We're a mighty dead an' alive set up here. Goin' to stay a spell?" he continued, with increasing interest, as he looked longer into Mercy's face.

"Probably," said Mercy, in a grave tone, suddenly recollecting that she ought not to talk with this man as if he were one of her own village people. The conductor, sensitive as are most New England people, spite of their apparent familiarity of address, to the least rebuff, felt the change in Mercy's tone, and walked away, thinking half surlily, "She needn't put on airs. A schoolma'am, I reckon. Wonder if it can be her that's going to teach the Academy?"

When they reached the station, it was, as the conductor had said, very dark; and it was raining hard. For the first time, a sense of her unprotected loneliness fell upon Mercy's heart. Her mother, but half-awake, clung nervously to her, asking purposeless and incoherent questions. The conductor, still surly from his fancied rebuff at Mercy's hands, walked away, and took no notice of them. The station-master was nowhere to be seen. The two women stood huddling together under one umbrella, gazing blankly about them.

"Is this Mrs. Philbrick?" came in clear, firm tones, out of the darkness behind them; and, in a second more, Mercy had turned and looked up into Stephen White's face.

"Oh, how good you were to come and meet us!" exclaimed Mercy. "You are Mr.

Allen's friend, I suppose."

"Yes," said Stephen, curtly. "But I did not come to meet you. You must not thank me. I had business here. However, I made the one carriage which the town boasts, wait, in case you should be here. Here it is!" And, before Mercy had time to a.n.a.lyze or even to realize the vague sense of disappointment she felt at his words, she found herself and her mother placed in the carriage, and the door shut.

"Your trunks cannot go up until morning," he said, speaking through the carriage window; "but, if you will give me your checks, I will see that they are sent."

"We have only one small valise," said Mercy: "that was under our seat. The brakeman said he would take it out for us; but he forgot it, and so did I."

The train was already backing out of the station. Stephen smothered some very unchivalrous words on his lips, as he ran out into the rain, overtook the train, and swung himself on the last car, in search of the "one small valise" belonging to his tenants. It was a very shabby valise: it had made many a voyage with its first owner, Captain Carr. It was a very little valise: it could not have held one gown of any of the modern fas.h.i.+ons.

"Dear me," thought Stephen, as he put it into the carriage at Mercy's feet, "what sort of women are these I've taken under my roof! I expect they'll be very unpleasing sights to my eyes. I did hope she'd be good-looking." How many times in after years did Stephen recall with laughter his first impressions of Mercy Philbrick, and wonder how he could have argued so unhesitatingly that a woman who travelled with only one small valise could not be good-looking.

"Will you come to the house to-morrow?" he asked.