The Miller Of Old Church Part 32

Pitying her shyness, Gay took the chain from his mother's hand, and, slipping it around Molly's neck, fastened it under the bunch of curls at the back. Then he patted her encouragingly on the shoulder, while he spoke directly to Reuben.

"It looks well on her don't you think, Mr. Merryweather," he inquired.

"Yes, it's a pretty gift an' she's much obliged to all of you," replied Reuben, with the natural dignity which never deserted him. "She's a good girl, Molly is," he added simply. "For all her quick words an' ways thar ain't a better girl livin'."

"We are very sure of that," said Mr. Chamberlayne, speaking in Gay's place. "She is a kinswoman any of us may be proud of owning." And going a step nearer to her, he began explaining her father's wishes in the shortest words at his command.

They were all kind--all honestly anxious to do their duty in aiding the atonement of old Jonathan. Their faces, their voices, their gestures, revealed an almost painful effort to make her appear at ease. Yet in spite of their irreproachable intentions, each one of them was perfectly aware that the visit was very far from being a success. They admired her sincerely, but with the exception of Gay, who was bothered by few moral prejudices, they were one and all nervously constrained in manner. To Mr. Chamberlayne she represented merely an attractive object of charity; to Kesiah she appeared as an encroaching member of the inferior order; to Mrs. Gay she embodied the tragic disillusionment of her life. In time they would either forget these first impressions or grow accustomed to them; but while she stood there, awkward and blus.h.i.+ng, in the middle of the library, where old Jonathan had worked out his repentance, even the lawyer found his legal eloquence tripping confusedly on his tongue, and turned at last in sheer desperation to stare with a sensation of relief at the frowning countenance of Kesiah. When, after a hesitating word of thanks, the girl held out her hand to Reuben, and they went away arm in arm, as they had come, a helpless glance pa.s.sed from Jonathan to Mrs.

Gay and from Mrs. Gay into vacancy.

"Like most eccentric bequests made in moments of great moral purpose, it was, of course, a mistake," said the lawyer. "Had Jonathan known the character of the miller, he would certainly have had no objection to Molly's choice--if she has, indeed, a serious fancy for the young man, which I doubt. But in his day, we must remember, the Revercombs had given little promise of either intelligence or industry except in the mother. Granting this," he added thoughtfully, "it might be possible to have the conditions set aside, but not without laying bare a scandal which would cause great pain to sensitive natures---"

He glanced sympathetically at Mrs. Gay, who responded almost unconsciously to the emotional suggestion of his ideal of her.

"Oh, never that! I could not bear that!" she exclaimed.

"The whole trouble comes of the insane way people arrange the future,"

remarked Jonathan with irritation. "He actually believed, I dare say, that he was a.s.suring the girl's happiness by that ridiculous doc.u.ment.

But for mother I'd fight the thing in the courts and then give Molly her share outright and let her marry the miller."

The lawyer shook his head slowly, with his eyes on Mrs. Gay. "Before all else we must consider your mother," he answered.

For the first time Kesiah spoke. "I am quite willing to take the girl when Reuben dies," she said, "but why in the world did he put in that foolish clause about her living with Jonathan and myself?"

Without looking at her Mr. Chamberlayne answered almost sharply. "The whole truth of the matter is that there was a still more absurd idea in his mind, dear lady," he replied. "I may as well let you know it now since I combated it uselessly in my last interview with him. At the bottom of his heart Jonathan remained incorrigibly romantic until his death, and he clung desperately to the hope that if Molly received the education he intended her to have, her beauty and her charm, which seemed to him very remarkable, might win his nephew's affections, if she were thrown in his way. That in short, is the secret meaning of this extraordinary doc.u.ment."

The uncomfortable silence was broken by a laugh as Gay rose to his feet.

"Well, of all the ridiculous ideas!" he exclaimed in the sincerity of his amus.e.m.e.nt.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SHADE OF REUBEN

Arm in arm Reuben and Molly walked slowly home through the orchard.

Neither spoke until the old man called to Spot at his doorstep, and then Molly noticed that his breath came with a whistling sound that was unlike his natural voice.

"Are you tired, grandfather? What is the matter?"

"It's my chest, daughter. Let me sit down a while an' it will pa.s.s. Who is that yonder on the bench?"

"Old Mr. Doolittle. Wait here a minute before you speak to him."

It was a perfect spring afternoon, and the air was filled with vague, roving scents, as if the earth exhaled the sweetness of hidden flowers.

In the apple orchard the young gra.s.s was powdered with gold, and the long grey shadows of the trees barred the ground like the sketchy outlines in a impressionist painting.

On a bench at one end of the porch old Adam was sitting, and at sight of them, he rose, and stood waiting with his pipe in his hand.

"As 'twas sech a fine day an' thar warn't any work on hand for a man of my years, I thought I'd walk over an' pay my respects to you," he said.

"I've heard that 'twas yo' granddaughter's birthday an' that she's like to change her name befo' it's time for another."

"Well, I'm glad to see you, old Adam," replied Reuben, sinking into a chair while he invited his visitor to another. "I've gone kind of faint, honey," he added, "an' I reckon we'd both like a sip of blackberry wine if you've got it handy. Miss Kesiah gave me something to drink, but my throat was so stiff I couldn't swallow it."

The blackberry wine was kept in a large stone crock in the cellar, and while she filled the gla.s.ses, Molly heard the voice of old Adam droning on above the chirping of the birds in the orchard.

"I've been settin' here steddyin' them weeds out thar over-runnin'

everything," he was saying, "an' it does appear to a considerin' body that the Lord might have made 'em good gra.s.s an' grain with precious little trouble to Himself an' a mortal lot of satisfaction to the po'

farmers."

"He knows best. He knows best," responded Reuben.

"Well, I used to think that way befo' I'd looked into the matter,"

rejoined the other, "but the deeper I get, the less reason I see to be sartain sure. 'Tis the fas.h.i.+on for parsons, an' for some people outside of the pulpit, to jump to conclusions, an' the one they've jumped the farthest to get at, is that things are all as they ought to be. If you ain't possessed of the gift of logic it takes with you, but if you are possessed of it, it don't. Now, I tell you that if a farmer was to try to run his farm on the wasteful scale on which this world is conducted, thar wouldn't be one among us as would trust him with next season's crops. 'Tis sech a terrible waste that it makes a frugal mind sick to see it."

"Let's be thankful that it isn't any worse. He might have made it so,"

replied Reuben, shocked by his neighbour's irreverence, yet too modest to dispute it with authority.

"Now, if that's logic I don't know what logic is, though I was born with the gift of it," retorted old Adam. "When twenty seeds rot in the ground an' one happens up, thar're some folks as would praise the Lord for the one and say nothin' about the twenty. These same folks are forever drawin' picturs of wild things hoppin' an' skippin' in the woods, as if they ever had time to hop an' skip when they're obleeged to keep one eye on the fox an' the hawk an' t'other on the gun of the hunter. Yet to hear Mr. Mullen talk in the pulpit, you'd think that natur was all hoppin' an' skippin'."

"You're a wicked unbeliever," said Reuben, mildly sorrowful, "an' you ought to go home and pray over your thankless doubts."

"I'm as I was made," rejoined the other. "I didn't ax to be born an' I've had to work powerful hard for my keep." Taking the gla.s.s of blackberry wine from Molly's hand, he smacked his lips over it with lingering enjoyment.

"Do you feel better, grandfather?" inquired the girl, in the pause.

"The wine does me good, honey, but thar's a queer gone feelin' inside of me. I'm twenty years younger than you, old Adam, but you've got mo'

youth left in you than I have."

"'Tis my powerful belief in the Lord," chuckled the elder, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and placing the gla.s.s on the end of the bench. "No, no, Reuben, when it comes to that I ain't any quarrel with folks for lookin' al'ays at the pleasant side, but what staggers me is why they should take it as a merit to themselves when 'tis nothin' less than a weakness of natur. A man might jest as well pride himself that he can't see out of but one eye or hear out of but one ear as that he can't see nothin' but good when evil is so mixed up into it. Thar ain't all of us born with the gift of logic, but even when we ain't we might set silent an' listen to them that is."

A south wind, rising beyond the river, blew over the orchard, and the barred shadows swung back and forth on the gra.s.s.

"'Tis the eye of sense we see with," remarked Reuben quietly.

"Eh, an' 'tis the eye of sense you're weak in," responded old Adam. "I knew a blind man once that had a pictur of the world in his mind jest as smooth an' pretty as the views you see on the backs of calendars--with all the stink-weeds an' the barren places left out of it--an' he used to talk to us seein' ones for all the earth as if he were better acquainted with natur than we were."

"I ain't larned an' I never pretended to be," said Reuben, piously, "but the Lord has used me well in His time an' I'm thankful to Him."

"Now that's monstrous odd," commented the ancient cynic, "for lookin' at it from the outside, I'd say He'd used you about as bad as is His habit in general."

He rose from the bench, and dusted the seat of his blue overalls, while he gazed sentimentally over the blossoming orchard. "'Tis the seventeenth of April, so we may git ahead with plantin'," he remarked.

"Ah, well, it's a fine early spring an' puts me in mind of seventy years ago when I was courtin'. Thar ain't many men, I reckon, that can enjoy lookin' back on a courtin' seventy years after it is over. 'Tis surprisin' how some things sweeten with age, an' memory is one of 'em."

Reuben merely nodded after him as he went, for he had grown too tired to answer. A curious stillness--half happiness, half indifference--was stealing over him, and he watched as in a dream, the blue figure of old Adam hobble over the sun-flecked path through the orchard. A few minutes later Molly flitted after the elder, and Reuben's eyes followed her with the cheerful look with which he had faced seventy years of life. On a rush mat in the suns.h.i.+ne the old hound flicked his long black ear at a fly of which he was dreaming, and from a bower of ivy in the eaves there came the twitter of sparrows. Beyond the orchard, the wind, blowing from the marshes, chased the thin, sketchy shadows over the lawn at Jordan's Journey.